On the Skeptical Influence of Gorgias's On Non-Being

On the Skeptical Influence of Gorgias's OnNon-Being STEVE HAYS How INFLUENTIALWASGorgias's skeptical treadse On Non-Being (ONB) in the late fifth and early fourth centuries? Philosophers have paid considerable attention to the content of the treatise, but historians of philosophy have neglected the important question of its influence in its own and immediately subsequent generations. This neglect is particularly obvious in Professor Guthrie 's' otherwise judicious and thorough treatment of Gorgias. In addition to his detailed analysis of the content of the ONB (3. I92-2oo), he offers a paragraph on the philosophy of Gorgias (3.273) in which he relates the skepticism of the ONB to what we know from other sources of Gorgias's elevation of persuasion and doxa and points out that Plato's views on this matter were antithetical to Gorgias's. "Nothing/s as Parmenides used the verb, that is, exists as at the same time an immutable reality and the object of human knowledge. If there were we could not grasp it, and even if we could, we could not communicate our knowledge to others.... Only knowledge based on unshakeable proof could withstand the attacks of peitho and there is no such thing. This was, in Plato's eyes, the arch heresy which he must do his utmost to destroy. He must show, first, that there is such a thing as true and false opinion. Next, because if they are only opinions the true one will be as vulnerable as the false to the wiles of the persuader, he must restore the criterion of judgment and demonstrate how opinion can be converted to knowledge by 'thinking out the reason' (Meno 98a)." In this tantalizing paragraph Guthrie suggests (but carefully avoids asserting) two possibilities which are inherently of great interest to historians of philosophy and of great potential interest to exegetes of Plato: (a) that Plato himself knew the skeptical argumentation of the ONB; and (b) that Plato's attempts to secure the possibility of knowledge entailed a deliberate refutation not only of Gorgias's elevation of peitho and W.K.C.Guthrie,AHistoryofGreekPhilosophy(Cambridge,196~--1981). [327] 328 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:3 JULY 1990 doxa,' but also of the skeptical arguments of the ONB. How seriously does Guthrie mean us to take these suggestions? Does he really believe that the skeptical argumentation of the ONB was so influential among Plato's contemporaries that Plato could not hope to win wide acceptance of his views without refuting it? The first clause of Guthrie's next paragraph raises expectations that he will address this question, but those expectations are frustrated as the sentence continues: "The influence of Gorgias was considerable, especially of course on literary style, where it was felt by writers as diverse as the historian Thucydides and the tragic poet Agathon." Disappointingly, Guthrie aborts his discussion of Gorgias's skeptical influence and concludes his discussion of Gorgias with this detour into the well-known paths of the doxographic tradition. 3 The result is that his fine synthesis in the previous paragraph , unsupported by arguments which directly corroborate the views it implies, appears to be mere speculation and perhaps highly idiosyncratic speculation at that. I think that the two suggestions implicit in Guthrie's paragraph are in fact the case: that the skepticism of the ONB was well known to Plato and his audience; and that Plato did have to respond to it in order to win a heating for his views. This article is an attempt to supply the 9 No one doubts that Plato was keenly interested in the influence of Gorgias's oratorical theory and was particularlyconcerned with Gorgias's view that the persuasion offered by oratory was more important than the truth sought by philosophy (P/u:/. 58a, Ph~dr. 267a). The ONB, however, is another matter. I am aware of no one who has confidentlyasserted that Plato knew its arguments and was compelled by their cogency or popularity to refute them. s Later doxographical accounts of famous orators, as presented by Cicero, Diodorus, Pausanius, Philostratus, and the Suda (see D-K 82A.1, 2, 4, 7, ~9, 3o, 3l, 32, 35) referred to...