In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates discusses the art of oratory with several prominent sophists: Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. The sophists claimed to be able to teach their students how to persuade listeners of almost anything, so that those students could win court cases, forward their own political agendas, and so on. Socrates calls into question the sophists’ assumption that getting one’s way is the highest achievement in life. For instance, he argues that committing a crime and then getting away with it through oratorical skill is actually worse for the criminal than is being punished, since in the latter case he might actually be healed of his wrongdoing.
Along the way, Socrates encounters many of the same rhetorical stunts that we run into on the Internet today. For example, early in the dialogue, Socrates says to Gorgias:
I suppose, Gorgias, that like me you have had experience of many arguments, and have observed how difficult the parties find it … to come away from the discussion mutually enlightened; what usually happens is that, as soon as they disagree and one declares the other to be mistaken or obscure in what he says, they lose their tempers, and accuse one another of speaking from motives of personal spite.
Socrates could just as easily deliver the same remarks today to anyone who has engaged in a few discussions on Facebook or X. It typically takes only a few rounds of back-and-forth before somebody is accusing someone else of being a fascist, a libtard, a racist, a communist, or a brain-washed MAGA cultist.
But Socrates also offers the remedy to this malady, at least for oneself:
I am one of those people who are glad to have their own mistakes pointed out and glad to point out the mistakes of others, but who would just as soon have the first experience as the second; in fact, I consider being refuted the greater good, in as much as it is better to be relieved of a very bad evil oneself, then to relieve another.
Online discourse is afflicted with other diseases as well. I suppose, dear reader, that like me you’ve had the experience of trying to discuss something with an interlocutor who continually wanders off to deliver a long diatribe on another issue only tangentially related to the topic under discussion. What’s worse, if you try to return his attention to the issue at hand, he accuses you of stifling his freedom of speech. Socrates, also, is only too familiar with this tactic and knows how to handle it. When he warns Polus to “keep in check the long speeches which you embarked on at the beginning of our conversation,” Polus responds, “What? Am I now allowed to say as much as I choose?”
Socrates replies:
It would certainly be hard luck, my good friend, if on arriving in Athens, which allows freedom of speech above all other cities in Greece, you found that you alone were denied that privilege. But, just look at the other side, think what hard luck it will be for me if, when you’re making a long speech and refusing to answer the questions put to you, I am not allowed to go away and get out of hearing.
That’s right: Socrates pioneered the “Mute” button, to be clicked whenever you find yourself in a “conversation” with someone who won’t stop babbling on about whatever bee is currently in his bonnet.
And which of us has not posted what we believe to be a cogent argument on some topic, only to be met with “LOL” as a response? Socrates had: when he tells Polus that the man who establishes a tyranny is more miserable than the man who tries to establish one but fails, and is punished, Polus’s response is to laugh. But Socrates points out the emptiness of such a response:
What’s this, Polus? Laughing? Is this a new type of proof, laughing at what your opponent says instead of giving reasons?
And surely many of us have engaged someone in an online discussion and presented strong evidence that the first assertion that person made in the discussion is nonsense. But rather than either acknowledging that fact or presenting counter evidence, they merely switch topics by making a brand-new assertion, unconnected to their first one. And if that one is proven false, they just … switch the topic again!
Socrates encountered this exact problem: “Oh, oh, Callicles, what a rogue you are! You’re treating me like a child, changing your ground from moment to moment, to mislead me.”
If you are skeptical about our country plunging into yet another war, very frequently people in favor of the war will accuse you of supporting whoever it is you don’t want to fight: so anyone who was against intervening in Bosnia in the 1990s must have been pro-Milosevic, anyone against Obama’s airstrikes in Syria pro-Assad, and anyone urging peace in Ukraine pro-Putin. That tactic seems to be at least 2400 years old, since when Socrates criticizes Pericles, Callicles tells him, “The people who tell you that are pro-Spartans with cauliflower ears, Socrates.” (The “cauliflower ears” is a reference to the Spartan’s love of boxing.)
Another common tactic employed in Internet discussions, when someone argues for an unpopular opinion, is to tell that person to “read the room.” So, for instance, if you say, “I think that in vitro fertilisation is morally problematic,” you may be met with something like: “Read the room: even Trump favors IVF!”
But Socrates knew that “the room” is a very unreliable meter with which to gauge the truth or justice of some position. He knew that the sophists often would “pander to the souls of a crowd, without regard to what is best for them.”
He then asks Callicles:
Do the orators in your opinion speak always with an eye to what is best, and make it the constant aim of their speeches to improve their fellow-citizens as much as possible, or do they … set out merely to gratify the citizens, sacrificing the public interest to their own personal success, and treating the assemblies like children, whom their only object is to please, without caring at all whether their speeches make them better or worse?
And Callicles admits that there are many orators who indeed do not care whether they genuinely help their listeners.
Socrates then points out that the power to persuade a demos (a people) will involve becoming like that demos, and if the people are corrupt, that will involve becoming corrupt oneself. As he says, “Each demos takes pleasure in hearing sentiments which are in harmony with its own nature and detests the reverse.” Thus, contrary to those who declare that “reading the room” or accepting the judgment of the “marketplace of ideas” will lead to the truth, what wins out in that marketplace is whatever ideas bolster the self-image of the people being addressed, regardless of their truth. And seeking popularity in that marketplace can itself make one resistant to truth, as Socrates warns Callicles: “the love of demos in your soul, Callicles, is putting up resistance to my argument.”
Finally, Socrates, anticipating his own death sentence at the hands of the Athenian people, describes how a doctor who does what is best for his patient, however unpleasant that treatment may be, could easily lose out in a court of law to a panderer who only offers patients what is pleasurable to them.
Although engaging in online discussions today is often vexing, it might be a relief to know that the problems we face are not unique to our age, and that Plato offered us a guide for how to cope with them 2400 years ago. Taking his prescription may not be any easier today than it was for his listeners then, but it might at least keep us sane and set us on the path toward truth.
Image via Getarchive.
