Plato's Gorgias

Plato's Gorgias depicts a conversation between Socrates and a number of guests, which centers on the question of how one should live. This "choice of lives" is presented both as a choice between philosophy and ordinary political rhetoric, and as a choice between justice and injustice. The essays in this Critical Guide offer detailed analyses of each of the main candidates in the choice of lives, and of how the advocates for these ways of life understand and argue with each other. Several essays also relate the Gorgias to the philosophical and political context of its time and place. Together, these features of the volume illuminate the interpretive issues in the Gorgias and enable readers to achieve a thorough understanding of the philosophical issues which the work raises.

• Provides diverse perspectives on the work's advocacy of a philosophical, just life as against a life of rhetoric and injustice
• Places the Gorgias in a wider context of philosophical and non-philosophical texts of its broad time and place
• Enables readers to achieve a better understanding of the interpretive issues in the Gorgias and to come to grips with their own views of the philosophical issues the work raises