Socrates confronts the celebrity rhetoricians of his day in a passionate debate regarding the purpose of persuasion and the nature of power. The discussion escalates from a polite inquiry into the definition of rhetoric to a fierce argument about whether it is better to inflict injustice or to suffer it. Plato presents a stark contrast between the life of the politician, who seeks to please the crowd, and the life of the philosopher, who seeks the good of the soul. This dialogue contains some of Socrates' most fervent moral convictions regarding the health of the human spirit.