In this chapter, postponing what will essentially be an extended treatment of the Republic in chapters 5–9, I discuss three problems in another pre-Republic dialogue, Gorgias. Each of these problems turns out – I claim – to be resolvable in terms of Plato's writing strategies; the outcome will be a further case study on that topic, but one which at the same time reinforces my so far relatively sketchy account of the positions from which Plato's Socrates starts – and starts, I claim, as much in the Republic as in the dialogues that precede it.

PROBLEMS

The Gorgias, from most points of view, looks anomalous. For on the one hand the dialogue contains one of the most spectacular applications of the Socratic theory of action, in the shape of Socrates' claim that orators and tyrants have no power – a claim from which he not only never retreats, in the rest of the dialogue, but on which he seems to build even more surprising, paradoxical, even (apparently) comical claims. Those supposedly enviable people, who – so Gorgias has claimed – can do whatever they want, in fact – Socrates says – do nothing they want, only what seems best to them. ‘How ridiculous!’ responds Polus. But of course Socrates is perfectly serious: they don't do what they want.