First Paper Assignment -- Due 9/3
  • Papers will be 4-5 pages in length, double spaced and in an 11-point or 12-point font.
  • Your name should appear only on the back of the last page, written lightly in pencil.
         One of Socrates's main contentions in the Gorgias is that those who--like Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles--simply teach their students to be successful in the worlds of politics and business are sophists and charlatans who are doing something shameful. More specifically, Socrates charges that in teaching students to be effective and persuasive thinkers and speakers without at the same time being concerned with whether or not they are morally upright, the sophist is guilty of malpractice, providing them with false care for the soul in the same way that a bad physician provides patients with false care for their bodies.

         Your job is, first, to spell out clearly the analogy between care of the body and care of the soul that Socrates proposes at 464b-466a (pp. 24-26 in the Hackett edition), paying special attention to the similarity between oratory (or rhetoric) and pastry baking (or cooking) . Second, on the basis of your reading of the whole dialogue, lay out and explain a few of the traits that, according to Socrates, a teacher who was concerned with the true health of his students' souls would try to instill in them.