Plato’s Gorgias: Truth and Rhetoric (part 1 of 3)

Much of our philosophical activity is designed not just to silence an interlocutor, but to persuade. We generally hope to persuade by way of truth in alliance with the sound moves of reason. But experience shows that people rarely offer intellectual assent on the basis of logical argument alone. Something more is needed, they need. . . well, experience — to feel the inner movement of assent come from within. This sophisticated thought is endorsed by many favorite philosophers such as Plato, Nietzsche.
But is this possibly a highly sophistical thought as well? What becomes the philosopher when organized around conforming one's thinking to the experience of an interlocutor? If truth is anything it ought to be located in the object of the domain we study. Right? Not in the pleasure of the person hoped to be persuaded? If we become primarily interested in catching people up into our sway we are no longer philosophers; we have become rhetoricians.
This is an important topic, especially for philosophers. So let's begin reading the opening section of Plato's Gorgias, where Socrates engages the master rhetorician, Gorgias, with the question "what is rhetoric"?
The reading is fairly short (only up to section 466). This will prepare us for reading the following two sections which continues the discussion with Polus, and then Callicles, in the following weeks.

Text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1672/1672-h/1672-h.htm#link2H_4_0002

(Skip introduction. We are reading up until Polus becomes the main speaker)