Power, Getting What You Want, and Happiness: Gorgias 466A4-472D7

Interpreters of Socrates’ argument at Gorgias 466A4-468E5 that rhetoricians and tyrants have little power because they do almost nothing they want tend either to think the argument invalid, or that Socrates relies upon peculiar uses of the terms ‘power’ and ‘want.’ By examining this passage within its larger dialectical context, I show that Socrates’ argument is valid and relies only on his interlocutor’s conventional use of the terms ‘power’ and ‘want.’