A review of Plato’s, Gorgias, illustrating the Sophist’s view of justice.
This paper discusses Plato’s, Gorgias, describing how Plato sought to counter the views of the Sophists, and in the Gorgias, Socrates seeks to counter one of the leading Sophists, Gorgias. The paper outlines an existential philosophical discussion between Callicles, Gorgias, Polus and Socrates, on various topics including justice and oration.
In the Gorgias, Plato addresses the Sophists and shows Socrates facing off against several of them in a discussion of justice. As can be seen from this dialogue, different Sophists taught somewhat different doctrines. In general, though, the Sophists considered the nature of law and whether law could be viewed as something objective, a scientific certainty to be applied to the world. Essentially, the Sophists found that there was no way to know whether there could be such a law or not and that therefore there was no reason to seek it.