Gorgias 465a2-7

This dense and elliptic passage is situated in a conceptually crucial section of the dialogue: Socrates refutes the claim of rhetoric to be an art (τέχνη), and defines its status as a spurious imitation (εἴδωλον) of justice (δικαιοσύνη). In this respect, the opposition between rhetoric and justice is mirrored by the contrast between cookery and medicine.Footnote ² Hence the choice in 465a4 of the medical verb προσϕέρω, used elsewhere by Plato with reference to medical treatment (for example, at Symposium 189a2). As is shown by Charmides 157c1-5, the verb can take both the accusative of the prescribed φάρμακον (or the like) and the dative of the object (or person) to which it applies (see also Phaedrus 268a9-b3 and 270b5-7).Footnote ³

The text of Gorgias 465a4, as it is transmitted by the manuscripts, is in itself untenable, and a conjunction needs to be supplied between ᾧ προσφέρει and ἃ προσφέρει.Footnote ⁴ Above all, any attempt at emending the text must take into account that here both ᾧ προσφέρει and ἃ προσφέρει are necessary for Plato's argument: Socrates states that medicine—unlike any pseudo-τέχνη—relies on inquiries concerning both the nature of the object that it heals and the cause of its treatments.Footnote ⁵ The understanding of the nature (φύσις) of both the prescribed drugs and the patient's body requires λόγος, that is explanatory knowledge, not just ἐμπειρία.Footnote ⁶ Unlike the latter, in fact, a truly rational τέχνη allows the person who masters it to individualize explanatory generalizations and to put them into practice. Like medicine, rhetoric must know both the object to which it refers and the grounds and causes (αἰτίαι) of its procedures in order to become a τέχνη,Footnote ⁷ as Plato theorizes elsewhere (see, for instance, Phaedrus 270e3).

Thus, despite the palaeographic likelihood of a confluence of lectio falsa and lectio emendata, there is strong philosophical evidence in favour of the reiterated προσφέρει at Gorgias 465a4.Footnote ⁸ Accordingly, Dodds suggests the simple ‘diagnostic’ integration of a conjunction like <ἢ>, which could have easily dropped out: ‘it has no rational understanding of the patient or the prescription’.Footnote ⁹ Nevertheless, Dodds himself does not present his solution as definitive and irreplaceable.

In fact, his integration may not be the only possibility. Given that 501a1-2 states the necessity of both the patient and the causes (καὶ […] καί), the corresponding denial of the relevant competences in 465a4 can become more emphatic if we insert <οὐδὲ> or <οὐδ’> between ᾧ προσφέρει and ἃ προσφέρει: together with the preceding οὐκ […] οὐδένα,Footnote ¹⁰ the passage would thus show an instance of redundant accumulation of negative particles,Footnote ¹¹ which is a frequent stylistic device in the whole Platonic corpus.Footnote ¹² In particular, a correlation of negative clauses is provided by the mentioned recapitulation at Gorgias 501a4-7.Footnote ¹³ In order to account for the loss of οὐδ’ in the manuscript tradition, we may attempt a detailed palaeographic explanation, involving both the double προσφέρει and the likely misreading of οὐδένα and οὐδ’ ἃ (especially in scriptio continua). For instance, a scribe could have accidentally omitted οὐδ’ ἃ προσφέρει, reinserting it in the margin; a later scribe could then have mistaken οὐδ(ὲ) for a signal word introducing a variant reading—or a correction—after οὐδένα, and thus could have written ἃ προσφέρει supra lineam;Footnote ¹⁴ the latter would have subsequently penetrated into the text, directly following ᾧ προσφέρει. In conclusion, the conjecture here proposed has the double convenience of making the syntax match closely the philosophical argument and of offering a possible palaeographic explanation for the loss of the conjunction. A translation of the emended passage would read: ‘it has no rational understanding whatsoever of the person to whom it applies nor of the nature of what it applies’.