Between Rhetoric and Sophistry: The Puzzling Case of Plato's Gorgias

The case of Gorgias' profession has been an object of ongoing dispute among scholars. This is mainly because in some dialogues Plato calls Gorgias a rhetorician, in others a sophist. The purpose of this article is to show that a solution only emerges in the Gorgias, where Plato presents Gorgias' goals as a rhetorician and its associated arts. On this basis, Plato introduces a systematic division between genuine arts and fake arts, including rhetoric and sophistry, thereby identifying their conceptual differences and similarities. The paper concludes by arguing that Gorgias can be called both a rhetorician and a sophist, provided that the labeling is done from different perspectives.