Gorgias’ extant works, translated by George Kennedy, may be found in Sprague’s The Older Sophists. I use these as default translations with two exceptions. For Helen, I use Kennedy’s revised translation, which he appends to his translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric; and for the Epitaphios, I use the translation by Thomas Cole, which he includes in his The origins of rhetoric in ancient Greece. For the transcription of Gorgias’ On Not-Being by the anonymous author of Melissus, Xenophanes, Gorgias or MXG, I use the translation by T. Lovejoy and E. S. Forster in Barnes’ Collected Works of Aristotle. In citing specific remarks by Gorgias I use the lettering and numbering protocol in Sprague, which follows that of the 1908 Diels and Kranz compendium of the writings of the Older Sophists, in which the letter “A” designates commentary and the letter “B” designates works attributed to Gorgias himself. The exceptions are Gorgias’ four major extant texts, On Not-Being (B3), the Epitaphios (B6); Helen (B11), and Palamedes (B11a), which I cite parenthetically as “N,” “E,” “H,” and “P” respectively, followed by the line number. Translations of Plato and Aristotle are taken from the Loeb editions. In respect to the difficult issue of gender references in personal and possessive pronouns, I attempt to use gender-neutral terms as much as possible, but otherwise opt for “his” and “he” for the sake of clarity.

The sophist is not the easiest thing in the world to catch and define (Plato, Sophist 218c).

It is only if we give them our soul that [the works of ancient times] can go on living: it is our blood that makes them speak to us. A really “historical” presentation would speak as a ghost to ghosts (Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” 126).

During the past several years, scholars have become increasingly interested in the ancient Greek Sophist Gorgias of Leontini. This scholarly turn marks a striking reversal in the status of Gorgias, a figure who has been marginalized in Western thought and culture ever since he was depicted by Aristophanes as a barbaric sycophant, by Plato as a shallow opportunist, and by Aristotle as an inept stylist.[i] In part, the current appreciation of Gorgias is an outgrowth of the project of “rehabilitating” the Sophists initiated in the nineteenth century by G. F. Hegel and George Grote; for most recent studies of Gorgias reaffirm the collapse of what Henry Sidgwick in 1872 was already calling the “old view” of the Sophists, one that portrayed them as an unscrupulous band of charlatans who “taught the art of fallacious discourse” and who propagated “immoral practical doctrines [through] plausible pernicious sophistries” (289). But recent studies have elevated Gorgias’ standing even further than that accorded him by scholars engaged in sophistic rehabilitation, most of whom portray Gorgias as less significant than his eminent “colleague” Protagoras, and some of whom exclude Gorgias from the company of Sophists altogether.[ii] Certainly not all scholars would concur with Victor Vitanza’s claim that Gorgias is the principal precursor of what he labels our own “Third Sophistic”; and indeed many academic philosophers continue to ridicule any attempt to depict Gorgias as a serious thinker or able writer.[iii] But the attention currently accorded Gorgias by scholars in numerous fields has transported this once marginal figure closer to the centers of what Richard Rorty calls the “Conversation of the West” (1980, 494).

In their diverse inquiries, scholars have explored the substance and style of Gorgias’ four principal extant texts, his pedagogy, and his political activities. Concerning On Not-Being, many philosophers and historians of philosophy now read Gorgias’ baffling text as a significant contribution to presocratic philosophy in general and Eleatic ontology and epistemology in particular; and several scholars argue that Gorgias’ remarks on language, knowledge, and truth anticipate the views of such twentieth century thinkers as Heidegger, Derrida, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Rorty and Fish.[iv] Regarding the Encomium of Helen, scholars of Greek mythology increasingly cite Gorgias’ account of Helen of Troy as rivaling the accounts by Homer, Sappho, Stesichorus and Euripides in importance;[v] historians of Greek science and medicine consider Gorgias’ remarks about the magical and pharmaceutical nature of logos significant in the development of “psychotherapy” in fifth-century Greece;[vi] students of Greek theater emphasize the influence Gorgias had on Euripides;[vii] and feminist scholars read Gorgias’ account as illuminating the status of women in Greek society.[viii] In their readings of the Defense of Palamedes, legal historians have found Gorgias’ reasoning to be a significant contribution to the development of dicanic argumentation, and platonic scholars have found the defense to be a model for the composition of Plato’s own Apology.[ix] Concerning the Epitaphios or Athenian Funeral Oration, cultural historians have read Gorgias’ text as a significant contribution to the genre of the epitaphios, a source for Plato’s parodic Menexenus, and a subtle critique of the propagandist rhetoric of fifth-century imperial Athens.[x] In respect to Gorgias’ notorious style, many historians find his antithetical and figurative manner of writing seminal in the development of Greek rhetorical theory and practice; and literary scholars have argued that his distinctive manner of writing and speaking adumbrates such genres and styles as Menippean satire, mannerism, the sublime, the grotesque, and the carnivalesque.[xi] Concerning his educational theories and practices, several theorists credit Gorgias for originating a pragmatic pedagogy that not only anticipates Isocrates and Quintilian, but remains vitally relevant today.[xii] And in regard to his political activities, some historians now contend that by urging Athens to undertake its ultimately disastrous Sicilian campaign, Gorgias played a more important role in the subsequent defeat of imperial Athens than previously believed; while others suggest that Gorgias’ advocacy of cultural panhellenism anticipates some twentieth-century “post-colonial” thought.[xiii]

But whereas he may no longer be relegated to the margins of scholarship, Gorgias nevertheless remains elusive and enigmatic. Indeed, one may argue that in his emergence in discussions of the nuances of presocratic philosophy, the intricacies of Greek mythology, the complexities of Greek politics and diplomacy, the formalities of Athenian legal argumentation, and the subtleties of Greek rhetorical theory and style, the figure we call Gorgias has become even more elusive and puzzling than he was to fifth and fourth century Athenians. For just as Gorgias appears to have “astonished” his first Athenian audience in 427 BCE, to have puzzled Socrates, who importunes Gorgias to “draw aside the veil” from his elusive rhetoric (Gorgias 460a), and to have perplexed Isocrates with his “subtleties” in On Not-Being and his transgressions of genre in Helen, Gorgias continues to confound contemporary scholars.[xiv] Of course, some dispute among scholars about a Sophist like Gorgias is to be expected, for the entire company of Sophists has always had a reputation for subtlety, ambiguity, and controversy. But even in comparison with discussions of his sophistic colleagues, disagreements about Gorgias are striking in their nature and scope. For while scholars may differ over the meaning of Protagoras’ notions of “measure” and “man,” the nature of Hippias’ “cosmopolitanism,” the rationale behind Prodicus’ attention to synonyms, the significance of Thrasymachus’ remarks on justice, or the implications of Antiphon’s concept of truth, their disagreements tend to occur within a framework of general consensus about the views of the particular Sophist in question. But in discussions of Gorgias such consensus is seldom found, and critics dispute vehemently what issue if any he is discussing, what he means by his various claims, and whether he even holds the position for which he is arguing. To use an analogy from the fine arts, if interpretations of Protagoras, Prodicus or Antiphon are akin to portraits by a school of Renaissance painters that illuminate various nuances of character or temperament, then renderings of Gorgias are more like renderings by Picasso or Francis Bacon, in which the nature and very existence of the model is called into question. In his myriad guises and diverse voices, identified with seemingly inconsistent positions on a variety of issues, Gorgias has thus acquired the dubious distinction of being perhaps the most elusive of the polytropic quarry hunted in Plato’s Sophist.

In the face of this intense scholarly disagreement about Gorgias, I intend in this book to articulate a coherent account of this enigmatic thinker and writer. Given this objective, I will use the remainder of this Introduction for several preliminary tasks. First, I will delineate the principal obstacles to articulating a coherent and comprehensive reading of Gorgias, impediments deriving from the condition of his extant texts, the elusive nature of his own thinking and writing, and our lack of definitive information about the contexts in which he composed and performed his works. I refer to our interpretive situation as a “hermeneutic aporia,” an impasse in which the obstacles we encounter seem to prevent us from articulating an account of Gorgias that is in any sense definitive or even more persuasive than radically antithetical readings. Second, I argue that the two principal strategies that scholars have urged as a means of escaping this aporia, the “objectivist” and the “rhapsodic” strategies, fail to provide us with a means of articulating a compelling and defensible reading of Gorgias. I then delineate the hermeneutic model I will use in my reading of Gorgias, one that draws on Stanley Fish’s notion that interpretation is a game played by members of an “interpretive community.” Attending to readings that attempt to render Gorgias’ work cogent, consistent, and coherent, I delineate three rival accounts of Gorgias currently advanced by scholars in the interpretive community, readings I identify as “subjectivist,” “empiricist” and “antifoundationalist.” Finally, I sketch the three sections of this book in which I will articulate and defend an “antifoundationalist” reading of Gorgias, attending first to his agonistic model of language, rhetoricist conception of inquiry, and his endorsement model of truth; next to his communitarian ethics and panhellenic politics; and third to his parodic, figurative and theatrical performances.

I turn first to the principal obstacles to understanding Gorgias, those deriving from the condition of his extant texts, the elusive nature of his writing, and our lack of definitive information about the contexts in which he composed and presented his works. The first class of impediments includes the lacunae in Gorgias’ oeuvre and in individual texts, and the questionable authenticity and accuracy of some works.[xv] Perhaps the primary obstacle among these is that most of what the Suda refers to as a “great deal” of Gorgias’ writing, over a lifetime of a hundred and nine years, appears to be lost altogether, while those few texts that do remain are in the form of paraphrases and copies (A2).[xvi] The lacunae in Gorgias’ oeuvre are of course a severe impediment, in that any interpretation based on a limited amount of an author’s writing must be acknowledged as potentially wildly inaccurate and at best partial. Furthermore, of the extant works that are included in the Diels-Kranz collection, which scholars today tend to accept as authoritative, most are themselves fragmentary and often corrupt. Of Gorgias’ four principal works, On Not-Being (B3), the Epitaphios or Athenian funeral oration (B6), the Encomium of Helen (B11), and the Apology for Palamedes (B11a), only Helen and Palamedes appear to exist in their entirety, and each is questionable in several places. The Epitaphios may be a small fragment of a considerably longer funeral oration; and On Not-Being exists only in summary form, indeed in two paraphrases that differ in significant ways. Among other extant fragments are one remark from the Olympic Speech (B7-8a), and the opening line from the Encomium for the People of Elis (B10). Diels and Kranz also include a dozen “unidentified” remarks and aphorisms attributed to Gorgias by various ancient authors, and four remarks they consider to be of “doubtful authenticity.”

A second difficulty posed by the condition of Gorgias’ texts derives from the questionable accuracy and authenticity of the texts attributed to him. Concerning On Not-Being, Gorgias’ original work is lost, and we possess only two quite disparate paraphrases, that of Sextus Empiricus in Against the Professors, and that of the anonymous author of Melissus, Xenophanes, Gorgias or MXG, a text included in the Aristotelian corpus. It is possible that both versions are summaries of an earlier work by Gorgias, or that each draws on intermediary sources, for each work omits material that is presented in the other. Concerning Helen and Palamedes, a quite different sort of scholarly hurdle arises. Both works, as they exist in the Cripps and Palatine manuscripts, appear to be transcriptions of Gorgias’ original texts rather than mere paraphrases. And whereas the two extant transcriptions of Helen differ slightly, they are by no means as diverse as the two extant paraphrases of On Not-Being.[xvii] But whereas most scholars now consider the transcriptions to be accurate, it is instructive to observe that prior to the canonization by Diels and Kranz many scholars did not appear to attribute either work to Gorgias. Of the three most influential nineteenth-century “rehabilitators” of the Sophists, Hegel, Grote and Nietzsche, none refers to either work in his discussions of Gorgias; and two of the most respected nineteenth-century British classicists adamantly repudiate each as spurious. R. C. Jebb thus asserts that both works are “generally admitted to be later imitations” (cxxvi), and that Helen in particular does not “bear any distinctive marks of the style of Gorgias”; and E. M. Cope contends that both Palamedes and Helen “are now regarded as imitations of his manner by some later Sophist” (1856, 67). Concerning the Epitaphios, preserved by a Scholiast on Hermogenes from one of the lost texts of Dionysius the Elder, it is somewhat disconcerting to note that the scholiast describes the extant text as “an example of the style” of Gorgias’ speeches (B6a), suggesting that the text may merely be an imitation of Gorgias’ style, and not a work composed by Gorgias himself. Concerning Gorgias’ extant “aphorisms,” most are paraphrases by authors who lived centuries after Gorgias uttered them, and none is cited in historical context.

If Gorgias’ texts are obscured by the vagaries of historical transmission, they are also rendered elusive because of the nature of his writing itself. Many of Gorgias’ assertions are ambiguous because he does not define the terms he uses to advance his principal theses and arguments. In On Not-Being, for instance, he does not specify whether his term “exist” is be construed in its “existential” sense, in its “veridical” sense, that of “being true,” or in its predicative or copulative sense. In the Epitaphios, he uses such terms as dikaioi (justice) and pistei (faithfulness) to praise the slain warriors, but does not tell us what he means by these accolades; in Helen, he does not define the principal terms he uses in defending Helen’s departure with Paris, leaving open to interpretation what he means by such terms as tyche, a term denoting chance and contingency; and logos, a polysemous term that denotes discourse, argument, and rational order.[xviii] In Palamedes he does not define such pivotal terms as alethia (truth), dike (justice), time (honor) or kairos (the opportune or the timely); and in his diverse aphorisms, he leaves tantalizingly ambiguous such key terms as dike (justice) (B21), apate (deception) (B23), and doxa (opinion) (B26). Further complicating his failure to define these and other terms, Gorgias frequently presents his central ideas in elusive and ambiguous metaphors, similes and puns. He states, for example, that logos is a great dynast (H8)

and a drug (H14); that love is a disease (H19); that Nature is a judge who casts a vote of death against everyone (P1); that the citizens of Larisa are akin to pots manufactured by the famous Larisan potters (A23); that philosophers are like the suitors of Penelope (B29); and that orators are like frogs croaking in water (B30). Each of these tropes is ambiguous, and what Gorgias actually means by any of his assertions is often open to an array of interpretations.

Further complicating an interpretation of Gorgias is his pervasive playfulness; for as several commentators have noted, it is unclear when he is being “serious” in his assertions. Aristotle, for example, notes that Gorgias himself recommends responding to seriousness with jests and to jests with seriousness (Rhetoric 1419b3); and he characterizes Gorgias’ own writing as pervasively “ironic” (Rhetoric 1408b18-21). As readers we must decide whether to read Gorgias’ texts as “serious” theses, as playful paignions, or perhaps as both. To cite only one instance of the hermeneutic challenge posed by this playfulness, Gorgias in Helen addresses a variety of epistemological and ethical issues, including the nature and power of language; the epistemological status of poetry and science; the limits of free choice in the face of chance, fate and compulsion; the conflict between obligations to one’s family and the pursuit of personal happiness; and the struggle between Greeks and Barbarians. But he characterizes his own work as a paignion or “amusement” (H21), suggesting that the text may not in some sense be “serious.” If we read his remark as disavowing the text’s seriousness, it is unclear whether we should discount the content of the entire text, and thereby refrain from attributing any of the views expressed to Gorgias; whether we should discount only some of the arguments, and conclude that Gorgias means what he says about, say, the nature and power of language; or whether we should read Gorgias as meaning everything he asserts. Our interpretive task lies not only in determining if and when Gorgias is being playful in his various assertions, but in deciding whether and to what extent such playfulness may obviate interpretation itself.[xix]

Whereas our attempt to understand Gorgias is obstructed by the condition of his texts and nature of his writing, it is also made difficult because of the ambiguity and diversity of the contexts in which he composed and performed his works. It would be enormously helpful to be able to place Gorgias’ texts in a detailed historical narrative, and to situate them vis-a-vis the political, social, legal, cultural and intellectual institutions and events in Leontini, Larisa, and other cities in which he composed and performed; but we are limited in any such undertaking, and must frequently resort to speculation.[xx] We are told that Gorgias was born between 480 and 490 BCE in the small city of Leontini, a colony in eastern Sicily established by the Chalcideans and allied with Athens; and that he died over a hundred years later, perhaps in Thessaly. We know little about Gorgias’ family life, save that his father was Charmantides; he had a brother, Herodicus, a physician whom he apparently accompanied at times; he had a sister whose grandson dedicated a golden statue to him at Delphi; and he may or may or may not have married.[xxi] In respect to his education, Gorgias appears to have studied under Empedocles of Acragus in southern Sicily, but we do not know when, how long, or in what capacity;[xxii] he may have also have studied with the rhetoricians Corax and Tisias in the eastern Sicilian city of Syracuse, but we know very little about these two figures, and nothing of Gorgias’ relationship with either man.[xxiii] Concerning his political activities, we know that Gorgias led an embassy from Leontini to Athens in 427 BCE requesting military assistance against Syracuse, but we know nothing about his political activities in Leontini prior to 427, nor even what the political institutions in Leontini were. After 427, Gorgias appears to have moved to mainland Greece, where he traveled to Athens, Larisa and other cities. He spoke frequently at panhellenic festivals, becoming “conspicuous” at Olympia, Delphi and elsewhere, but we do not know whether he was involved in the organization of the festivals themselves.[xxiv]

Gorgias’ principal profession was teaching, and his students are said to have included Polus, Meno, Aspasia of Miletus, Pericles, Critias, and Isocrates. He is also said to have influenced Thucydides, Agathon, Alcidamus, and many other writers.[xxv] But whereas Gorgias may have influenced his students’ thought and manner of writing, their own views offer little guidance for understanding Gorgias’ thought. One of Gorgias’ students in Sicily was Polus of Acragus, who subsequently taught and apparently wrote a text on rhetoric. Plato inserts the “coltish” Polus into the Gorgias; but we should not necessarily attribute to Gorgias the views expressed by Polus. Nor should we attribute to Gorgias the radical egoism expressed by the purely fictional Callicles, even though Plato depicts Callicles as sympathetic to Gorgias. Isocrates, also a student of Gorgias, appears to have been influenced by several of his mentor’s ideas; but we cannot presume that Isocrates fully understood Gorgias’ thought, given that he condemns Gorgias for his “arid” remarks in On Not-Being (Antidosis 268), and his “violations” of genre in Helen (Helen 14-15).[xxvi] Two other Athenian students of Gorgias include the opportunistic Alcibiades, who promoted Athens’ disastrous Sicilian campaign, and the notorious Critias, who became a member of the tyrannical Athenian “Thirty”; but we have no reason to assume that Gorgias condoned the political activities of either man. One of Gorgias’ students in Thessaly was Meno, who in Plato’s Meno extols Gorgias’ characterization of virtue and his putative “theory of pores”; but the platonic Meno’s account of these topics may not accurately represent Gorgias’ own views. In respect to style, Gorgias appears to have influenced the writing of Alcidamus and Lycophron, as well as the style of authors as diverse as Hippocrates, Thucydides, Isocrates and Agathon, whose “euphuistic” style Plato parodies in the Symposium.[xxvii] But although these men may have imitated some features of Gorgias’ manner of writing, we should not assume that Gorgias used tropes, topoi, arguments or genres for the same reasons as any of his putative imitators.

If we should not assume that Gorgias concurs with his teachers or students, neither should we assume that he shares all the views of the thinkers and teachers he is most frequently associated with, the Sophists. Most scholars include Gorgias among the “Older Sophists,” the diverse array of individuals who taught and lectured throughout fifth and early fourth-century Greece. But while we may classify Gorgias as a Sophist, we ought not conclude that he would always concur with Protagoras, Hippias, Antiphon, and Prodicus. Rather, we should recognize that the Sophists were a rather heterogeneous family of thinkers, writers, speakers, and teachers who discussed a variety of ontological, epistemological, ethical, political, and stylistic topics, and who presented their views in different genres and venues. In respect to Protagoras, arguably his most important “colleague,” we may find that Gorgias shares some of Protagoras’ principal views, and that attending to Protagoras’ views may illuminate those of Gorgias. We may be able to illuminate Gorgias’ thought if we attend to Protagoras’ contention that “man is the measure of all things” (DK80.B1); that every logos can be opposed with a rival logos (DK80.B6a); and that it is possible to make an apparently weaker logos stronger (DK80.B6b). But we must also recognize that Gorgias appears to depart from Protagoras in crucial ways. To cite only three examples, Gorgias does not advocate agnosticism but discusses the gods in several texts; he promotes panhellenism rather than democracy; and he appears to place enormous emphasis on the heuristic function of style and delivery. We may also attend to the ideas of other Sophists to illuminate Gorgias; but we ought not conclude that by defining “sophistry,” or “sophistic rhetoric,” we will thereby be able to understand Gorgias’ distinctive ideas, his art of inquiry and argument, his multifarious style or his theatrical delivery.

If we cannot rely on the remarks of his mentors, students and colleagues in our interpretation of Gorgias, nor can we rely uncritically on the portrayals of Gorgias given by his two most influential critics, Plato and Aristotle. Plato provides indispensible insights into Gorgias’ views, notably that Gorgias participates in an “ancient quarrel” between rhetoric and philosophy; that he considers probabilities more significant than any putative context-invariant “truths” (Phaedrus 267a); that he articulates an anti-essentialist, family-resemblance conception of virtue (B19, Meno 71e-72a); that his primary ethical concerns are honor and shame (Gorgias 461b); that his multifarious style is both festive and combative (Gorgias 447a); and that his objective as educator is to liberate and empower his students (Gorgias 452d).[xxviii] But whereas these insights are invaluable, we must recognize that Plato depicts Gorgias with his own philosophically weighted vocabulary, and assesses him from within his own conceptual framework. Indeed, it is instructive to emphasize that Gorgias himself describes the Gorgias as a playful satire rather than an accurate account of his own views (A15a). We must also be cautious of Aristotle’s account of Gorgias. We may learn a great deal from Aristotle’s observations about Gorgias’ conception of the art of rhetoric, notably that Gorgias’ “epideictic” performances are overtly theatrical and frequently playful (Rhetoric 1366a29-32); that he is concerned with praise and blame (Rhetoric 1414b29); that he uses associative or “paralogical” reasoning (Rhetoric 1418a32); that he deploys localisms, neologisms, epithets and metaphors in his “frigid” and quasi-poetic style (1405b34-1406b4); that he frequently writes ironically (Rhetoric 1408b18-21; that he considers “seriousness” to be a rhetorical strategy rather than an inherently desirable moral trait (Rhetoric 1419b3); and that in teaching the art of rhetoric he has students memorize model speeches rather than learn the rules of the art (Sophistical Refutations 183b36). But whereas his remarks illuminate Gorgias’ conception of rhetoric, we must recognize that like Plato, Aristotle is by no means neutral or impartial in his characterization, and that he describes and evaluates Gorgias from within a conceptual framework that is diametrically opposed to that of Gorgias.

Given the fragmentariness and questionable authenticity of much of his oeuvre, the ambiguous, figurative and ludic nature of his own writing, the dearth of specific information about the contexts in which he composed his works, the ambiguous relationship between his views and those of his mentors and students, and the openly partisan characterizations of his work by his Athenian adversaries, we find ourselves in what may be termed a hermeneutic aporia or impasse, in that we appear to have no obvious means of articulating and defending a particular account of Gorgias’ thought. On the one hand, it is not clear how we may attribute to Gorgias any “position” on any issue or any overall philosophy, given that we do not know if or to what extent the fragmentary collection of his texts is representative of his overall philosophy, whether or not he really means what he is reported to have said in any of his works, or what he means by his undefined terms and elusive metaphors. Describing Gorgias as holding a particular position on any issue thus seems highly suspect if not completely arbitrary. Conversely, given the nature of Gorgias’ works, it seems possible to attribute any position to Gorgias we wish, since any construal may be rendered consistent with the fragmentary, ambiguous remnants of his writing, and no interpretation can be judged more or less viable. For if a critic encounters a remark by Gorgias that appear to be inconsistent with his or her interpretation, he or she may always resort to claiming that the particular remark in question was not really made by Gorgias, that it is not representative of his overall thought, that the terms themselves have a different meaning, or that remark is merely ironic or playful. The hermeneutic challenge, in this respect, is not only one of articulating a coherent and comprehensive account, but of being able to argue in a meaningful way that a given interpretation is preferable to other plausible readings of Gorgias. For if any reading is consistent with one or another construal of some of the extant fragments, and all apparent contradictions in a given interpretation can be resolved by diverse recourses, then every attempt to attribute a particular position to him is suspect, and every attempt to decide which reading is preferable is futile.

The objectivist and rhapsodic escapes

In the face of this hermeneutic aporia, scholars have proposed two sorts of “escapes,” ways of reading Gorgias that appear to circumvent the ostensibly insurmountable obstacles to articulating a compelling interpretation. Each of these proposed escapes, I suggest, fails to provide a way out of the hermeneutic aporia. We may label the first approach “objectivist,” in that its goal is to articulate an objectively valid or “correct” account of Gorgias by identifying his original intentions in the text without imposing our own biased assumptions or conceptual schemes on them.[xxix] This objectivist approach is first proposed by Plato, who depicts understanding as a process of “drawing aside the veil” of speech in order to discern Gorgias’ real meaning (Gorgias 460a). Plato expands on what “drawing aside the veil” involves in the Ion, where he indicates that interpretation involves understanding an author’s original intentions. He thus insists that a rhapsode engaged in interpretation must “understand the meaning of the poet,” and that this requires him to “interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers” (Ion 530c). Plato further indicates that understanding an author’s original meaning involves examining his precise words and the meaning they had in his own historical context, namely “his own region and dialect” (Protagoras 341a-d). Plato’s objectivist approach to interpretation has been extremely influential, and informs the views of contemporary theorists such as Emilio Betti and E. D. Hirsch. Betti maintains that “it is our duty as guardians and practitioners of the study of history to protect this kind of objectivity and to provide evidence of the epistemological conditions of its possibility” (177-8, emphasis added); and Hirsch contends that an interpreter must discern a “determinate” meaning, namely the author’s intended meaning, for “the meaning of a text is the author’s meaning” (25). Following Plato’s lead, he asserts that “the interpreter’s primary task is to reproduce in himself the author’s “logic,” his attitudes, his cultural givens, in short, his world. Even though the process of verification is highly complex and difficult, the ultimate verificative principle is very simple-- the imaginative reconstruction of the speaking subject” (242). Hirsch argues that the “activity of interpretation can lay claim to intellectual respectability only if its results can lay claim to validity” (164). An objectively “valid” reading trumps every other interpretation, for it recovers an author’s original meaning without imposing anachronistic conceptual schemes upon an author.

This objectivist approach has been advocated by numerous Gorgian scholars, including Jacqueline Romilly, George Kerferd, Thomas Cole, and Edward Schiappa. Among these scholars, Schiappa has articulated this objectivist approach most eloquently, and I will address his account in order to show why it fails to provide a way out of the hermeneutic aporia. Schiappa states that in order to understand any of the Sophists, we must base our reading on “historical fact” (1991, 65), and reconstruct the Sophists’ ideas “in their own words and intellectual context,” rather than relying on our own anachronistic terminology. He thus asserts that his goal is to attain “a thorough and comprehensive recovery of each Sophist’s thinking as far as the available evidence permits,” and to “understand sophistic thinking in its own context as far as possible” (1991, 81). He acknowledges that every such reconstruction must necessarily be incomplete, since given the limits of our knowledge “there is no such thing as a final, objective, impersonal historical account,” one that exactly replicates the Sophists’ own ideas; but Schiappa insists that “it does not follow that all [readings] are equally valuable or ‘valid,’” for some are clearly more accurate than others in their fidelity to objective facts, while others “stretch the original context and anachronistically inject later developed abstractions” (1990b, 308-310, emphasis added). Schiappa thus echoes Jacqueline Romilly, who chastises those scholars who turn their back upon “history as it was lived, within the framework of fifth-century Athens” in order to detect in the Sophists “their own particular problems and prejudices.” (1992, xi); he iterates Kerferd’s claim that we should read the Sophists “without presuppositions”(1989, 13); and he embraces Alan Bloom’s contention that “if we were to study history according to our tastes, we would see nothing but ourselves everywhere,” given that “thought is the prisoner of whatever place it is to be found [if] it cannot break the bonds of the present”(cited in Schiappa, 1991, 67-68).

In order to “break the bonds of the present” and arrive at a more objective and accurate account of Gorgias and the other Sophists, Schiappa advocates two complementary hermeneutic strategies. First, he argues that we should ground our reading on the Sophists’ original words or ipsissima verba, rather than relying on interpretations and commentary by subsequent scholars. We should identify and privilege “data” rather than “theories,” attending solely to those fragments that are authentic, accurate, and free of subsequent interpretation. In so doing, we should “bracket” our own anachronistic philosophical terminology and concepts as much as possible, so as to discern the Sophists’ own thought in their own words, and to avoid “improper and premature schematization”(1991, 21). Rather than transplanting their fragments from their original context into subsequent conceptual frameworks, we should avoid any philosophical terminology that the Sophists themselves did not actually use. Second, Schiappa argues that we must ground our interpretation of what the Sophists’ themselves meant in their own historical context, namely that of fifth-century Greece; for it is only within this context that their original words have meaning. Drawing on the work of Havelock, Ong and others, Schiappa characterizes the Sophists’ “fifth-century historical framework” in respect to the traditional topic of mythos and logos. He identifies the “mythic-poetic” culture of early Greece as “a constellation of certain social practices, including specific forms of discourse (primarily oral poetry), patterns of explanation (typically theistic), and political orientations (elitist)”; and he describes the subsequent “rationalistic” culture exemplified by Aristotle as a culture in which “oral and written prose challenged poetry, anthropocentric or ‘scientific’ explanations challenged theistic traditions, and radical democracy challenged more elitist forms of government”(1991, 30). Using this distinction, Schiappa characterizes fifth-century Greece as a period of transition from the more primitive culture based largely on mythical thinking to the fourth-century culture relying on rational inquiry. Positing this putative historical transition or progression as “objective fact,” Schiappa concludes that most of Gorgias’ thought and style may be understood as “advancing the art of written prose in general, and argumentative composition in particular” (1995, 317).

Whereas Schiappa’s objectivist strategy may appear on its face to escape the hermeneutic aporia by situating Gorgias’ original words in his own historical context, it fails for two reasons. First, Schiappa’s attempt to attend solely to Gorgias’ “actual words” or ipsissima verba is futile, for as noted above, all of Gorgias “actual words” are lost. Since all of his extant texts and remarks exist in the form of transcriptions and paraphrases of questionable authenticity and accuracy, it is impossible to stipulate any of Gorgias’ “original words” without relying on an array of interpretive assumptions and speculations about Gorgias and the authors who have transcribed and paraphrased him. Whereas most Gorgian scholars today tend to accept as authoritative the collection of Diels and Kranz, this does not mean that we have finally arrived at an “accurate” collection of Gorgias’ works, one that corrects the “errors” of such nineteenth-century scholars as Jebb or Cope who considered Helen and Palamedes inauthentic. On the contrary, the acceptance of Diels and Kranz’ collection indicates that our discussions of Gorgias depend on our own historically contingent assumptions, judgments and speculations about such matters as whether or not a particular text is sufficiently representative of Gorgias’ thinking or manner of writing to be assigned to him; and whether and to what extent the transcribers of Gorgias’ works may have misunderstood his original terms or arguments, and thereby altered his original texts. But even if we stipulate that some of Gorgias’ extant texts are comprised of his “original words,” this does not enable us to avoid using our own anachronistic terminology in reading Gorgias. For we must still translate his words into contemporary English, and hence into our own conceptual schemes, in order to understand their meaning; and to do this we must use our own terms and conceptual schemes. For as every experienced translator recognizes, translation requires interpretation; and every interpretation involves making assumptions and adopting specific procedures. In Rorty’s terms, “translation is necessary if ‘understanding’ an author is to mean something more than engaging in rituals of which we do not see the point, and translating an utterance means fitting it into our practices” (1984, 52n1). Whereas Schiappa insists that in order to decipher Gorgias’ original intentions we should “bracket” our own anachronistic terms and concepts, he fails to recognize that this practice is simply not possible.

Schiappa’s second error is that he sees “historical placement” as an objective project that does not rely on our own culturally biased assumptions and judgments. He fails to see that every historical placement of Gorgias’ texts, both in respect to the specific contexts in which he wrote and the more general contours of fifth-century Greek history and culture, is speculative and contestable. As noted above, we possess very little specific information about the specific political, economic, social and cultural milieus of Leontini, Syracuse, Phaerae and elsewhere in which Gorgias composed and presented his texts; and in order to characterize those contexts we must rely on an array of contestable assumptions, procedures, and judgments. And regarding what Schiappa calls the general “framework” of Greek culture in which Gorgias lived and wrote, we must see that any characterization of its dominant features, and how they may have influenced Gorgias’ writing, is perhaps even more speculative and disputable. Whereas Schiappa situates Gorgias’ work in terms of a traditional historical narrative that depicts Greece as evolving from an irrational culture informed by mythos to a rationalistic culture informed by logos, we must recognize that this narrative is not an objective fact but a highly questionable tale that many scholars in the twentieth century have repudiated as positivistic and simplistic. The disputable nature of the evolutionary narrative may be exposed by contrasting it with a rival narrative, one that may be termed an “agonal” narrative of Greek culture. [xxx] In the agonal narrative, advocated by an array of comparative mythologists, cultural anthropologists, an historians of philosophy and rhetoric, Greek culture is not depicted as an evolution from the putative irrationality of myth to the rationality of logos, but as a sequence of disputes between people holding rival conceptions of rationality, truth, and value, disputes that Plato first characterized as manifestations of an “ancient quarrel” between philosophy and rhetoric. In the agonal narrative, foundationalist thinkers such as Orpheus, Parmenides and Plato are depicted as seeking objective truths and moral laws, while “pragmatic” thinkers such as Gorgias and Protagoras are seen as insisting that truths and moral codes are constructed by members of contingent communities.[xxxi] Whether we find the evolutionary or agonal narrative more convincing, we ought not conclude that either is “objectively true.” Rather, we should see that every account of Greek culture and history is ultimately a narrative or story that we tell, and that the project of placing Gorgias in Greek culture and history does not depend on “historical accuracy” but upon on which story we find more believable. Rather than assuming with Schiappa that we are able to situate Gorgias’ texts in an “objective historical setting,” we must recognize that any characterization of what constitutes an “objective setting” is no more than a “likely story.”

Whereas we should repudiate as misguided the objectivist attempt to understand Gorgias by attending only to his original words and placing them in an “objective” historical framework, we need not follow the advice of those scholars who encourage us to read Gorgias in any way we choose, without any concern for whether our reading may be more or less plausible than rival readings. This is the advice of scholars who contend that rather than attempting to discern what Gorgias or any of the other Older Sophists may have actually meant in their various texts, we should use their extant remarks as inspiration for creating our own personal philosophies. Like objectivism, this strategy finds one of its earliest and clearest articulations in the work of Plato. If objectivist scholars adopt Plato’s objectivist model of interpretation in the Ion, these scholars may be said to adopt the approach of Ion himself, a rhapsode who uses the words of characters in the Iliad or Odyssey to create a novel dramatic performance without concerning himself with Homer’s own views.[xxxii] Also like objectivism, this rhapsodic approach to reading has a long history, one that has affinities in the ancient world with the radical skepticism of Pyrrho, who contends that knowledge about any object or text is impossible and that we must rely solely on our own individual perceptions and judgments; and it has affinities in the modern world to radical solipsists like Dostoevsky’s underground man, who maintains that knowledge is illusory and that listening to other people is of value only insofar as it serves to promote his own unbridled personal freedom.[xxxiii] Among its recent advocates are Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who argue that “reading a text is never a scholarly exercise in search of what is signified, still less a highly textual exercise in search of a signifier. Rather, it is a productive . . . exercise that extracts from the text its revolutionary force” (106). Rather than attempting to understand an author’s intention in a text, they urge readers to create their own personal “readings,” none of which can be deemed more persuasive than another. For a book “is not an image of the world, still less a signifier. It is not a noble organic totality, neither is it a unity of sense . . . . In a book, there is nothing to understand, but much to make use of. Nothing to interpret or signify, but much to experiment with . . . . Find scraps of book, those which are of use to you or suit you” (50; 67-68 emphasis added). Each act of reading, in this model, is an artistic performance in which a reader draws freely upon a text to create his or her own radically novel work of art.

This rhapsodic approach to Gorgias is advocated most prominently by John Poulakos, who contends that since apprehending the Sophists’ own views is impossible, we are better served by constructing our own “neosophistic” conceptions of knowledge, power, and art. Repudiating as misguided any attempt to discern the original intentions expressed in any of the Sophists’ texts, Poulakos asserts that such efforts erroneously “assume that the discourses attributed to the Sophists are stable objects of investigation, objects, that is, that can be explored disinterestedly, examined closely, and possessed epistemologically”; and they incorrectly “assume that we, the present interpreters, can indeed recover and have access to the past-as-it-was and can disregard, untroubled, the distance separating our times, our society and our culture from that of the ancients” (1995, 5). Moreover, Poulakos contends that attempting to recover the meaning of any of the assertions or arguments made by Gorgias or any of the other Sophists is wrong-headed, since the Sophists did not “really mean” what they wrote in their extant texts. Rather, according to Poulakos, “what they have left behind is not what they really believed. Their works represent only sketchy illustrations of what can be done with language” (1995, 25). Poulakos argues that our purpose in reading the Sophists should not be to “correct prior views on the sophists and offer truer interpretations,” nor to “resolve conflicts between competing interpretations,” but “to treat the rhetoric of the sophists so as to stimulate some new thinking on our own rhetorics” (1995, 4-5, emphasis added). In order to stimulate new thinking, Poulakos adopts a deliberately idiosyncratic strategy of reading, whereby he selects three terms from some of the Older Sophists’ “rhetorical compositions and reported practices,” and constructs what he labels “sophistic rhetoric,” in respect to these three terms. He acknowledges that his strategy of reading is selective, but he argues that this is not a weakness, for “no set of terms, no set of illustrative texts, and no reconstructed cultural horizon can exhaust the sophists’ rhetoric” (1995, 56). Selecting the terms kairos (timeliness), paignion (play), and dunaton (the possible), Poulakos defines sophistic rhetoric as “the art which seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggest that which is possible” (1983, 36). Poulakos implies that insofar as Gorgias, Protagoras, Critias, Prodicus, Hippias and others engaged in what he calls “sophistic rhetoric,” they merit the title of Sophist.

Whereas Poulakos may appear to offer an escape from the hermeneutic aporia, I suggest that his rhapsodic approach is irrelevant to our project of understanding Gorgias, and that his substantive account of sophistic rhetoric is too reductive to be of much use. On the one hand, Poulakos’ approach is irrelevant, since he repudiates as misguided the entire project of making sense of Gorgias, and presents his own account as his own personal creation. If the sole criterion for assessing the viability of any reading is the extent to which it generates a reading of value in a reader’s own life, then any attempt to argue that one reading is preferable to another is misguided and self-contradictory. We should thus not expect Poulakos’ account to illuminate any of Gorgias’ own ideas about such matters as the nature of truth, knowledge or language, the role of honor and shame in ethics, the nature of panhellenism, or any of the other topics he discusses. Of course, if we agree with Poulakos that Gorgias does not really mean anything he says in his texts, then we are relieved of such an effort, and should attend only to his conception of “rhetoric.” But even if we limit our investigation in this way, we find that Poulakos’ account fails to illuminate Gorgias’ practice in his four extant works. For attempting to understand Gorgias’ art of rhetoric in respect to the three terms kairos, paignion, and dunaton is highly reductive, and says nothing about Gorgias’ strategies of invention; his deployment of paradigmatic and associative modes of reasoning; his use of parody, puns, metaphors, epithets and other tropes; or his deliberately histrionic mode of delivery. This is not to deny that Gorgias considers kairos to be important, that he is indifferent to what is possible, or that he composes playful paignions; but it is to deny that Gorgias’ entire art of rhetoric is reducible to these three terms. Moreover, Poulakos’ definition of sophistic rhetoric is extremely vague, and does not distinguish Gorgias’ ideas or practices from those of his most ardent adversaries. Poulakos has no grounds for excluding from his category of “sophistic rhetors” individuals such as Socrates, whose views differ radically from those of Gorgias. For one could argue that Socrates, Plato and even Aristotle attempt to “capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate,” and to “suggest that which is possible.” Indeed, many of the views articulated by Plato in his dialogues are far more original or novel than those of, say, Prodicus, the Sophist whom Gorgias himself ridicules “for speaking what was old-fashioned and had often been said before” (A24).

A rhapsodic strategy of reading is also employed by Victor Vitanza, who engages in what he calls a “wild/savage” practice that affirms his own “sovereign subjectivity” (1997, 319, 253). Repudiating as misguided any attempt to understand any of Gorgias’ own thoughts, Vitanza asserts that “I place very little value in the authorial fantasy” (1997, 237). Indeed, Vitanza never pretends to speak of Gorgias at all, and instead concerns himself solely with the interpretation of Gorgias advanced by Mario Untersteiner, referring in one passage to “Gorgias’ (Untersteiner’s) view” (1997, 131). Instead of pretending to “understand” Gorgias, Vitanza professes his goal to be the creation of a “Third Sophistic,” one generated from his own subjective perspective. He thus asserts that “discussing the possibilities of a Third Sophistic in rereadings of Gorgias’ text will allow me to initiate a reinvestigation of a sublime-sovereign subjectivity” (1997, 237 emphasis added). He remarks that “I am thoroughly persuaded that if we are to reclaim the Sophists, it must be done by searching for third (“some more,” sovereign, sublime) subject positions” (1997, 237). The strategy of “reading” that Vitanza uses in his creative project is one that he labels “topical deformation.” In one such instance of topical deformation, Vitanza explains that he arrived at his understanding of “Gorgias” via Jacques Lacan by characterizing “subjectivity in terms of the topos “out of the possible comes the possible,” or “out of negation comes affirmation.” He explains that “I achieved this reading by way of Lacan’s discussion of the real (the impossible) and its trilemma (imaginary, symbolic, real), which I eventually paralleled with Gorgias’ trilemma (in “On the Nonexistent or on Nature”) . . . . it was a reading of Gorgias across these Lacanian topoi that allowed me to reach for a non-Humanist subjectivity”(1997, 252). Using his anti-method of topical deformation, Vitanza appropriates the figure he refers to as “Untersteiner’s Gorgias” into his own Third Sophistic. Since he makes no claim that his reading in any way represents any of Gorgias’ own thoughts, Vitanza eludes the charge that his account is arbitrary or reductive; but rather than providing a viable way of escaping the hermeneutic aporia, Vitanza altogether abandons the project of making sense of Gorgias’ thought and writing. His rhapsodic exhibitions may illuminate his own neosophistic ideas and inspired strategies of reading, but they offer little guidance for understanding Gorgias’ own views.

In order to avoid the Scylla of objectivism and the Charybdis of rhapsodism in our attempt to escape the hermeneutic aporia we face in seeking Gorgias, I suggest that we adopt a model of interpretation that may be characterized as pragmatic, conventionalist or “communitarian,” a model adumbrated by Protagoras and developed more recently by such scholars as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Kenneth Burke, Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish.[xxxiv] This model locates the criteria for assessing any reading in the shared practices or conventions of reading that constitute and regulate what Fish calls an “interpretive community” of readers, rather than a putatively determinate historical text or the arbitrary whim of an autonomous reader. In this model, a “reading” is made possible only within the practices of an established community of readers who consent to the assumptions, practices and procedures of the specific interpretive project. Many of these assumptions and practices are not explicitly spelled out, but are relied upon by scholars in the field to the extent that being a scholar involves an unchallenged use of them. These practices include, among others, using the terminology of the appropriate scholarly discourse, deploying modes of argumentation, authentication and citation deemed acceptable by other scholars, and conforming to the conventions of genres such as the essay or scholarly text published by recognized journals and presses in the field. Further, the practices involve a general consensus about which interpretive projects are worth undertaking at any given time, a recognition of what scholars have said about the subject, and an acceptance of some authors and texts as authoritative. These shared practices enable members of the interpretive community to identify and agree upon the accuracy and authenticity of particular texts, to delineate what counts as a persuasive interpretation of a text, and to rule out some readings as inappropriate. The precise nature of these scholarly strategies, assumptions, and judgments, and hence what counts as scholarship in the field, may well change over time; but this does not mean that the changing conventions enable scholars to arrive at a closer approximation to the “real meaning” of a text; nor does the change in scholarly practices indicate that these procedures themselves are optional or arbitrary. Rather, the change indicates that what it means to be a scholar changes over time, and that if individuals egregiously transgress those conventions they will simply not be considered to be members of the scholarly community.

In this model of interpretation, there is no original and determinate text to be discovered, for texts themselves are fabrications made available through the use of hermeneutic conventions. That is, there are no “uninterpreted texts” that exist apart from and prior to interpretations. Since the texts themselves are available only through the conventions and procedures of the interpretive community, it is only within these interpretations that an author’s thought becomes available, and there is no external entity or meaning that the interpretations represent. In Fish’s terms, assertions about the “truth, correctness, validity, and clarity” of any given text are not made “in reference to some extracontextual, ahistorical, noninstitutional reality, or rule, or law, or value,” but are instead “intelligible and debatable only within the precincts of the context or situations or paradigms or communities that give them their local and changeable shape” (1980, 342-3). Conversely, while there are no independent “texts” for scholars to be faithful to, there are also no unbridled autonomous readers who are able to interpret the texts in any way they choose and still remain viable members of the interpretive community. Every member of the interpretive community is constituted by shared practices and procedures of communicating and reading, and individual readers are thus regulated and indeed constituted by the practices of the communities to which they belong. Thus, “meanings are the properties neither of fixed and stable texts nor of free and independent readers, but of interpretative communities that are responsible both for the shape of a reader’s activities and for the texts those readers produce” (Fish 1972, 322). Whereas an objectivist like Schiappa may depict himself as an autonomous agent who is able to leap beyond our contemporary “anachronistic” critical vocabulary in order to understand an author such as Gorgias in his own words and in his own time; and a rhapsodist like Poulakos may consider himself to be an original artist who creates his own personal understanding of Gorgias, the communitarian reader repudiates the notion of an original text and an individual autonomous reader altogether, and maintains, with Fish, that “an individual’s assumptions and opinions are not ‘his own’ in any sense that would give body to the fear of solipsism. That is, he is not their origin (in fact, it might be more accurate to say that they are his); rather, it is their prior availability which delimits in advance the paths that his consciousness can possibly take”; for “interpreters act as an extension of an institutional community” (1972, 320-321).

Insofar as scholars consent to the array of practices and conventions of the interpretive community, their work is cooperative; for they rely on the work of others in the community, and without the agreed-upon procedures and conventions, they would be unable to understand any text. But if every scholarly project is cooperative, it is also competitive, in that its objective is to articulate a persuasive or compelling reading of a text or author. Stated another way, interpretation is a “game” played by members of the interpretive community, in which each scholar’s objective is to articulate an account that is more persuasive than rival interpretations. Indeed, the only criterion for the viability of a reading is its persuasiveness, its power to convince other members of the community. Every reading is thus inescapably “partial,” both in the sense that it is partisan, and represents the position advanced by a culturally situated reader; and in the sense that it articulates only one perspective among others possible readings. Using Protagoras’ terms, we may say that every reading may be opposed by a rival or “opposed” reading (DK80. B6a); and that a scholar’s task is to make his account “stronger” than those of his rivals (DK80.B6b). Further, while a scholar may challenge existing readings, he may not honestly do so on the grounds that other readings fail to replicate what an author “really meant”; for the only way to determine what an author “really meant” is with another interpretation. Again using Protagoras’ terms, we may say that it is “impossible to contradict” any interpretation by reference to unmediated facts (DK80.A1), and that it is only possible to refute a reading with another, more persuasive reading. Since the texts themselves are available only through the conventions and procedures of the interpretive community, it is only within these interpretations that an author’s thought becomes available; there is no “external” entity or meaning that the interpretations “represent.” In order to judge whether a reading is viable, scholars must assess it in respect to rival interpretations advanced by other members of the interpretive community. In those instances in which scholars agree upon a reading, this does not mean that they have finally unearthed the real meaning of a text, and have finally “gotten it right.” It simply means that no scholar in the community has been able to effectively challenge the prevailing reading.

Adopting this “communitarian” model of interpretation, my purpose and procedure will differ significantly from that of objectivists like Schiappa and rhapsodes like Poulakos. Unlike Schiappa, my goal is not to articulate a “valid” interpretation that replicates Gorgias’ original intentions as impartially and objectively as possible; for I maintain that such a goal is illusory. Rather, my goal is to articulate an account of Gorgias that is more compelling than other accounts currently articulated in the scholarly community. In respect to procedure, I will not privilege Gorgias’ “original words” as the only means of grasping his views, and in so doing eschew our own terminology as anachronistic and distorting. Rather than avoiding such terms as “rhetoric,” “hermeneutics,” “subjectivism,” “empiricism,” “antifoundationalism,” and others that do not appear in Gorgias’ oeuvre, I will rely extensively on these terms, considering them to be essential for articulating competing accounts of Gorgias’ thought and for judging which account is most viable. This does not mean that I will attend only to “interpretations” and ignore Gorgias’ own views; for I hold that to articulate Gorgias’ own views is not to flee our own terminologies but to articulate an interpretation in terms that we deem more persuasive than rival accounts. Nor will I presume that I can situate Gorgias in an “objective” historical and cultural context, such as that informed by a putative evolution from mythos to logos that Schiappa embraces. For I maintain that we, as members of the interpretive community, must determine the nature of Gorgias’ “historical context” by engaging in interpretation and deciding which narrative we find most compelling. To understand Gorgias we must situate him in various intellectual, political and artistic contexts; but in so doing we must decide which contexts we consider most pertinent, and what the nature of those contexts is in each case. For we do not possess an independent means of accessing Gorgias’ historical situation that enables us to circumvent our own partisan interpretive strategies, a kind of privileged, direct route that reveals the way things really were. My hermeneutic approach does not suggest that I will ignore “history” and attend only to contemporary, anachronistic concerns; for every interpretation situates Gorgias “historically,” albeit in a different way; and which “historical” account we consider viable is itself a function of the interpretation we accept as most persuasive. Rather than ignoring history, I reject only the positivist notion that “history” is comprised of a progression of unmediated facts that may be apprehended by an unbiased observer and transmitted in an objective and neutral vocabulary. As such, my approach is thoroughly “historicist,” for I see every historical account as itself an historically conditioned narrative or “genealogy,” and every historian as inescapably situated in his or her own contingent historical perspective.

While I reject the purpose and method of objectivist readers, I do not embrace the goal and procedure of rhapsodic readers like Poulakos. Unlike Poulakos, I do not take as my goal the creation of my own personal views of rhetoric or philosophy, ideas that may enable me to cope with exigencies in my own life. I agree with Poulakos that scholars should strive for novel or original readings, and that a valuable consequence of interpreting Gorgias is that it may inspire readers to generate their own ideas about language, rhetoric, interpretation, or other matters. But I suggest that in order to determine whether a reading is truly novel or original, we must compare and contrast it with existing readings. A reading may seem quite new to a reader who is unaware of the work of other scholars, while to other scholars in the field the reading may be derivative and commonplace. Further, I suggest that while interpreting Gorgias may provide us with guidance for developing our own views about the issues and topics that Gorgias himself discusses, this does not obviate the need to first understand him. For only if we understand Gorgias’ views, and are able to differentiate his views from those of other thinkers, will we be able to draw meaningfully upon his views in developing our own. For if we understand Gorgias’ position on a given topic, we will be able to enter meaningfully into the conversation, position ourselves vis a vis Gorgias, and articulate our own perspective. While I reject the objectivist goal as illusory, I do not thereby conclude with Poulakos that this prevents us from articulating a compelling and defensible account of Gorgias’ thought, one that we consider more persuasive than rival accounts. Indeed, I suggest that to dismiss every attempt to “understand” Gorgias as theoretically impossible is to accept the objectivist thesis that “understanding” means possessing a direct or unmediated access to Gorgias’ own thought independently of our own assumptions and judgments. And this, I contend, fails to recognize that understanding any text means accepting an account of it that we find more persuasive than every rival account. In respect to the strategy of reading I use, I reject Poulakos’ idiosyncratic strategy of selecting three terms from the works of the Sophists, constructing a schematic model of “sophistic rhetoric,” and characterizing Gorgias as a Sophist insofar as he fits this model. Instead, I attend to the rival terminologies that scholars have used in their interpretations of Gorgias, flesh out their competing portrayals of Gorgias’ views about a variety of issues, assess the rival readings in respect to their consistency, coherence and cogency, and develop and defend the reading that I find most compelling.[xxxv]

In articulating and defending my interpretation of Gorgias, then, I will rely on the shared conventions of the scholarly community, for it is these conventions that enable us to generate viable readings. But as noted above, these conventions are not sufficient for developing a coherent and defensible reading of Gorgias, given the condition of his texts, the elusive nature of his writing, and the obscurity of the contexts in which he composed. If we reject as illusory the objectivist search for a valid interpretation, and dismiss as irrelevant the rhapsodic proliferation of free-floating fabrications, we must turn to our conventions themselves as a way out of our impasse. But how can our conventions guide us? The answer, I suggest, is that we must further stipulate or agree about some of the features of Gorgias’ work; and that if we can come to some consensus, we will be able to arrive at a more limited number of plausible readings of Gorgias. These stipulations are neither universal nor absolute, but are grounded in our own existing interpretive practices and customs, and are open to examination and challenge. As such, we may choose to modify them in the ongoing “circular” project of articulating an account of Gorgias, the result of which is what John Rawls calls a “reflective equilibrium,” wherein our understanding of Gorgias is congruent with our own interpretive conventions, stipulations and judgments. Not all scholars will agree to these stipulations, and in those cases their readings will lie outside the boundaries of what I consider the mainstream construals of Gorgias. But I suggest that given our customary practices the stipulations are reasonable, and that in fact most Gorgian scholars do accept them. Prior to articulating and defending my reading of Gorgias, then, I will delineate five stipulations that most Gorgian scholars have made, and attempt to justify each stipulation. These involve the stipulations about the authority of the Diels-Kranz collection, the cogency of thought we attribute to Gorgias, the logical consistency of his assertions, the thematic coherence of his work, and the stylistic design of his writing.

The first stipulation is that we accept the authority of the Diels-Kranz collection of Gorgias’ works, so that when we speak of Gorgias, we are speaking of the Diels-Kranz Gorgias. As noted above, prior to the publication and acceptance of this 1908 collection, scholars such as Hegel and Grote did not appear to attribute Helen or Palamedes to Gorgias; and Cope and Jebb specifically argued against such an attribution. It is conceivable that the current scholarly consensus may change, and that compelling arguments may lead us to agree with these earlier scholars. I am not assuming that Diels and Kranz provide us with the “true” texts of Gorgias, such that a scholar with the proper credentials and authority could never challenge one or another of them. Rather, I am only claiming that given the assumptions, criteria, procedures and judgments of gorgian scholars, the collection is authoritative, to the extent that the figure we call “Gorgias” is the figure we identify as the author of these texts. I will not ignore critics who wrote prior to Diels-Kranz; on the contrary, I will argue that the three principle readings of Gorgias originate in nineteenth century authors Hegel, Grote and Nietzsche. But their readings remain powerful because they are consistent with Diels-Kranz; and, it may be argued, one of the reasons scholars today accept the Diels-Kranz collection as authoritative is because most scholars tend to read Gorgias in one of these three ways. The Diels-Kranz collection will not be altered because a scholar discovers Gorgias’ true thought; it will be changed if a scholar advances a rival reading that is more compelling than current readings. By stipulating the authority of Diels-Kranz, we place the burden of proof on a critic who wishes to reject or ignore one or more texts; and we agree to marginalize those readings that reject the authority of Diels-Kranz without justifying their rejections.

The second stipulation is one of cogency, wherein we agree to attribute cogency or power to Gorgias’ thought and writing. In this stipulation, we consent to a principle of hermeneutic “charity,” wherein we attempt to “do the best for the text,” or make what we consider to be the strongest case for Gorgias. This stipulation is not unreasonable, given that during much of his life Gorgias was highly respected as a philosopher, moralist and artist. His metaphysical treatise On Not-Being was widely known throughout Greece, drawing attention from an array of philosophers.[xxxvi] Further, Gorgias was respected as a moralist and political figure, serving as ambassador for his native city of Leontini and becoming “famous” at the festivals where he promoted panhellenism (B9).[xxxvii] And Gorgias was admired as an artist rivaling Aeschylus in importance, extolled by Philostratus as the “father” of the sophists’ art, and credited with inventing improvisational oratory, myriad figures of speech, and entire genres of discourse. A colleague of some of the most eminent poets and playwrights of his time, Gorgias was featured in the comedies of Epicharmus and appears to have influenced many of the tragedies of Euripides. [xxxviii] I do not maintain that we should rely on ancient testimony in assuming that Gorgias is a cogent thinker and artist; but I am suggesting that we place the burden of proof on those critics who contend that Gorgias has no ideas worth taking seriously, that he doesn’t understand the issues he is discussing, and that he is inept in his use of style.[xxxix] The stipulation of cogency does not mean that we must preclude the possibility that his critics are correct in dismissing him as an amoral confidence man and inept stylist; and it certainly does not mean that we must agree with anything that he says. Rather than ignoring criticisms of Gorgias, I only submit that it is reasonable to consider interpretations that are able to characterize Gorgias as a compelling thinker and skilled artist to be prima facie more persuasive than those readings that simply dismiss his thought as shallow and his writing as inept.

The stipulation of cogency is linked to the next three stipulations, those of logical consistency, thematic coherence and stylistic design. The first of these concerns logical consistency, in that we stipulate that Gorgias considers consistency to be a high priority, and that if a reading is able to render Gorgias’ remarks consistent we ought to consider that reading prima facie more plausible than a reading that fails to resolve apparent inconsistencies. Stated another way, I will consider an interpretation that fails to resolve any ostensible contradictions in Gorgias’ assertions about such matters as the nature of truth, knowledge, justice or freedom to be weaker than an interpretation that is able to resolve ostensible contradictions. The stipulation of logical consistency may be defended on two grounds. First, Gorgias himself emphasizes the importance of consistency in several of his works. In On Not-Being he rebuts his adversaries for their inconsistent statements about existence, knowledge and language; in Helen he shows that the poets are inconsistent in their condemnation of Helen; and in Palamedes he argues that treasonable behavior is inconsistent with his desires or abilities, and that we ought not trust Odysseus, who is “most inconsistent” (enantiotata) in implying that Palamedes is both wise and mad. And he asks “how can one trust a man of the sort who in a single speech says to the same man the most inconsistent things about the same subjects?” (P25). Second, most scholars have considered consistency to be extremely important, and have either condemned Gorgias for his inconsistency or made a strenuous effort to resolve inconsistencies in Gorgias’ assertions. Plato concludes that Gorgias is inconsistent in professing to teach his students about justice, since some of them are unjust; Adkins argues that a “universal determinism of action could easily be generated from what is said in the Helen, and that such a determinism is not consistent with the Palamedes” (1983, 122); Robinson argues that Gorgias is inconsistent in his assertions about the nature of Being in On Not-Being; and Roochnik concludes that the “relativism” of Gorgias is untenable because it is self-contradictory. I do not mean to suggest that we must conclude that Gorgias is consistent in his assertions; we may well concur with Plato, Adkins, Robinson or Roochnik that Gorgias’ thinking is inconsistent, and that no attempt to resolve his inconsistencies is persuasive. But if we draw this conclusion, we must consider it a serious flaw in Gorgias’ thought; and if we are engaged in making the best case for Gorgias, we must consider readings that fail to resolve apparent inconsistencies to be weaker than those that do.

A stipulation closely related to that of consistency concerns the overall coherence of what may be called Gorgias’ “world view.” Specifically, I suggest that we should attempt to render Gorgias’ work thematically coherent, such that his remarks on various topics form an integrated whole. This stipulation differs from the stipulation of logical consistency in that it emphasizes the holistic or integral nature of his views on diverse subjects, rather than the consistency of his assertions on the same subject. Specifically, it involves delineating a coherence among Gorgias’ views on an array of topics such as truth, language, communication, knowledge, and rhetoric; the nature of the individual and the community; the nature of virtue or excellence; the social values of justice, equality, freedom and friendship; and the purpose and nature of education and art. It may be argued that stipulating that Gorgias’ thought on these various topics is coherent is presumptuous; but I suggest that for Gorgias this stipulation is indeed warranted. Gorgias himself suggests that he sees a connection between epistemological and ethical matters, praising the Athenian warriors for their intellectual and moral virtue. Many of Gorgias’ most astute readers have seen his views as coherent, and have drawn upon that coherence to praise or chastise him. Plato, for example, draws a connection between Gorgias’ repudiation of truth and acceptance of probability, his art of rhetoric as a form of pandering to stereotypes and the status quo, and the amoral consequences of his teaching. In the modern era, a number of scholars have delineated connections between Gorgias’ epistemological and ethical views. E. R. Dodds suggests that Gorgias’ affirmation of empiricism is integrally related to his Utilitarian ethics; and Untersteiner argues that Gorgias’ subjectivist epistemology is integrally connected to his irrationalist ethics. Whereas we may not agree with these construals, I suggest that insofar as they are able to discern a unity in Gorgias’ thought, these readings merit consideration as viable on the grounds that they render Gorgias’ overall “world-view” to be coherent.

Whereas scholars have attempted to render Gorgias’ work thematically coherent, many have also sought to find an integral or purposive relationship between the “substance” of his work and his notorious “gorgianic” style. In consenting to this stipulation, we presume that Gorgias is a skilled stylist whose manner of writing and performing is deliberate and functional, and we place the burden of proof on those critics who assume that there is no meaningful relationship between Gorgias’ putative thought and his outlandish figuration, or who dismiss Gorgias as an inept stylist who simply is unable to communicate clearly. This stipulation will pit us against an array of Gorgias’ ancient critics such as Plato, who characterizes Gorgias’ style as a “delightful feast” of words designed solely to entertain his audiences; and Aristotle, who argues that Gorgias’ style is too artificial and frigid to be effective. And it will lead us to challenge an array of modern critics, including W. H. Thompson, who contends that in Gorgias’ writing “the sacrifice of sense to sound, perspicuity to point, [is] manifest throughout” (1871, 176); Bromley Smith, who sees Gorgias’ metaphors as far-fetched and tasteless (1921, 357); George Kennedy, who states that Gorgias “flagrantly indulged” in his gorgianic figures (1989, 184); Neil O’Sullivan, who argues that Gorgias’ bombastic “Aeschylean” style was considered “striking” in 427 BCE only because of its obsolescence (21); J. D. Denniston, who maintains that two words suffice for characterizing Gorgias’ style: “wholly bad” (10); and John Robinson, who dismisses Gorgias’ style with the single epithet “repellent” (52). In stipulating that Gorgias is a skilled and deliberate stylist, I will consider those readings which fail to show how his thought and writing are interrelated to be less convincing than those interpretations which are able to explain the nature and purpose of his distinctively “tropical” style.

Given these stipulations, I undertake three interrelated tasks in developing my reading of Gorgias. First, I identify the most persuasive readings of Gorgias that scholars have articulated. Second, I integrate and develop the reading of each school, combining the work of individual scholars who share the same view of Gorgias but who examine different aspects of his work. Third, I will assess the readings of the rival schools, judging which of them presents the most compelling account of Gorgias. In identifying, developing and assessing these three rival accounts, I must make two disclaimers. First, although I do not intend my classification of these rival readings to be controversial, in that I draw from the descriptions scholars have given their own accounts and those of their rivals, I recognize that alternative characterizations of the most persuasive positions in current discussions of Gorgias may be offered. Second, I recognize that not every scholar who has recently written on Gorgias, and whom I classify as adhering to one or another of the rival schools, will necessarily accept every aspect of the “composite” reading that I develop. In developing the rival “constructions” of Gorgias’ thought and art, I attempt to show how each reading offers a coherent account of what may be called his metaphysics and epistemology; his ethics and politics; and his “rhetoric”; or, stated another way, his conception of truth, inquiry and language; his conception of the individual and the community, and the sort of community he advocates; and the manner in which he presents his ideas. I recognize that each school allows for varieties of emphasis and focus; and that the way I situate various scholars is open to challenge.

If we attend to those scholars who attempt to render Gorgias as a consistent and coherent thinker and artist, we will be able to identify three distinct schools of interpretation. I identify these three readings as the “subjectivist,” “empiricist,” and “antifoundationalist” accounts, using labels that several of the scholars themselves have deployed to describe their own accounts and those of their adversaries. The first two schools of Gorgian criticism originate in the writings of the two nineteenth-century authors who have been credited with initiating the project of “rehabilitating” the Sophists, G. F. Hegel and George Grote. Hegel’s 1832-1833 Lectures on the History of Philosophy and Grote’s 1869 History of Greece have been so influential that until recently most subsequent scholars engaged in discussions of Gorgias and the other Sophists have tended to adopt one or another of the readings. The identification and characterization of the two prevailing schools is itself widely accepted among sophistic scholars. Kerferd thus observes that “it has become common to classify the defenders of the sophists into two groups, the one . . . stemming from Grote, and the other the Hegelian” (1989, 10); Jarratt remarks that the Hegelian and Grotian readings “created two different sets of sophists”(5); Schiappa, who embraces the empiricist reading, notes that “Despite the lingering of the Platonic and Hegelian traditions, most contemporary students of the Sophists accept Grote’s general position” (1991, 10); and A. A. Long, also a partisan of Grote’s position, writes that “on the sophists nothing has ever surpassed Grote”; while “for philosophical stimulus (but not for scholarly accuracy),” Hegel is recommended (Long, 1999, 366).[xl]

In the reading originating with Hegel and developed by Untersteiner, Rosenmeyer, Verdenius, Versenyi, White and Miller, Gorgias emerges as advocating what Hegel calls subjectivism (355). In this reading, Gorgias is construed as maintaining that each individual fabricates his or her own subjective reality or truth, that objective knowledge is impossible, and that every claim to describe objective reality is deceptive. Among scholars who attribute this view to Gorgias, Mario Untersteiner contends that Gorgias posits a “tragic antithesis” between our perception and the world from which we are isolated (150); and Eric White argues that Gorgias sees reality as a Heraclitean flux in which every unprecedented, kairotic moment is apprehensible only through subjective intuition (16, 34). Some adherents of this school portray Gorgias’ ethical and political views as integrally related to his subjectivism, construing him as attempting to liberate himself and his audiences from the “prison house of language.” Untersteiner argues that for Gorgias every moral decision is “irrational,” and William Race argues that Gorgias embraces a romanticist ethic which urges individuals to pursue their romantic desires. Politically, Gorgias sees every government as repressive, whether power is wielded by a tyrant, the few or the many, and he promotes a politics of rapture modeled on the dionysian festival. Concerning Gorgias’ rhetorical style, Untersteiner argues that Gorgias deploys the trope of antithesis to show or display the antithetical opposition between individuals the chaotic reality that lies beyond language, an antithesis that cannot be expressed logically without self-contradiction (194); and White suggests that Gorgias “restlessly experiments with the style of utterance in the hope of producing genuine novelty,” a poet of kairos who recreates himself and his world anew in each epideictic performance.

Whereas many scholars read Gorgias as a subjectivist, they are countered by a school of critics who read Gorgias as advancing a diametrically opposed epistemology, that of empiricism. In Guthrie’s summarizing phrase, Gorgias and his sophistic colleagues “shared the general philosophical outlook described . . . under the name empiricism” (8-10). The empiricist school, which includes Grote, Loenen, MacDowell, Dodds, Enos and Schiappa, construes Gorgias as a scientific empiricist whose emphasis on observation and rational argument anticipates the science and logic of subsequent thinkers such as Aristotle. These scholars tend to read Gorgias in On Not-Being as rejecting the “transcendent” and non-empirical realm of Being affirmed by Parmenides, and as affirming the existence of a material world accessible through the senses. Concerning language, they contend that Gorgias overtly repudiates the deceptive use of language by magicians, poets, practitioners of witchcraft, and men like Odysseus, and uses rational argumentation to arrive at the truth. Further, the empiricist camp tends to read Gorgias as a liberal in his ethics, promoting the greatest happiness of the community as a whole or advocating an ethics of duty in which morality demands adherence to universally valid moral laws accessible to the uniquely human faculty of reason. They read Gorgias is a vigorous partisan of democracy who maintains that individuals should be free and equal because of their possession of a rational moral faculty. In respect to his own rhetorical style, Gorgias uses antitheses to accentuate and clarify his conceptual distinctions, and he illustrates his ideas with lucid metaphors and other appropriate figures of speech.

Whereas these two readings tend to dominate current discourse about Gorgias, several scholars have recently begun to articulate a third account, one that has been labeled antifoundationalist. In this construal, Gorgias repudiates as misguided the project of seeking a criterion for knowledge and language. This reading originates in the writings of Nietzsche, who argues that the Sophists articulate a “tropical” model of language in which every assertion is inescapably figurative; they embrace an “agonistic” model of inquiry in which knowledge as constructed through rival rhetors; and they construe “truth” as a label of endorsement rather than an objective state of affairs. More recently, the antifoundationalist reading has been is suggested by Rorty, who construes the Sophists as resisting the attempt by such philosophers as Parmenides and Plato to discover an “unshakable foundation” for knowledge and discourse (1980, 157); and it is promoted by Richard Lanham, who construes Western intellectual history as an ongoing quarrel between serious foundationalist thinkers intent on discovering ultimate truths about the world and absolute rules for governing behavior, and pragmatic, playful thinkers like the Sophists who see language as a repertoire of rhetorical maneuvers that enable communities to fashion their own truths and values (1976, 1-4). The antifoundationalist reading is explicitly urged by Fish, who asserts that “antifoundationalism is rhetoric, and one could say without too much exaggeration that modern antifoundationalism is old sophism writ analytic” (1989, 347). And the reading is advocated by Jarratt, who characterizes “the sophists’ emphasis on dissoi logoi-- contradictory propositions-- as the anti-foundation of any knowledge” (70, emphasis added). Among scholars who have begun to develop this reading in detailed studies of Gorgias’ individual texts, Alexander Mourelatos explores Gorgias’ anti-representationalist model of language in On Not-Being; Nicole Loraux examines the way Gorgias simultaneously deploys and exposes his own use of established commonplaces or topoi in praising the Athenian warriors in the Epitaphios (221-262); and James Porter examines Gorgias’ parodic repudiation of the poets’ claim to foundational “truths” in Helen.

In this book I will draw upon, elaborate and synthesize the studies of the antifoundational school of critics, arguing that their reading resolves many of the inconsistencies in the subjectivist and empiricist readings, and provides a more viable explanation of Gorgias’ style or manner of writing. I develop this argument in three parts. In part one, “rhetoricity,” I examine Gorgias’ conceptions of language, knowledge and truth. I discuss the subjectivist and empiricist construals of Gorgias, and argue that each is contradicted by many of Gorgias’ assertions. I then develop an antifoundationalist reading of Gorgias, arguing that in On Not-Being Gorgias repudiates the notion that there is a foundational “truth” in the world, that knowledge consists in the apprehension of this truth, and that words acquire meaning by representing an independent “reality.” In his three-part argument he shows that attempts to characterize this putative truth are inevitably self-contradictory; that even if such a truth existed we could not apprehend it; and that even if we could apprehend it, we could not communicate it to others. Stated another way, Gorgias shows that a foundationalist model is unable to account for everyday claims to knowledge or the practice of everyday communication. In place of this model, Gorgias articulates and uses an agonistic model of language in which discourse is a repertoire of maneuvers in various agons or games, inquiry involves a competitive and cooperative struggle between rival rhetors, and “truth“ is a term of endorsement given by community to accounts they find persuasive. In Gorgias’ construal, claims to truth are not evaluated in reference to independent criteria, but are always judged in reference to the practices, conventions, and criteria agreed upon by individuals in a community. Truths are neither subjective expressions of intuitive insights nor accurate replications of a context-independent domain, but persuasive narratives fabricated in rhetorical contexts that persuade and win the endorsement of a situated community.

In part two, “Community,” I discuss the ethical and political dimensions of Gorgias’ antifoundationalism. In opposition to the subjectivist and rationalist readings, I suggest that Gorgias is a conventionalist who sees habitual practice or nomos as informing individuals and communities, and who characterizes morality as adherence to the social conventions of particular communities. Gorgias’ principal ethical terms are thus honor and shame, wherein the ultimate authority lies neither in universal moral laws nor in the subjective desires of autonomous individuals, but in the members of a communities themselves, mutually trusting people who concur in their moral judgments about one another. In Gorgias’ ethics, individuals strive to obtain their own goals within the parameters of socially sanctioned agons or contests guided by considerations of honor and shame, terms of moral approbation or condemnation rendered by other members of their community. Rather than urging people to free themselves of rational restraint or adhere to universal moral laws, Gorgias invites people to become engaged in the agons of their community. In respect to his political views, I characterize Gorgias as a panhellenist who endorses the conventions of the Greek community. Gorgias is not a relativist who sees every political arrangement as equally desirable, for he vigorously supports hellenic culture, and opposes “barbarians” who aggressively assault it as well as imperial cities who seek to enslave other cities. Gorgias’ advocacy of the agon as a venue for fashioning truths and values leads him to oppose repressive tyranny; but his embrace of the agon does not entail a commitment to democracy as the only possible form of government. Instead, Gorgias advocates a pluralistic panhellenism in which diverse political arrangements are possible, but in which people in various cities live harmoniously with one another.

In part three, “Performance,” I examine the stylistic and performative aspects of Gorgias’ epideictic performances, focusing on his notorious figuration and histrionic manner of presentation. I examine the subjectivist thesis that Gorgias uses “poetic” devices to express truths that cannot be articulated in rational prose, and the empiricist reading that Gorgias uses figurative language to communicate clearly in oral settings, and I argue that each of these readings is contradicted by Gorgias’ stylistic practice. As an alternative to these accounts, I argue that Gorgias’ style may best be characterized as “parodic,” in that he adapts to the conventions of diverse discourses while playfully drawing attention to the conventions of those discourses and the rhetoricity of every text. In his performances, Gorgias adapts his manner of writing to the conventions of distinct genres in order to compose novel texts; but he foregrounds the conventions of the discourse in order to expose the strategies his foundationalist rivals use to deceive audiences into believing that their arguments or texts are objectively valid. In his four extant works, he deconstructs the assertions by self-effacing Eleatic philosophers who present themselves as speaking the voice of reason; the utterances of poets who present themselves as divinely inspired; the assertions by biased litigants who present their accusations as true; and the orations of prominent Athenian citizens who depict their city as the fount of justice. Gorgias’ parodic performances are an integral part of his pedagogy, for by displaying the rhetoricity of every text, he shows his audience that all arguments, including his own, are contingent, situated fabrications that are “true” only insofar as they are endorsed by specific audiences. Gorgias’ objective is not to transmit objective truth or to inculcate universal moral principles, but to encourage people to become engaged in the agons of their culture. For it is by engaging in these agons that people are able to liberate and empower themselves, while fostering solidarity in the panhellenic community.

Throughout the three main sections of this book I argue that the antifoundationalist reading makes a stronger case for Gorgias than the subjectivist and empiricist readings, rendering Gorgias’ work logically consistent, thematically and artistically coherent, and consequently more compelling or cogent. But which reading we ultimately accept will not depend solely on the cogency it lends to Gorgias, but also on whether it is congruent with our conception of Greek and Western culture. For every interpretation involves placing an author in a cultural context; and the way we construe that context will influence the way we place and thus read Gorgias. In the concluding chapter of the book, I address the ways in which our conception of Greek and Western culture may determine how we situate Gorgias. Attending to the two principle narratives of Greek culture, I suggest that our interpretation of Gorgias is correlatively related to which of these narratives we find most persuasive. If we adopt the evolutionary narrative, we will be inclined to situate Gorgias in respect to this evolution, and hence will tend to embrace either the subjectivist or empiricist reading. Subjectivists from Hegel to Vitanza thus read Gorgias as a proponent of irrationality who depicts logos or reason as inherently deceptive and repressive, an advocate of liberation who seeks to overthrow the repressive regime of logos, and a creative artist who uses poetic devices to expose the deceptions of logos and suggest new ways to recreate oneself and one’s world. Empiricist scholars from Grote to Schiappa, in contrast, read Gorgias as an advocate of reason who promotes rational inquiry as a way to dispel the deceptions of myth-bound poets, a supporter of democratic governments who affirms the equality of rational individuals and rejects the repressive social orders legitimized by traditional myths, and a proponent of lucid prose who deploys antitheses, analogies and logical reasoning to convey his ideas clearly and effectively. I suggest that if we adopt the agonal model of Greek culture we will see Gorgias as neither a proponent of mythic or logical thought, but as an antifoundationalist thinker who sees both mythos and logos as contingent upon the conventions of a community, and who challenges claims by philosophers that they possess a privileged route to the truth and assertions by poets that their words are divinely inspired. If we adopt this reading, we will be inclined to grant him a seminal and pivotal role in Greek culture, seeing him as a clever sophist and skilled artist who displays his antifoundationalist views in a variety of parodic, epideictic performances. And if, with Fish and other scholars we see this struggle as informing much of Western history, such that ancient quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy continues to this very day in terms that are “exactly those one finds in the dialogues of Plato and the orations of the sophists” (1989, 483-85), then we may be inclined to grant Gorgias an even more important role as a thinker and artist, one who stands as our own precursor in an ongoing struggle against the deceptions of foundationalist thought.

[i] Aristophanes describes Gorgias as a member of a “rascally race” who “live by their tongues/ Who reap and sow/ And gather in and play the sycophant/ With tongues. They are/ Barbarians by birth,/ Gorgiases and Philips” (A5a, Birds 1694ff). He also rebukes Gorgias for flattering the Athenians in his appeal for military support (Acharnians 633-40). Plato condemns Gorgias on intellectual, moral and stylistic grounds, repudiating his contention that probability is more important than truth (Phaedrus 267a), denouncing his art of rhetoric as an amoral “knack” for manipulation through flattery (Gorgias 463b); and parodying his style in the Symposium. Aristotle also disparages Gorgias, portraying him as a derivative stylist without serious views, and characterizing his style as inept and “frigid” (Rhetoric 1405b34).

[ii] Some scholars distinguish between sophists, who discuss philosophical issues, and rhetors, who are primarily concerned with composing persuasive public speeches. Among nineteenth century scholars, Grote argues that “if the line could be clearly drawn between rhetors and sophists, Gorgias ought rather to be ranked with the former” (1869, 187). Kierkegaard also views Gorgias as a rhetor rather than a sophist. In the twentieth century most scholars have depicted Gorgias as a sophist, but C. J. Classen writes that “whether Gorgias is to be regarded as a sophist is an unsolved problem even today” (21); E. R. Dodds writes that “it is doubtful whether [Gorgias] should in fact be called a ‘sophist’ at all” (Dodds, 6-7); and T. Irwin contends that “I do not believe there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Gorgias was a sophist” (1997, 588, note 2).

[iii] Vitanza claims that while Protagoras is the principal representative of the First Sophistic, Gorgias is a “proto-Third Sophistic thinker” (1991, 125). For further development of his view, see Vitanza, 1997, 244ff..

[iv] Whereas only twenty years ago most anthologies and collections of essays on early Greek philosophy tended to exclude Gorgias altogether, recent texts , such as A. A. Long’s 1999 Early Greek Philosophy, tend to include a discussion of Gorgias. Gorgias is associated with Heidegger by Miller, 169-84; with Derrida by Crowley, 278-85; with Gusdorf by Gronbeck, 36-38; with Ayer and Stevenson by Mourelatos, 156; and with Nietzsche, Derrida, Rorty, and Fish by Roochnik, 1990, 50; 1991, 225-46.

[v] For recent discussions of Gorgias’ contribution to the discourse on Helen of Troy, see Lindsay, Bergren, Suzuki, N. Austin, Crockett and Worman.

[vi] Concerning Gorgias’ influence on the style of medical writers, Ludwig Edelstein writes that “Gorgias was Hippocrates’ teacher in rhetoric; the Epidemics to a certain extent follow the stylistic rules of Gorgias” (138). Concerning Gorgias’ contributions to the development of “logotherapy,” using words to assist people in securing a flourishing life, see Nussbaum, 1994, 51.

[vii] Among recent scholars who explore Gorgias’ influence on Euripides, Gregory argues that Gorgias’ influence pervades The Trojan Women (1991,158); Scodel asserts that Euripides draws directly on Gorgias; Worman finds a similarity in the references each author makes to Helen’s body (181); and Croally argues that an “appropriate description of this bizarre discourse called Euripidean tragedy is aesthetic Gorgianism” (227).

[viii] For rival accounts of Gorgias’ view of women, see Zeitlin, Bergren, Jarratt and Crockett.

[ix] For discussions of Gorgias’ contribution to Greek legal theory and reasoning see Coulter and Long, 1984.

[x] For accounts of the significance of Gorgias’ Epitaphios in Greek culture, see Untersteiner, 176-184; and Loraux, 221-262.

[xi] Arthur Pease argues that Gorgias’ paradoxical encomia anticipate Erasmus’ Praise of Folly and much modern satire (41-42); Eric White argues that Gorgias’ figurative style anticipates “mannerism”(30-31); and James Porter argues that Gorgias’ elevated writing is an early instance of the “sublime” (267ff).

[xii] For recent discussions of the educational theories and practices of Gorgias and his sophistic colleagues, see Guthrie, 41-44; Kerferd, 1989, 30-41; Kennedy, 1963, 18-21; and Jarratt, 81-120.

[xiii] Concerning the impact of Gorgias’ 427 BCE delegation, B. H. Williams agrees with Diodorus that Gorgias influenced the Athenian decision to support Leontini, but Donald Kagan contends that “We may safely dismiss the suggestion by Diodorus that the Athenians were convinced by the rhetorical innovations of the great sophist Gorgias who led the embassy from Leontini” (182).

[xiv] For ancient references to the amazement and perplexity Gorgias aroused in his first Athenian audiences, see Philostratus (A1), Diodorus Siculus (A4.3), Timaeus, and Dionysius of Hallicarnassus (A4.5). Socrates concedes to Polus that “indeed I do not know whether this is the rhetoric which Gorgias practices, for from our argument just now we got no very clear view as to how he conceives it” (Gorgias 463a). Isocrates chastises Gorgias in Antidosis (sections 268-9) and Helen (sections 14-15). For recent discussion of Isocrates’ critique of Gorgias, see Poulakos, 1986.

[xv] For discussion of scholarly dispute over the authenticity and accuracy of Gorgias’ extant texts prior to the canonization by Diels and Kranz, see Untersteiner, 95-97; Segal, 136-137, note 10; Kerferd, 1989, 1; and Romilly, 1992, ix-x.

[xvi] The Suda is a 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, derived from the scholia to critical editions of canonical works and from compilations by earlier authors.

[xvii] For further discussion of authenticity and accuracy of Helen and Palamedes, see Untersteiner, 99, note 54. For a discussion of the Cripps and Palatine manuscripts in which the works appear, see MacDowell, 1961.

[xviii] For discussion of the meaning of logos, see Peters, 110-112; Kerferd 1981, 83; Roochnik, 12-13. Kerferd writes: “there are three main areas of its application or use, all related by an underlying conceptual unity. These are first of all the area of language and linguistic formulation, hence speech, discourse, description, statements, arguments (as expressed in words) and so on; secondly the area of thought and mental processes, hence thinking, reasoning, accounting for, explanation (cf. orthos logos), etc.; thirdly, the area of the world, that about which we are able to speak and to think, hence structural principles, formulae, natural laws and so on, provided that in each case they are regarded as actually present in and exhibited in the world-process” (1981, 31).

[xix] Scholars who read Gorgias as not meaning anything that he says in Helen include Poulakos, who argues that what the sophists left behind “is not what they really believed,” since their works “represent only sketchy illustrations of what can be done with language” (1995, 25). Among those who read Gorgias as meaning some of what he says in the text, Versenyi writes that “there is no reason to suppose that Gorgias cared much whether Helen was vindicated or not . . . There is another aspect, however, under which his defense or eulogy is by no means a playful exercise: most of Helen’s Encomium deals with the nature and power of logos, a subject whose importance and seriousness for the rhetorician are obvious” (1963, 44). Scholars who assume that Gorgias means everything he says in Helen include Race, 16-33; Crockett, 71-90; and Bergren, 82-86. For discussion of Gorgias’ “seriousness” in On Not-Being, see Kerferd, 1955, 3; Calogero, 1957, 225-7; Versenyi, 40-41; and Guthrie, 193-4.

[xx] For ancient references to the dates of Gorgias‘ birth and death, which range from 500/480 to 392/372, see A2; A6; A10; A11; A13; A14; A18; A19. For discussion of these dates, see Untersteiner, 97 note 2; and Segal, 135, note 1.

[xxi] For Gorgias’ family life, see A2, A2a, A22; A7, A8. Concerning his putative marriage, Isocrates describes Gorgias as “neither marrying a wife nor betting children” (A18); but Plutarch writes that “When Gorgias the orator read a speech at Olympia about concord among the Greeks, Melanthius said: ‘This fellow advises us about concord, though he has to persuaded himself and his wife and his maid, only three in number, to life in private concord.’ For it seems that Gorgias had a passion for the little maid and his wife was jealous” (B8a).

[xxii] Gorgias is said to have studied under Empedocles by Philostratus ( A2), Diogenes Laertius (A3), and Quintilian (A14). Gorgias demonstrates his familiarity with many of the principal philosophers of his time, including Parmenides, Zeno Melissus, Empedocles, and Plato; and he was most probably familiar with the Pythagoreans, Leucippus, and the Ionians.

[xxiii] For recent discussions of Korax and Tisias, see Verall, 197-210; Hinks, 61-69; Cole, 23-27; and Schiappa, 1999.

[xxiv] Among ancient scholars who discuss Gorgias’ participation at panhellenic festivals are Aristotle (Rhetoric 1414b29; 1416a1), Philostratus (A1, A35), and Pausanias (A7).

[xxv] Concerning Gorgias’ putative students, Plato identifies Polus (Gorgias) and Meno (Meno); the Suda mentions “Polus of Acragus and Pericles and Isocrates and Alcidamus of Elaea” (A2); Cicero mentions Isocrates (A12); Philostratus writes that “Aspasia of Miletus is said to have sharpened the tongue of Pericles in imitation of Gorgias, and Critias and Thucydides were not unaware of how to acquire from him glory and pride” and that “the digressions and transitions of Gorgias’ speeches became the fashion in many circles and especially among the epic poets” (A35).

[xxvi] Yun Lee Too challenges the commonplace that Isocrates’ was a “student” of Gorgias, claiming that the assumption is “tentative” at best, and pointing out that Isocrates repeatedly attacks Gorgias (235-239).

[xxvii] For Gorgias’ association with Alcidamus and Lycophron, see Aristotle (Rhetoric 1406a). For a discussion of Gorgias‘ putative influence on Thucydides see John Finley, 35-84.

[xxviii] Plato discusses Gorgias explicitly in seven dialogues (Apology 19e, Gorgias, Symposium 198c, Philebus 58a, Meno 95c, 73c, 96d, Hippias Major 282b, Phaedrus 261b, 267a), and he discusses his views or parodies his writing in several others (Menexenus, Sophist, Theatetus, Parmenides, Republic).

[xxix] Other labels that have been given to this hermeneutic approach include “factualism” (Poulakos, 1990, 220), “essentialism,” “platonism” (Poulakos 1990, 219), “reactionary fundamentalism” (Poulakos, 1990, 219), “positivism” (Poulakos, 1990, 219), intentionalism, and “semanticism” (Poulakos, 1990, 220).

[xxx] While Plato describes the “ancient quarrel” as one between philosophy and poetry in the Republic 607b5, he remarks in the Gorgias 501c-502d that poetry is essentially rhetoric, suggesting that the ancient quarrel is between philosophy and rhetoric.

[xxxi] Jarratt argues that the evolutionary narrative relies on positivistic conceptions of “myth” and “rationality” (31ff). She rejects what she calls a “commonplace of ancient history: the transformation of a ‘mythic’ world view through the fifth-century revolution to rationality” (xxii). She suggests that nomos or “convention” offers a salient alternative to the mythos/logos antithesis (xxiii). Lanham states that in the rhetorical view reality is irreducibly social and man is a role player, while for the serious or philosophical person reality is comprised of an objective natural or supernatural world “standing ‘out there,’ independent of man; and each man “possesses a central self, an irreducible identity”(1). Fish adds that “the history of western thought could be written as the history of this quarrel . . . . the debate continues to this very day and . . . its terms are exactly those one finds in the dialogues of Plato and the orations of the sophists” (1989, 483-85).

[xxxii] Other labels for this rhapsodic approach to interpretation include subjectivist, relativist, idiosyncratic, expressionist, “solipsist” (Schiappa 1990, 309) “existentialist” (Schiappa 1991, 207) and “neosophistic” (Schiappa 1991, 198), “postmodern” (Schiappa 1990, 308), “subjectivist” (Segal 1984, 90-93), “anti-historical” (Schiappa 1991, 310).

[xxxiii] Ancient skeptics include Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. Dostoevsky’s underground man rejects natural laws, asserting that he alone determines whether two plus two equals four; and he rejects the anthill of modern society, asserting that his primary objective is to affirm his own personal freedom.

[xxxiv] This model may also be characterized as a “game” model, a “contextualist,” or “agonistic” model of interpretation. Hans-Georg Gadamer writes that “tradition” is indispensible for understanding; Kenneth Burke contends that interpretation occurs within a socially shaped “orientation”; Rorty characterizes hermeneutics as a project of familiarizing that which is unfamiliar. Hiley, Bohman and Shusterman write that interpretation “always takes place within some context or background-- such as a web of belief, a complex of social relations, tradition, or the practices of a form of life” (7). I suggest that the roots of this hermeneutic approach may be found in Protagoras and Gorgias.

[xxxv] I do not mean to suggest that Schiappa, Poulakos and Vitanza fail to contribute to our understanding of Gorgias. On the contrary, they provide an array of insights into Gorgias’ thought and art. But these insights, I submit, have nothing whatsoever to do with their professed “methodologies” of reading. Rather, it is by heeding the conventions of the interpretive community, and participating in the interpretive game currently played by its members, that they are able to develop their most compelling theses.

[xxxvi] For discussion of the Athenians’ familiarity with On Not-Being, see Hays, 327-337.

[xxxvii] For discussion of Gorgias’ statues at Olympia and Delphi, see Morgan, 375-86.

[xxxviii] For Gorgias’ relationship to Epicharmus, see Demand, 453-63.

[xxxix] Scholars who dismiss Gorgias‘ ideas as inane platitudes include Aristotle, Rhetoric 1404a20; Cope, 1855, 79-80; Denniston, 12; Dodds, 1990, 8; and Robinson, 49-60.

[xl] Other scholars who articulate this dichotomy include Guthrie, 1971, 8-10; Mansfeld, 1985, 252-253; Mourelatos, 140; and Poulakos, 1990, 161.