Aah Socrates, you tried really hard, but in the end, you were a failure. For all of your arguments, no one is persuaded. You try to teach, and yet none of the potential students seem to learn what you have to say. Maybe thats why you come across as bitter.
Socrates spent his life teaching people using argument, but in the end, he was largely a failure. Even Plato largely failed at the pursuit, and it wouldn't be until imperial Rome that he was pulled out of the dust and raised up the lofty heights he is today.
Gorgias, for all his apparent reputation for wisdom and instruction really isn't much better. He fails to make a good case for just what it is he teaches. Or maybe its just Plato writing Gorgias as a bumbling failure. Gorgias own words in the Encomium to Helen make a better case as to what it is he's teaching and why its valuable.
How can we blame Helen for her infidelity and starting a war if she was seduced by pretty speech any more than we can if it was fate that she determined her actions; or if she was raped and kidnapped by Paris. Under the latter two circumstances, certainly she'd be forgiven. Why then, under the former, is she not to be forgiven? Does speech not have the power to change one's mind? Either persuasion is possible and people can be moved
to action by the power of speech, or there's not an argument to be had at all.
Yet, the argument has been going on for thousands of years, the same argument that Socrates has with his various interlocutors. They (particularly Gorgias) make the case through argument that speech is powerful and persuasion is indeed possible. Socrates makes an argument that speech is powerless, and no real persuasion is possible. But this doesn't make any sense at all, how can he even make his case if speech is powerless?
If appearances have no bearing whatsoever on truth, then speech has no bearing on truth. But if speech has no bearing whatsoever on truth, then speech cannot deceive. If speech cannot deceive, and people can't be moved to belief things that are false through the power of speech it is equally impossible for speech to move people to acknowledge that which is true. So, Socrates, in making his argument against Gorgias undermines himself just as successfully as he does Gorgias. Both men are blind and unable to see
truth. Socrates acknowledges that he can't see more that shadows on the wall, but insists there is something more. Gorgias insists that the shadows are all there is. But if our senses only reveal the shadows to us, then what we're left with is the mind. What is the mind if not reason and language? These tools might get one to the truth, or they might not. Even if they did, there wouldn't be a means of independent verification.
As tempted as I am to go with Gorgias for acknowledging the primacy of appearances over truth, he goes too far. I prefer Isocrates approach, to acknowledge the problem of truth, and to change the argument. The argument isn't whether or not there is truth to be known or whether speech can bring us the truth. The argument is what to do with what we have. We have language, we can speak to change the minds of others. What are we to do
with this faculty? Try to develop sound judgement in ourselves and others to make better decisions in our eminently complicated lives. Sometimes we may fail, and it could all be for nought, but this is all we have, so we do what we can.
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