Socrates vs. Callicles: examination & ridicule in Plato’s Gorgias

The Doctor and the Pastry Chef : Pleasure and Persuasion in Plato

The Doctor and the Pastry Chef: Pleasure and Persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias Penultimate draft – final version in Ancient Philosophy, 27, 2007 Jessica Moss The Gorgias’ ostensible subject is rhetoric, which it defines as a “producer of persuasion.” But the dialogue is also centrally concerned with another kind of persuasion: Socrates’ attempts to persuade his interlocutors to pursue the life of j...

Gorgias-B: Argumentation in Practice

Gorgias-B is a new tool that supports a methodology for the development of real life applications. It can be used by nonargumentation experts generating and testing automatically the target argumentation theory in Gorgias.

Confrontation and Ridicule

Ridicule can be used in order to create concurrence as well as to enhance antagonism. This paper deals with ridicule that is used by a critic when he is responding to a standpoint or to a reason advanced in support of a standpoint. Ridicule profits from humor’s good reputation, and correctly so, even when it is used in argumentative contexts. However, ridicule can be harmful to a discussion. Th...

Misunderstanding Socrates

THE NOTION OF A Socratic PHILOSOPHY, as distinct from what is commonly known as Platonism, has its origins in the work of Gregory Vlastos1 and continues today through the scholars he has influenced.2 The Socratic movement in Plato studies maintains that one can identify in certain Platonic dialogues a philosophical method and a collection of philosophical theses which may properly be attributed...

Shame and Ambiguity in Plato’s Gorgias