P1 Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias criticizes Orators who are public speakers and tyrants who are rulers and oppressors as unintelligent groups of people in the society. He further says of oration as a type of flattery. This claim by Socrates seems unfair and harsh, but he comes to a conclusion that Tyrants and Orators are unintelligent because, according to Socrates, having power translates to having something good for who has it. Therefore, Socrates views orators and tyrants as having power in the society that they think it is good for them. It is from this definition of a person having power that he concludes that orators and tyrants should not be held in high regard. He argues that they should be considered to have the least control and power to influence anyone in the city. Socrates justified his argument by stating that orators as well as tyrants do nothing about what they want and only do whatever seems fit for them to do. Therefore, the mere act of doing whatever seems best at any time as requiring no intelligence and, therefore, he concludes orators and tyrants are unintelligent. The real justification for the lack of intelligence by the orators and tyrants is because they lack power.
P2 Socrates in the digression is involved in a dialogue with Polus with a motive to know why people perform certain actions. In this dialogue, Socrates seeks to understand whether people are only involved in doing certain things because it is required of them or because they perceive the benefits of their acts. He argues that people only do things mostly because they must or because they have no alternative. He justifies his claim by giving an example of seafarers taking dangerous voyages because they want to make income. Socrates assumes that people act for an end and what we want in the acting is only that end that is always some good. Socrates believes that for any action of a person, the results are the only determinants and not the action itself. Socrates justifies his argument with an example when he gives an instance of bad deeds which result to distress to a large number of people because the people particularly want the end but distaste performing the means.
M1 Socrates argues that Orators and tyrants have no power through the means of this argument
Power is beneficial to people for who has power
If orators and tyrants do only what seems best but lack intelligence, it is bad for them.
Therefore, if orators and tyrants do what is bad for them, they lack power.
Socrates argues that orators and tyrants are unintelligent by arguing that they lack knowledge, and therefore they end up doing things which are bad both to themselves and people they have influence over since they do what seems best and not what they want to do. Power is only beneficial to people who have it, and orators and tyrants lack intelligence because they do what they deem best which mostly turns up as wrong. This line of argument can be true or false depending on whether a person who has power such as an orator or tyrant has an objective truth about the subject they are handling. For instance, orators who are persuading a person about health do not necessarily lack some level of intelligence in this subject. This is because orators have some degree of knowledge about health, and they want to use this knowledge to convince a person to take healthy food.
I think for orators and tyrants to be viewed by Socrates as intelligent and therefore powerful, they must perform in such a way that they can meet their own desires as well as the needs of the society. In this argument by Socrates that tyrants and orators are intelligent is unfair and illegitimate. This is because, when a person having power is judging what the best choice to make and action to do is, they require some degree of intelligence. This is because Socrates views intelligent people as having the power to choose critically between two competing options that are only possible when a person is knowledgeable to choose what they want and not what seems best. When a person considers one option as better than the other, they will apply some degree of knowledge and moral decision-making intelligence at arriving at that conclusion. An ordinary member of the society who lacks intelligence will from time to time make decisions, and if the outcome of any of their choices is best, it is merely by luck. This is exposing the society to great dangers and therefore Socrates should not have made this claim. The oratory skills possessed by Orators are not just tools for self-gratification considering that when these people are making presentations, they require some levels of intelligence of the topics they are presenting to the people so that they can persuasively convince them to do what they want.
Despite that I disagree with Socrates’ claim that Orators and Tyrants are unintelligent, Socrates cannot be denied some credit for his opinion. He assumes that Orators and tyrants are an unintelligent lot because they only make decisions because they seem right and not because they actually know what is right. My own definition of power supports this claim. Having power in my own definition means a leader has the ability to control and influence his or her subjects. A person in authority makes a decision on behalf of the subjects. It is true that a person in authority can make decisions about other people’s lifestyle, yet they lack knowledge. This is especially true when political leaders easily recommend to their people what they are to do because it seems best, yet they have avoided the rationalization process. They only do it hoping that such a decision will yield better results. Most times we, being the subjects, believe that people in authority are reliable and intelligent and, therefore, obey them; yet, sometimes, this may not be the case. Some leaders are irrational and intelligent and only make decisions because they seem best.
As such, in this present scenario, it is not entirely bad when orators and tyrants do what they deem as good even when they lack knowledge. I appreciate Socrates argument that sometimes the decisions of the orators and tyrants when they are unintelligent may result in an undesirable outcome for the community they are leading. However, I also acknowledge that sometimes they are lucky enough to get away with it because of nature, and they make the right decisions even when they lack intelligence. Orators and tyrants still need some level of intelligence in order to make the right decisions, though. Therefore, I can conclude that Socrates is wrong for entirely assuming that all tyrants and orators make bad decisions because they lack intelligence.
I personally disagree with Socrates’ belief that tyrants and orators entirely lack knowledge. His argument is false based on my definition of power which Socrates tries views as making decisions by individuals in the society. It is important to note that even if Socrates’s definition of power would be considered right, the claim that orators are tyrants are unintelligent would still be wrong.
M2 Socrates argues the claim that Tyrants have no power and therefore do what seems best and not what they want through this argument:
Actions by moral agents have foreseeable results
If tyrants do only actions that have negative outcomes its bad for them.
Therefore, if tyrants do what is bad for them, they lack power
Tyrants do not do exactly what they want but this, however, comes with a significant cost. Socrates’ argument is that if an action will have results which the moral agent foresees and recognizes as bad, the moral agent had no intention of choosing that option. This means that an action by a moral agent is primarily motivated by his view of the goodness or badness of the result. In the argument by Socrates that tyrants and orators do not do what they want, Socrates needs to describe in detail his definition of the wanting and motivation of the moral agent. In this digression, Socrates makes a distinction between what one wants and what seems best depending on what amount of knowledge the moral agent possesses on the actual final result of the action. Socrates argues by giving an example of a tyrant who kill his prime minister and later realizes his actions were bad because it caused a destabilization of the city, but did not mean to do it. The implication by this example is that the tyrant did not want the actual killing, or he did not want the killing because it had underlying issues that needed to be explained in detail.
When one considers the second implication, the fact that a tyrant did not want banishment because it would cause destabilization in his kingdom is not in any way connected to his desire for or against the killing of the prime minister. Even through this action may provide some revenge, a tyrant will only desire a sweet revenge without necessarily wanting any form of destabilization in his kingdom. However, when taking the second implication, Socrates is also fallacious in that he changes the idea from wanting to kill as a form of revenge to a want for the actual banishment. For Socrates, he believes that tyrants have no power to do what they want but do only what seems best because they want to safeguard their positions of influence in the society. They, therefore, settle on a convenient position though they have the ability to have the prime minister killed. In a real sense, the tyrants look at the end and not the means and therefore looks for an option that is good for them.
The last problem arises when we suppose the tyrants advocating for killing are purely driven by a form of revenge for an object which needs some description. This problem can be solved when one considers that Socrates asserts that all desires of human beings aim at the real final good. When it is noted that one has desires, the content of their desire is not entirely exhausted by what seems best but has to include a means to end relations which eventually culminates to what is the actual good. This means that when a person has actual knowledge of the good and the means-end relations, they are capable of linking the immediate content of that desire to the actual good or what they want to do.
It must be acknowledged that some moral agents such as tyrants and orators lack common knowledge about the actual correct means to happiness. They will, in turn, fail in identifying the actions that they desire to do which are actually those that constitute what is real good using best means. So tyrants and orators who are unintelligent according to Socrates will end up being stuck in doing continuously what seems best, though that which seems best does not in any way constitute the best means to that which is actually good. With intelligence for what is good, a moral agent will end up being unable to do anything they want and desire. However, when they have knowledge Tyrants have the actual power to choose between competing means that lead to the best end.
When one considers the above arguments, they can boldly see the point of Socrates when he claims that people do things for the sake of doing them. In particular, Socrates gives a classic example of what tyrants can do which includes putting them to death, confiscating their property or banishing them. I believe that in this argument, Socrates only focuses on the narrow range of moral agents, and the actions of the Tyrants do not necessarily relate to everyone in the city. The conclusion from this whole argument is that by their actions, they are doing what seems best in the city, and that makes orators and tyrants to have the least power in the city. According to me, this argument is false since tyrants only do things that seem best to them. Therefore, they will not kill the prime minister to revenge since this may cause a destabilization in the town that they do not need. They lack the power to act on what they want which is to avenge but only settle on keeping the city calm.
