Knack vs Craft in Gorgias Essay Example

part to pastry baking, gymnastics is the counter part to cosmetics, justice is the counter part to oratory and legislation is the counter part to sophistry (Plato 25). After making these relationships clear Socrates then explains that each part of flattery “masks itself with its counter part and pretends to be the characteristics of the mask” (Plato 25). Each of the four parts of flattery has no account of the nature of their counter parts.

For example, pastry baking takes on the impression of medicine in that if a pastry baker and a doctor were to compete in front of children on which of the two has better expertise on what food is good for the body, the pastry baker would win every time because if it were solely up to the body to choose between eating a delicious pastry or drinking some sort of bitter medical remedy one would much rather have the pastry. The same goes for gymnastics and cosmetics.

Cosmetics may make you look like you are healthy but they do not make you actually healthy, where as gymnastics knows what’s best for your physical health (Plato 25,26). This is what Socrates specifically refers to as flattery and is such the thing that he finds to be shameful because it does not take into consideration what is best for both the body and soul but instead guesses at what is most pleasant at the moment (Plato 25).

Without the soul to govern the body the world would not know what is best for it. This is what makes a knack undesirable and shameful. What Socrates is ultimately saying is that flattery is deception and that

is exactly what oratory is. Socrates’ argument about oratory being a knack, and a knack being part of a shameful practice, is backed up by his premises and thus makes his argument valid. The premises consisted of the four parts of flattery and each of their counter parts that are found in a craft.

After he explains the four parts of both a knack and a craft he explains how a knack is only what is best for the time being, where as a craft truly knows what is best for both the body and soul. He concludes by saying how oratory is a knack in that it is a shameful practice because it does not consider what is best for one’s well being and instead uses its deceitfulness, just like the other parts of flattery, in order to pretend to be what is best when it is actually only what is pleasant at the time and is what you want to hear at the moment.