플라톤 - 고르기아스 [Plato - Gorgias]

*Gorgias

<정리>

소피스트에 대한 소크라테스의 비난은 [대화]편 여러 곳에서 찾아볼 수 있지만,이 글에서의 비난은 소피스트들이 자신의 무기로 생각하는 수사(rhetoric)에 집중되고 있다. 그리고, 이 글에서 엿볼 수 있는 소크라테스의 태도는 다른 글과는 달리 상당히 적극적으로 대화의 상대자를 설득하고 가르치려고 하고 있다. 소크라테스의 논의의 핵심은 수사가 사람을 즐겁게 하기 위한 꾸밈이나 아양이라고 보는 것이라고 할 수 있는데, 그의 이러한 태도는 표현하고자 하는 내용이 표현하는 형식과 불가분이라는 사실을 명확히 이해하지 못했거나, 아니면 단순히 이 당시의 소피스트들이 진리 혹은 사실의 추구보다는, 변설좋음(?)만을 추구하는 태도에 염증을 느꼈기 때문이라고 볼 수 있을 것이다.

플라톤의 글을 읽어나가면서 차츰 느끼게 되는 것은 그가 인간이 인간답게 살아가야 하는 의무감을 강조하는--그것이 윤리 의식이리라--반면에, 인간이 인간답게 살아가야 하는 데에서 따르는 어려움과 고통에는 그다지 주의를 기울이지 않는다는 점이다. 시와 예술은 인간이 인간으로 살아가는 데서 오는 어려움, 혹은 그러한 것을 초월하고자 하는 욕망의 반영이라는 측면도 있는데, 이런 점을 등한시 하기 때문에 플라톤은 시인 혹은 예술가를 홀대하지 않았는가 한다.

*Socrates: Let me see now if I can explain more clearly what I mean. To the pair, body and soul, there correspond two arts--that concerned with the soul I call the political art; to the single art that relates to the body I cannot give a name offhand. But this single art that cares for the body comprises two parts, gymnastics and medicine, and in the political art what corresponds to gymnastics is legislation, while the counterpart of medicine is justice. Now in each case the two arts encroach upon each other, since their fields are the same, medicine upon gymnastics, and justice upon legislation; nevertheless there is a difference between them. There are then these four arts which always minister to what is best, one pair for the body, the other for the soul. But flattery perceiving this--I do not say by knowledge but by conjecture--has divided herself also into four branches, and insinuating herself into the guise of each of these parts, pretends to be that which she impersonates. And having no thought for what is best, she regularly uses pleasure as a bait to catch folly and deceives it into believing that she is of supreme worth. Thus it is that cookery has impersonated medicine and pretends to know the best foods for the body, so that, if a cook and a doctor had to contend in the presence of children or of men as senseless as children, which of the two, doctor or cook, was an expert in wholesome and bad food, the doctor would starve to death. This then I call a form of flattery, and I claim that this kind of thing is bad. . . because it aims at what is pleasant, ignoring the good, and I insist that it is not an art but a routine, because it can produce no principle in virtue of which it offers what it does, nor explain the nature thereof, and consequently is unable to point to the cause of each thing it offers. And I refuse the name of art to anything irrational. . . .

To be brief, then, I will express myself in the language of geometricians. . . . Sophistic is to legislation what beautification is to gymnastics, and rhetoric to justice what cookery is to medicine. But. . . . while there is this natural distinction between them, yet because they are closely related, Sophist and rhetorician, working in the same sphere and upon the same subject matter, tend to be confused with each other, and they know not what to make of each other, nor do others know what to make of them. For if the body was under the control, not of the soul, but of itself, and if cookery and medicine were not investigated and distinguished by the soul, but the body instead gave the verdict, weighing them by the bodily pleasures they offered, then the principle of Anaxagors would everywhere hold good--that is something you<Polus, the hearer--quoter>. . . and all things would be mingled in indiscrimate confusion, and medicine and health and cookery would be indistinguishable. (247-8)

*Polus: Surely it is the man unjustly put to death who is pitiable and wretched.

Socrates: Less so than his slayer, Polus, and less than he who is put to death justly.

Polus: How is that Socrates?

Socrates: In view of the fact that to do wrong is the greatest of evils.

Polus: Is that the greatest? Is it now a greater to suffer wrong?

Socrates: Most certainly not.

Polus: Then you would wish rather to suffer than to do wrong?

Socrates: I would not wish either, but if I had either to do or to suffer wrong, I would choose rather to suffer than to do it. (251-2)

*For philosophy, you know, Socrates, is a pretty thing if you engage in it moderately in your youth; but if you continue in it longer than you should, it is the ruin of any man. for if a man is exceptionally gifted and yet pursues philosophy far on in life, he must prove entirely unacquainted with all the accomplishments requisite for a gentleman and a man of distinction Such men know nothing of the laws in their cities, or of the language they should use in their business associations both public and private with other men, or of human pleasures and appetites, and in a word they are completely without experience of men's characters. (267) <Socrates의 친구 Callicles의 말>

*Socrates: . . . . Do you<Callicles-quoter> too share our opinion, that the good is the end of all actions and that everything else should be done for its sake, not the good for the sake of everything else? (283)