Boire sous l’œil de Gorgias

Plato’s Symposium and Xenophon’s Symposium are unexpected and untapped sources on rhetoric and its links to the socio-religious rite of banqueting. They offer two different and sometimes opposing points of view on rhetoric, and both, contrary to what has often been said, include a critical view of the rituals of sociability. Plato and Xenophon both react to the realities of their times and suggest, each in his own way, that rhetoric, under certain conditions, can be a mode of conviviality, i.e. an intellectual tool, an exercise in citizenship learning, a research instrument, or even a step towards truth. In both cases, the tutelary and fascinating figure of Gorgias is summoned, sometimes to criticize the deadly rhetoric of the sophists which constitutes an obstacle to convivial dialogue, sometimes to promote a constructive practice of speech in the communicational and visual space that symposium creates.