Socrates in the Underworld

This is the first full-length monograph to address the religious, ethical, and political dimensions of Plato's Gorgias. The third longest and most serious dialogue has long been neglected because of the disconcerting moral and psychic demands it makes on its readers. Yet such a personal appropriation, equivalent to taking the uncanny daimon of Socrates back to one's cave or body, is the key to understanding the philosopher's paradoxical claim that nobody deliberately chooses to do evil. The dramatic action of the Gorgias shows how angry and insecure men can be led by demagogic rhetoric to perform violent and thoughtless deeds. The repeated performance of such actions has the effect of blinding their judgment to the extent that they truly know not what they do. Deliberately using the disastrous demagogue-driven Peloponnesian War as the backdrop for the Gorgias, Plato suggests that only Socrates practiced the true political art. This art seems to consist of undoing the insidious effects