This thesis offers Plato's readers a different approach to reading the Gorgias. Chief consideration is given to Plato's artistic plan as a rhetorician, rather than a strict moral philosopher. The display of his rhetorical genius works to support his arguments in favour of a certain kind of rhetoric. The usual argument that Plato is attacking rhetoric is rejected here. In its place the reader will see a Plato refuting his contemporaries' spurious form of rhetoric, as the rhetoric Plato represents and displays is a true craft, as genuine as the dialectic. Rhetoric is not without its shortcomings, but neither is the dialectic, and though Socrates says otherwise, it is because Plato is not Socrates. The argument for two Socrates is not advanced here, but his rhetorical tendencies are expressed in three debates whose overall message culminates in his prophetic myth of life after death. Plato introduces a new kind of visionary rhetoric that Socrates does not explicitly defend but which he nonetheless displays within the drama of the dialogue. Plato's views on rhetoric, then, are not merely the sum of Socrates' views on the Gorgias' theme, rather it is within the dramatic presentation of different views on rhetoric that Plato seeks to convey his defence of rhetoric.

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