Gorgias on nature or that which is not

Abstract

T HE remains of Gorgias' treatise 7rtc? 'rou [0 6v?oc m1) 7rrpL CA)q have not received very much attention from scholars during the last fifty years. This is probably due mainly to two reasons the highly technical and indeed to many readers repulsive nature of its content, and the widely held view that it is not meant seriously but is simply a parody or joke against philosophers, or at best a purely rhetorical exercise. 1 The first of these views seems so obviously wrong that it is hardly necessary to devote much time to discussing it. The short answer must be that there is nothing humourous about the treatise and no indication that it was ever intended to be so. In this respect it is in exactly the same position as the second part of Plato's dialogue Parmenides. Its general thesis might conceivably amuse those to whom all attempts at philosophy are inherently absurd, but such persons could hardly be expected to work through the difficult arguments which make up the contents of the work. The view that it was purely a rhetorical exercise is no more plausible. But it is not intended to argue this question at length here. The final answer to both views must consist in showing just what is the content of the treatise and the serious purposes to which it is directed. There have indeed been those who have treated the work seriously. But its interpretation undoubtedly presents quite extraordinary difficulties, and those who have treated it seriously have arrived at very different views as to what Gorgias is saying.2 What follows is in part new, and as a consequence little space is devoted to previous interpretations, and where they are mentioned it is usually in disagreement. It is nonetheless the work of scholars in the past who have laid a foundation both in establishing the text and in interpreting it upon which all future studies must rest. Our information about the contents of the treatise comes from two separate accounts, the summnary in Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. vii. 65-87, and the third section of the work De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia I Cf. H. Gomperz, Sophistik und Rhetorik, Leipzig 191 2, I 8 2 ff., H. Maier, Sokrates, Tlubingen 1913, 2x9ff. For reflections of these views see e.g. K. Freeman, Companion to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 3 6 12, and E. Brihier, Histoire de la Philosophie, 1. i. 8 S. 2 Notably G. Calogero, Studi sull' Eleatismo, Roma 1932. M. Untersteiner, I Sofisti, Torino 1949 (English Translation, The Sophists, Oxford: Blackwell 19S4). 0. Gigon in Hermes, lxxi (1936) I86-213. E. Dupreel, Les Sophistes, Neuchatel 1948 [actualy 19491. 1 have not seen D. Viale (= Adolfo Levi), Studi su Gorgia in Logos xxiv (1941).