Socrates Suspicion Of Democracy Analysis

This essay will contend that the source of Socrates’ suspicion of democracy derives from the process by which the dissemination of knowledge or the lack of knowledge to the public is conducted. Secondly, it will evaluate one strength and weakness in Socrates’ method at arriving at truth and therefore the best way to govern.

The source of Socrates’ suspicion of democracy stems from the argument that by virtue of the law being established through majority rule the best orators can persuade the majority, over experts, through the use of rhetoric, which is void from knowledge and therefore void from the truth. Socrates stresses that the general public is more likely to be convinced through pandering from the most skilled rhetoricians who pander rather than by expert testimony that is based on reason and logic. Socrates states this assertion in his dialogue with Gorgias (459b) and argues that because the
Socrates states, “my method is to call in support of my statements the evidence of a single witness, the man I am arguing with…the rest of the world are nothing to me” (474a). Socrates is unable to succeed in finding this greater truth in his dialogue with Calicles, and is left to answer his own questions and to engage in a long rhetorical speech. Socrates’ position is weakened because he engaged in what he initially told Gorgias at the beginning of their dialogue “to put off to another occasion the kind of long continuous discourse and [a willingness] to give a brief answer to what is asked” (449c). Socrates may have been successful in using his method up until his conversation with Calicles, but as it shows, the quest for reason and logic can only progress if both parties are willing and in Calicle’s case he was not. Therefore Socrates method or argumentation is as unsuccessful at arriving to the truth as he claims democracy to