Gorgias / Edition 1

by Plato, James H. Nichols

Overview

With a masterful sense of the place of rhetoric in both thought and practice and an ear attuned to the clarity, natural simplicity, and charm of Plato's Greek prose, James H. Nichols, Jr., offers a precise yet unusually readable translation of one of the great Platonic dialogues on rhetoric.

The Gorgias presents an intransigent argument that justice is superior to injustice—to the extent that suffering an injustice is preferable to committing an unjust act. The dialogue contains some of Plato's most significant and famous discussions of major political themes, and focuses dramatically and with unrivaled intensity on Socrates as a political thinker and actor.

Nichols's attention to dramatic detail brings this dialogue to life. Plato's striking variety in conversational address (names and various terms of relative warmth and coolness) is carefully reproduced, as is alteration in tone and implication even in the short responses. The translation renders references to the gods accurately and non-monotheistically for the first time, and includes a fascinating variety of oaths and invocations. Nichols believes that Plato's thought on rhetoric has been largely misunderstood, and he uses his translation as an opportunity to reconstruct the classical position on right relations between thought and public activity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801485275
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/15/1998
Series:	Agora Editions
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	1,101,919
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)
Lexile:	1230L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James H. Nichols, Jr., is Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College. His published work includes a translation of Alexandre Kojeve's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, also from Cornell.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Politics

GORGIAS

The Rhetoric of Justice in Plato's Gorgias

Editorial Reviews

"The admired qualities of Dodds's works, a scholarship both exact and deep, an economy and lucidity in exposition (Dodds has few rivals in saying much in the fewest words with absolute clarity), and an immense level-headedness and sobriety which combined with the sharpest acumen and independence of judgment in the handling of evidence is never seduced by the charm of fantasy, all these once more characterize his edition of the Gorgias."—Philosophical Quarterly

"Professor Dodds's fine edition (which both overhauls the manuscript tradition and supplies a commentary as wide ranging as it is perspicacious) fills a gap untouched in this country since 1890....The Gorgias should have a special appeal to contemporary students, and to historians no less than philosophers."—Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher