The three theses
Nothing exists; if it did it could not be known; if known it could not be communicated. A gap is torn between language and reality.
Ancient Greece & Rome · c. 483–375 BCE
Gorgias
高尔吉亚 · Γοργίας
Master of rhetoric who denied being, knowledge and communication in three theses, and treated language as a kind of spell.
The SophistsBirthplace: Leontinoi, Sicily
Speech is a mighty lord, which with the smallest and least visible body accomplishes the most divine works.
Source: Encomium of Helen 8
Gorgias came from Leontinoi in Sicily and was said to be a pupil of Empedocles. In 427 BCE he arrived in Athens as an ambassador, and his ornate style of speaking swept the city. He then taught rhetoric across Greece for very high fees and lived past a hundred. Plato's dialogue named after him defines rhetoric as a knack of flattery opposed to philosophy.
His philosophical work On What Is Not turned Eleatic method against Eleatic conclusions: first, nothing exists; second, even if something existed it could not be known; third, even if it could be known it could not be communicated. Whether this was a display piece or a serious doubt about the relation of language to reality is still debated.
The Encomium of Helen defends Helen of Troy: if she was persuaded by speech she is not to blame, for speech is a mighty lord that with the smallest body accomplishes the most divine works, dispelling fear, removing grief, creating joy. The passage is at once a defence of rhetoric and a diagnosis of it.
Key Ideas
The power of speech
Speech acts on the soul like a drug, persuading, bewitching, healing. Rhetoric is the mastery of that power.
Rhetoric apart from truth
Persuasion does not depend on truth. The insight founded rhetoric and provoked Plato's entire critique of it.