This is Philosophy Bytes with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy Bites is available at www. www.filosophybytes.com.

Angie Hobbes argues that Plato is still relevant and has written a book,

Why Plato Matters Now, explaining how.

What Plato wrote about power and justice is particularly resonant today.

Angie Hobbes, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on is Plato and power.

Now, Plato has quite a lot to say about political power, different kinds of power,

but we're going to focus to start with on the dialogue known as the Gorgias.

So what does he say there?

Yes, Gorgias. It's named after the rhetorician and orator Gorgias, who's come over from Sicily.

And the character of Socrates is interrogating him and he says, well,

what is this rhetoric? Why is it so special? And Gorgias says, well, rhetoric, if you're good rhetoric, you can do whatever you want with whomever you want. It gives you complete power. And Socrates

says, no, it doesn't because I don't think the orator or the rhetorician can do whatever they want, because they don't know what they want, because they don't understand what their true good is.

And Gorgias sort of gives up and a young headstrong character called Polis takes over.

And he kind of says, well, no, again, it's wonderful,

this rhetoric again, you can do whatever you want. You're as powerful as a tyrant. And Socrates says,

do you really think that the tyrant is happy? Oh yes, yes, the tyrant is supremely happy. Oh,

but no, again, the tyrant is absolutely wretched because by wronging others,

they are harming their own soul. If something is more shameful, then it's also more harmful to you,

the agent, because you are harming your own soul. And Polis isn't very happy with this,

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