Socrates says that he's the best politician of all. H it's stephani, a very striking claim. But i actually think he's deadly serious. Politicians as such are surely aiming to provide some benefit to the city and the citizens. That's at least their pretence, if not their real aim. And a character like calicles is going to emerge, who's going to try to be voted in through democratic means, but is actually then going to use his democratic position to destroy democracy. It's enormously powerful. So it's not surprising me that it was copied and distributed pretty quickly and made an impact. Brisbi we socrates,. o course, all this is written
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Plato's most striking dialogues, in which he addresses the real nature of power and freedom, and the relationship between pleasure and true self-interest. As he tests these ideas, Plato creates powerful speeches, notably from Callicles who claims that laws of nature trump man-made laws, that might is right, and that rules are made by weak people to constrain the strong in defiance of what is natural and proper. Gorgias is arguably the most personal of all of Plato's dialogues, with its hints of a simmering fury at the system in Athens that put his mentor Socrates to death, and where rhetoric held too much sway over people.
With
Angie Hobbs
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
Frisbee Sheffield
University Lecturer in Classics and Fellow of Downing College, University of Cambridge
And
Fiona Leigh
Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson