Abstract

Eric Voegelin holds that the platonic dialogue Gorgias is a battleground in which a struggle for the soul of the younger generation is at stake. The rhetorician and the philosopher compete for their influence over Athenian youth: against the teaching of political success stands the teachings of the "substantial". But as Voegelin shows, this is not a fight between equals, between equivalent or really disputable options. Instead, it is an opposition between what could be called the decadent representation of a tradition and a revolution incarnated by Socrates. A revolution about the meaning of politics as a privileged space of realization of what is human, which contrasts with the sophistic instrumentalization. And, as the fragments about tyranny show, if tyranny is fearsome, it is so because it entails the irruption of the "limitless" individual into politics, and consequently carries the rupture of the organic links which build up the community. But Socrates demands more than the restauration of these links: he fights for the building of a new political self.