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Plato's Gorgias - Selections - Comments

Tr. W.D. Woodhead. In classical times this dialog was also known by the title "On Rhetoric" (Diog. L. iii, 59).

The subject of the Gorgias is this: "we are discussing no small matter, but how to live" (472c, 487e, 492d, and 500b-d), which is also the subject of Book One of Plato's Republic (344e and 352d).

For this page I have written comments about some things in Plato's dialog I found philosophically interesting from the point of view of --

In the Gorgias, Plato's step-by-step arguments are very long -- but yet also very concise. Thus my own selections and comments give only a critical overview of some things Plato discusses. The best I can hope is that my remarks are not philosophically stupid, or not overly so.

[Note that according to one authority the letters 'g' in the name 'Gorgias' are pronounced like the letters 'g' in the English name 'George' are, and the 'i' and the 'a' form a diphthong. But contrariwise another authority says that the letters 'g' in 'Gorgias' are pronounced like the 'g' in the English name 'Gregory' are, and that the 'i' and 'a' do not form a diphthong but are pronounced as 'gi' and 'as'. Gor-gi-as versus Gor-gias. I am neither a classical Greek nor a classicist, and I don't know which is correct.]

Outline of this page ...

Dialectic versus Rhetoric

448d - SOCRATES: For it is obvious from what Polus has said that he is better versed in what is called rhetoric than in dialogue.

By 'dialog' is meant here 'dialectic' (471d), but not only in the sense of 'logic' but also in the sense of 'question and answer', which is the method of Socrates in philosophy. Socrates held that "Someone who knows some thing can give an account of it (or, in other words, explain what he knows) to others".

Rhetoric is, instead, characterized as making speeches (448d). And about Polus, Plato says, "It seems that he does not quite answer the question asked" [or, as we would say, Polus talks "like a politician", answering the question he would like to have been asked rather than the one he has been asked]. Polus is a student of the Gorgias, and Gorgias says of himself that he is a rhetorician "and a good one", able "to make rhetoricians of others also" (449a-b).

To what does the art of Rhetoric persuade?

251d - Rhetoric is one of the arts that achieve and fulfill their function entirely through words ...

452e-453a - [Rhetoric, according to GORGIAS, is] the power to convince by your words the judges in court, the senators in Council, the people in the Assembly, or in any other gathering of the citizen body. -- [From which Plato concludes that Gorgias considers rhetoric to be] a creator of persuasion.

According to A.E. Taylor, the word 'rhetorician' or 'orator', in the Greek of Aristotle's day, meant 'politician'. (Aristotle [Rev. ed. 1919] (1955), ii, p. 30n) [Photograph of the Pnyx, the assembly place of direct democracy, where rhetorician tried to persuade the citizens of Athens towards or against courses of action.]

454a - [But] rhetoric is not the only creator of persuasion.

[And so GORGIAS replies that rhetoric is the] kind of persuasion ... concerned with right and wrong. [Note: this is not what Gorgias said in 452e, where he says, in effect, that it is an art of persuasion that is indifferent to right and wrong: its only concern is to convince.]

454b - I suspected too, Gorgias, that you meant this kind of persuasion ...; it is merely that you may not be surprised if a little later I ask you the same question, though the answer does seem clear to me.

Plato is alluding to refutation through cross-questioning which follows (454e-455a), the point in the argument where the contradiction in Socrates' companion's statements is shown. It is the path to Socratic ignorance, if Socrates' companion will follow it.

454c - [I may repeat the question] -- for, as I said, I am questioning you, not for your own sake, but in order that the argument may be carried forward consecutively [i.e. obtaining step-by-step agreement], and that we may not form the habit of suspecting and anticipating each other's views, but that you may complete your own statements as you please ...

Persuasion may be to Knowledge, or to Belief (454e)

454d-e - [Knowledge and belief are not the same thing] But both those who have learned [i.e. who know] and those who believe [but do not know] have been persuaded.

The difference between the concepts 'belief' and 'knowledge' is that one can be inclined to believe whatever seems (PI § 258) to be true: one can believe that a false proposition is true, but one cannot know that a false proposition is true, although one can believe one knows it to be true. [These are all what Wittgenstein called "grammatical reminders" about how we use the words 'belief' and knowledge'.] The grounds for knowledge are conclusive, but for belief (opinion) inconclusive. Knowledge is made objective by belonging to the community's way of life rather than to the individual; belief, in contrast, belongs to the individual (cf. OC § 550: Knowledge requires public grounds whereas belief need not have any grounds at all). Thus persuasion may be used to confuse the merely plausible ['belief'] with the known ['knowledge'], which was, Aristotle says, the promise of Protagoras: to make the false appear the true.

454e-455a - SOCRATES: Shall we lay it down then that there are two forms of persuasion, the one producing belief without knowledge, the other knowledge?... Now which kind of conviction about right and wrong is produced ... by rhetoric? That which issues in belief ..., or that which issues in knowledge?

The words in the text are "That which issues in belief without knowledge", but that form of expression is misleading. If a distinction is made using the words 'belief' and 'knowledge', then the combination of words 'belief with knowledge' is nonsense. If one knows one doesn't also believe: knowledge is not a kind of belief, no more than belief is a kind of knowledge. (If we defined 'knowledge' as 'belief with conclusive grounds', then what word would we to use for 'belief without conclusive grounds'? Plato wishes always to distinguish between knowledge and opinion; and that is the same distinction between knowledge and belief.) The art of arithmetic persuades to knowledge (453e-454a).

454e-455a - GORGIAS: Evidently, Socrates, [persuasion] issues in belief.

SOCRATES: Then rhetoric apparently is a creator of a conviction that is persuasive but not instructive about right and wrong. [And it could not be otherwise, for how could the orator instruct if he himself does not have knowledge of his subject. (459b-c)]

457d-e - ... speakers can seldom define the topic of debate [In this case, the topic is "Rhetoric", and what Gorgias seems unable to do is to give a Socratic definition of that topic -- i.e. What is the common nature of rhetoric, and in what way is rhetoric's common nature different from all other common natures? or, in other words, what is the essence of rhetoric?] ... but if they are in dispute and one insists that the other's statements are incorrect or obscure, they grow angry and imagine that their opponent speaks with malice against them, being more anxious for verbal victory [i.e. to persuade to belief (opinion)] than to investigate the subject under discussion [to discover the truth (knowledge)].

Now why do I say this? Because, it seems to me, what you are now saying is not quite consistent or in tune with what you first said about rhetoric [(see 452e above) because now Gorgias has said that there is a proper use and a wrongful use of rhetoric (456c-457c). In effect, he rejects its use to make the worse appear the better reason].

Question: at this point in the dialog could not Gorgias define 'rhetoric' as: the technique of persuasion to a true statement (although not known by the hearer to be a true statement) where there is no possibility of instruction (There may not be time, or the ignorant may refuse to be instructed) to knowledge? But in that circumstance, couldn't the hearer be persuaded to believe a false statement as readily as a true one? Gorgias calls the latter an abuse of rhetoric -- but if the one who persuades is unable to instruct because he lacks knowledge of the truth, then how will he know whether he is using rhetoric rightly or wrongly? He cannot. And therefore it seems that rhetoric is simply a technique of persuasion to a belief.

The character of the dialectician (philosopher)

457e-458b - But I am afraid to cross-examine [i.e. cross-question] you, for fear you might think my pertinacity is directed against you, and not to the clarification of the matter in question. Now, if you are the same kind of man as I am, I should be glad to question you .... And what kind of man am I? One of those who would gladly be refuted if anything I say is not true, and would gladly refute another who says what is not true, but would be no less happy to be refuted myself than to refute, for I consider that a greater benefit [than either to refute another or to be agreed with] ... I believe there is no worse evil for man than a false opinion about the subject of our present discussion.

GORGIAS: I claim to be the type of man you indicate ...

If rhetoric is the art of persuasion to the good, as Gorgias has said (454a) --

460a - [SOCRATES] Stop one moment! What you say is right. If you make a rhetorician of any man, he must already have knowledge of right and wrong ...

Freedom of speech in Athens | Dialectic versus making a speech (Polus)

461d-462a - POLUS: May I not speak at what length I please?

SOCRATES: It would indeed be hard on you ... if, on coming to Athens, the one spot in Greece where there is the utmost freedom of speech, you alone should be denied it.

But look at my side. Would it not be hard on me also, if I may not go away and refuse to listen, when you speak at length and will not answer the question? But if you have any interest in what has been said and wish to set it right ... question and answer in turn, as Gorgias and I did, and refute me and be refuted.

462b-c - POLUS: ... and then, as a result, I suppose, that this admission a contradiction arose in the argument -- which is just what you love and you yourself steer the argument in that direction ... But it is the height of bad taste to [so] lead discussions ...

462c-d - [SOCRATES] What, Polus? Have you already learned from me what I consider rhetoric to be, that you proceed to ask if I do not think it a fine thing? [Socrates has accepted either to question or answer (462b), but he shows Polus to be a poor questioner, "more anxious for verbal victory than to investigate the subject under discussion" (457d). As his remark about "bad taste" shows, Polus is not concerned about the truth.]

The art that tends the soul, and the arts that tend the body

464b-c - To the pair, body and soul, there correspond two arts [which minister them to good health] -- that concerned with the soul I call the political art [statesmanship]; to the single art that relates to the body I cannot give a name offhand [but it has] two parts, gymnastics and medicine, and in the political art what corresponds to gymnastics is legislation, while the counterpart of medicine is justice.

The distinction between things that benefit and things that give pleasure only ("flattering routines")

464c-465b - [Corresponding to these arts, however, are "routines" that flatter rather than bring good health to body and soul: they aim "at what is pleasant, ignoring the good" (465a). Flattery] having no thought for what is best, she regularly uses pleasure as bait to catch folly and deceives it into believing that she is of supreme worth. [Thus corresponding to medicine, there is cookery (which impersonates it, as if the cook rather than the doctor knew which food was best for the body); corresponding to gymnastics, there is beautification, "which creates an impression of good health" although it is a false one (464a).]

Rather than the word 'routine' which Woodhead uses, Benjamin Jowett uses only the word 'flattery' and says that flattery's practices -- "I do not call any irrational thing an art", Plato says (465a) -- are "shams or simulations" of the beneficial arts.

Mathematical proportion as a model of explanation

[Note: To geometry rather than to arithmetic belongs proportion in Greek mathematics. A:B :: C:D = "A is to B as C is to D". (W.K.C. Guthrie, Plato: the man and his dialogues: earlier period (1975), p. 299n1) Plato will say that Callicles "neglects geometry" (508a).]

465b-c - To be brief, then, I will express myself in the language of geometricians -- for by now perhaps you follow me. Sophistic is to legislation [laws based on knowledge of right and wrong] what beautification [decoration, attiring (tr. Jowett)] is to gymnastics [exercise], and rhetoric to justice [acts in accordance with the law] what cookery is to medicine.

decoration : exercise :: cookery : medicine

rhetoric : lawfulness :: cookery : medicine

465c-d - Sophist and rhetorician, working in the same sphere upon the same subject matter, tend to be confused with each other, and [others know not] what to make of them.

Flattery ("routine") is irrational

465a - ... I insist that it is not an art but a routine, because it can produce no principle in virtue of which it offers what it does ... And I refuse the name of art to anything irrational.

The Greek that Woodhead translates as 'routine', Guthrie translates as 'an empirical knack' (Plato ... earlier period, p. 291), which I take to mean: a knowing how to do something without knowing how what you do achieves its end ("It just works"). For example, in cookery, experience shows that some dishes give pleasure, others not; as in beautification, experience shows that some designs give pleasure, others not.

Why is rhetoric irrational -- is it because rhetoric persuades to belief without knowing why anyone is so persuaded despite not being instructed to knowledge (as in a theater, where one is moved to senseless tears)? Plato says that cookery is "without any pretense whatever to reason" (500e-501a); it cultivates pleasure "in a thoroughly unscientific way", preserving "by mere experience and routine a memory of what usually happens", whereas medicine "can give a rational account" of its subject.

And what does Plato mean by "give a rational account"? I think he must mean "the ability to trace a mechanism", knowledge of cause and effect. For example, adding pepper to beef gives pleasure, whereas adding pepper to fruit does just the opposite. No one knows why. In medicine, slightly raising the legs eases strain to the heart -- why? because thus blood more easily returns to it. Something like this, maybe [cf. arithmetic is an art].

Anaxagoras and "the excluded middle" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1012a 24-27)

465d - the principle of Anaxagoras would hold good everywhere [according to which] all things [are] mingled in indiscriminate confusion ...

467e-468a - Now is there anything in the world that is not either good or bad or intermediate between the two, neither good nor bad?... And by neither good nor bad you mean such things as partake now of the one, now of the other, and sometimes of neither, as for example, sitting, walking, running, and sailing, or again such objects as stones and timbers and the like?

Aptly or inaptly, I earlier called definitions of 'good' by means of "things as partake now of one, now of the other" as relative definitions, and I questioned whether absolute definitions were really Socratic (although Aristotle says Socrates invented common nature definition) rather than Platonic (as the notion of "partaking" surely is), for Xenophon's account of definition is very different from Plato's.

[Aristotle dismissed Plato's notion of "partaking" as "empty words and poetical metaphors" (Metaphysics 991a, tr. A.E. Taylor).]

According to Aristotle, Socrates confined his search for universally applicable rules (absolutes) to ethics; it was only Plato who extended that search to metaphysics (for Plato's Heraclitean reason). Plato's question is, Why would Socrates seek absolutes in ethics? And Plato's answer, namely that Socrates was seeking a universal guide, a standard to apply in all circumstances (as the yardstick may be used to measure every distance), is plausible (It is not knowable).

To do wrong, rather than to be wronged, is the greatest evil that can befall man

469b - POLUS: Surely it is the man unjustly put to death who is pitiable and wretched.

SOCRATES: Less so than his slayer, Polus, and less than he who is put to death justly.

POLUS: How is that Socrates?

SOCRATES: In view of the fact that to do wrong is the greatest of evils.

That is, I believe, the meaning of Socrates' statement in Plato's Apology (41c-d) that no evil can befall a good man either in this world or in any other, because (1) to do wrong is the only evil, and (2) 'the good man' is one who does no wrong. Of course this does not mean that he will suffer no misfortune (innocent men are put to death).

How does this relate to Socrates' identification of the good with the useful or beneficial? It is not useful to the body to be put to death, but -- what is useful to man's soul, the ethical part of man in Socrates' vocabulary? (There is no need to introduce the notion of "absolute good", which is not a rational notion.)

470e - POLUS: Obviously then you will say that you do not know whether the Great King himself is happy.

SOCRATES: And I shall be telling the truth, for I do not know how he stands in education and justice.

POLUS: What? Does happiness rest entirely upon this?

SOCRATES: Yes, in my opinion, Polus, for the man and woman who are noble and good I call happy, but the evil and base I call wretched.

Dialectic persuades to knowledge only

471d - At the very beginning of our discussion [448d], Polus, I praised you for being in my opinion well-trained in rhetoric though you had neglected dialectic.

Dialectic does not aim to persuade, except to knowledge. It tests the meaning and truth of propositions through cross-questioning, and accepts a proposition as true only after a thoroughgoing effort by reason and experience to refute the proposition. Proving (i.e. testing), in contrast to persuading by clever discourse, is the dialectic Polus has neglected.

What is the good for man?
Knowledge of who is happy and who is not.

472c - For the questions in dispute are by no means trivial, but are, one might say, matters where knowledge is noblest and ignorance most shameful -- the sum and substance of them being knowledge or ignorance of who is happy and who is not.

473e - POLUS: do you not consider yourself already refuted, Socrates, when you put forward views [namely that it is better to be wronged than to do wrong, and it is better to be punished for wrong-doing than to escape punishment] that nobody would accept? Why, ask anyone present!

SOCRATES: I am no politician, Polus, and last year when I became a member of the Council and my tribe was presiding and it was my duty to put the question to the vote, I raised a laugh because I did not know how to.

Plato asks a logical-grammatical question here: Is that how we decide what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil, -- by taking a vote? Was that how you learned to use those words, or how you would teach someone else to use them? Plato is saying that knowledge of the truth is possible; that everything is not "just a matter of opinion".

[On the other hand, I do not believe Plato was clear about this point, for he often speaks of law-givers (legislators) who know what the laws should be (or what the "true laws" are). But we do not apply the words 'true', 'false', 'good', on the basis of authority (knowledgeable legislators, even if the legislators are divinities) any more than on the basis of democracy (taking a vote).]

It is bad do wrong, but even worse not to be punished for the wrong-doing

474b - [SOCRATES] For I think that you and all other men as well as myself hold it worse to do than to suffer wrong and worse to escape than to suffer punishment.

474d - Apparently you do not consider the good and the fair -- [The Greek word rendered as 'beautiful' means not only 'handsome', but also 'excellent', 'fine'] -- to be the same, nor the evil and the shameful. [In Xenophon, Socrates seems to say that the good and the beautiful are the same thing (Memorabilia iii, 8, 5), that what is useful (good) to a thing is the same as the excellence ('beauty') that is proper to it, and vice versa.]

474e - Do you not in the same way name all other things also -- figures perhaps or colors -- fair either because of some pleasure or some use they render or for both reasons together?... And further, with regard to laws and institutions -- the fine ones, I mean -- their beauty does not lie outside these limits of the pleasurable, useful, or both?

475a - And it is the same with the beauty of forms of learning.

475e-476a - And though all other men except me agree with you, I require no witness to testify for me to save you alone, and putting you alone to the vote, I ignore the rest [i.e. the dialectic ("discussion") of two companions, not the opinion of the multitude, decides the argument, i.e. which of the two is refuted, which is not]. Well, so much for that.

The soul is cured of evil when punished for wrong-doing

476a - Would you say that to suffer punishment is the same thing as to be justly chastised when guilty?

476d - And he who rightly inflicts it punishes justly?

477a - So he who is punished justly [i.e. punished for the wrong he has done] suffers what is good?... Is his soul bettered if he is justly punished?... Then he who is punished is rid of evil in the soul? [Plato makes an analogy here to a medical regimen, which is not pleasant thing, but is beneficial (478b): the soul is cured of its evil as the body is cured of its disease.]

477b - Is he not then freed from the greatest of evils?

477b-c - And do you consider there is an evil condition of the soul [as there is an evil condition of the body]?... And do you call this injustice and ignorance and cowardice and the like [as for the body, poverty and disease]?... Now which of these evils is most shameful [The most shameful is also the worst]? Is it not injustice and the evil of the soul in general?

478c - For happiness, after all, it seems consists not in a release from evil, but in never having contracted it.

478d - And was not punishment admitted to be a release from the greatest of evils, namely wickedness?... because a just penalty disciplines us and makes us more just and cures us of evil.... Then the happiest of men is he who has no evil in his soul, since this was shown to be the greatest of evils?

478e - And second in order [The first is 478c] surely is he who is delivered from [evil in the soul].... And we found this is the man who is admonished and rebuked and punished.... Then his life is most unhappy who is afflicted with evil and does not get rid of it.

479d - Then wrongdoing itself holds the second place among evils, but first and greatest of all evils is to do wrong and escape punishment.

Platonic Rationalism versus Socratic rationalism

That is an example (478d) of the thorough-going Rationalism of Plato, which is different from the thoroughgoing rationalism of Socrates. For Plato, reason alone, unaided by experience, is the test of truth (-- although 'truth' in Rationalism means no more than 'validity', as in 'a logically valid deduction'). Plato describes his axiomatic method in philosophy in the Phaedo [99d-100a].

But our life is not that way: Although some human beings may benefit from being punished, others are only harmed by it. There is, after all, a practical part to this, because the one who punishes is not a god who can look into a man's soul and say which punishment will rid it of evil.

Escaping punishment, as life shows, (even escaping detection of a wrong that should be punished in the eyes of the wrong-doer himself), that being given a second chance is in fact sometimes enough to cure the soul of its evil -- if the criterion for being cured is how someone goes on to think and act. If he amends his life, is this not proof that the evil has been removed? And in other cases, even a very harsh punishment is not enough to make the wrong-doer amend his life, but quite the contrary.

Should the test of experience be excluded from dialectic? Plato seems willing, Socrates unwilling.

What is the criterion for 'being cured of evil'?

Plato's requirement is that the punishment imposed be a just one (476a) -- but what is 'just' to mean here, simply that one is punished for the wrong one has done (in contrast to being punished for a wrong one has not done)? What is Plato's criterion for 'being cured of evil' -- is it that the wrong-doer does not repeat the wrong-doing, but amends their life?

Or is Plato's criterion for 'being cured of evil' simply the punishment itself. In the analogy to medicine (478b), for example, a broken bone is healed when it is no longer broken -- regardless of whether someone goes on to break that bone again. But is evil like a mark on paper that can be mechanically erased?

Experience of life is needed to make the rational reasonable

What Plato says may be rational -- but it is not "reasonable", because it excludes human experience. The question here is not only "Does it stand to reason?" but also "Does it stand to the evidence?" (Those are the two tests of Socratic dialectic.)

Reason alone may lead us to agree rather than refute that the greatest of all evils is to do wrong, and that it is worse to do wrong than to be wronged. But the question of punishment -- i.e. of being benefited ("cured of evil") by punishment -- is a different question: because in the case of punishment-and-cure we are talking about cause and effect, which is a question of experience.

Conceptual versus Factual Investigations

What are talking about when we say that "the worst evil is to do wrong" -- does that question belong to a factual or a conceptual investigation? It is the latter. To see that it is, we has only to consider what effect having wrong done to us may have, because, as a matter of fact, I may be able to amend my life after doing wrong, but it may happen that my response to having wrong done to me is that I become a thorough villain, a wrongdoer myself. Such things happen. So from the point of view of "being cured of evil", with respect to experience, is it always true the it is better to be wrong than do wrong?

In ethics Plato uses his method of tautologies, as e.g. 'If the good man harms his enemies, then what does the bad man do to his enemies?' to show what is good by contrasting it with what is evil. That is a conceptual investigation, and investigation of "rules of grammar" (in Wittgenstein's jargon). The proposition 'Wrong-doing is the second greatest of all evils' (479d) is another result of this method, in this case 'If wrong-doing is good, then what is evil?'

[In the Sophist [246d], Plato speaks of a change of heart. But what is the relation of that notion to Socrates? Because for Socrates the one who knows what is right will do what is right (Xenophon, Memorabilia iii, 9, 5): there is nothing irrational ("the heart") to change: To be cured of evil means to acquire knowledge of the good. So it seems that Plato's views broadened over time: if "the body [the irrational, "the heart"] is a source of endless trouble" (Phaedo 66c-d), then, according to the later Plato, knowledge alone is not enough to cure man of evil.]

Polis accepts that he has been refuted

480d-e - Are we to accept this or not, Polus?

POLUS: To me it seems fantastic, Socrates, but I suppose it is consistent with what was said before.

SOCRATES: Then surely we must disprove that, or else this view must follow.

POLUS: Yes, that is so.

481a-b - [SOCRATES: Rhetoric], in my opinion, Polus, but does not seem to be of much use for a man who does not intend to do wrong, if indeed it has any use at all -- and our previous discussion has revealed none.

But is rhetoric morally useless?

That is not true unless Plato is thinking only of rational people. Because Gorgias has said that a rhetorician is able persuade to belief (rather than instruct to knowledge) an irrational patient to accept the treatment the doctor has prescribed for him even though the doctor himself cannot instruct the patient to knowledge (456b).

Nature and convention are antagonists to one another (Callicles)

In contrast to Gorgias and Polus who are willing to refute or be refuted -- that is, to take part in question and answer and cross-question -- Callicles now comes forward. Maybe he is an example of "a misologist and a stranger to the Muses" (Republic 3.411d, tr. Shorey), or in any case of a misologist (494e-495a) only, because he is not an uneducated man.

481b-c - CALLICLES: Tell me, Socrates, are we to consider you serious now or jesting? For if you are serious and what you say is true, then surely the life of us mortals must be turned upside down and apparently we are everywhere doing the opposite of what we should.

482b-c - SOCRATES: [It is philosophy] who says what you now hear from me, and she is far less unstable than my other favorite [Alcibiades (481d), according to Plato, who] is at the mercy now of one argument, now of another, but philosophy holds always to the same, and she says what now astonishes you, and you were here when the words were spoken.

You must either then prove against her as I said just now, that to do wrong and to evade punishment for wrongdoing is not the worst of all evils; or if you leave this unrefuted, then ... Callicles himself will not agree with you, Callicles, but will be at variance with you throughout your life. And yet I think it better ... that the majority of mankind should disagree with ... me, rather than that I ... should ... contradict myself.

Socrates is a man whose way of life is consistent with his ideas. "The greatness of a thinker rests in the unity of life and thought which he has achieved," Albert Schweitzer said about Goethe (tr. Stuermann).

482d-483a - CALLICLES: It was through this admission [which Polus made "because the general conventional view demanded it" and "because he was ashamed to say what he thought"] that [Polus] was forced to contradict himself, and that is just what you like.... For, Socrates, though you claim to pursue the truth, you actually drag us into these tiresome popular fallacies, looking to what is fine and noble, not by nature [physis], but by convention [nomos]. Now, for the most part, these two, nature and convention, are antagonistic to each other. And so, if a man is ashamed and dares not say what he thinks, he is compelled to contradict himself. And you have discovered this clever trick and do not play fair in your arguments, for if a man speaks on the basis of convention, you slyly question him on the basis of nature, but if he follows nature, you follow convention.

Laws are conventions made by the weak to suppress the strong (Callicles)

483b-c - CALLICLES: But in my opinion those who framed the laws are the weaker folk, the majority. And accordingly they frame the laws for themselves and their own advantage, and so to with their approval and censure, and to prevent the stronger who are able to overreach them from gaining the advantage over them, they frighten them by saying that to overreach others is shameful and evil, and injustice consists in seeking the advantage over others. For they are satisfied, I suppose, if being inferior they enjoy equality of status.

This is akin to what Nietzsche was to say, if I remember what he was to say, and I may not, twenty-two centuries (if I have mastered the maths) later. Where is Nietzsche's originality, because has he not simply taken his ideas from the Greek Sophists (especially Gorgias 483e-484a)? Maybe we could say this: that Callicles is an example of Nietzsche's superman only if Callicles has mastered himself (of which Plato speaks in 491d-e), not simply if he has re-evaluated all values and rejected slave morality, "the laws of the weaker folk".

The discussion shouldn't be allowed to run utterly away from experience -- because although some laws appear to favor the weaker, in fact far more favor the stronger. If the law prohibits both the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges (Anatole France), that hardly makes the rich and poor equal before the law. On the other hand, in contrast to law is equity (or, the natural sense of fairness). Injustice arises whenever law is regarded as more important than equity (Tolstoy). Plato's discussion is about both law (convention) and equity (nature), but more about equity, because Callicles is talking about what is equitable (justice according to nature).

The strong have the natural right to rule over the weak (Callicles)

483c-484a - CALLICLES: But in my view nature herself makes it plain that it is right for the better to have the advantage over the worse, the more able over the less. And both among all animals and in entire states and races of mankind it is plain that this is the case -- that right is recognized to be the sovereignty and advantage of the stronger over the weaker.

We mold the best and strongest among ourselves, catching them young like lion cubs, and by spells and incantations we make slaves of them, saying that they must be content with equality and that this is what is right and fair.

But if a man arises endowed with a nature sufficiently strong, he will, I believe, shake off all these controls, burst his fetters, and break loose. And trampling upon our scraps of paper, our spells and incantations, and all our unnatural conventions, he rises up and reveals himself our master who was once our slave, and there shines forth nature's true justice.

484c - ... because this is natural justice ...

Or in other words equity. In Euripides' The Suppliants Theseus replies to Callicles' outlaw: "We in Athens write our own laws and then are ruled by them. We hold there is no worse enemy to the state than one who keeps the law in his own hands" (c. lines 390-440, quoted in Hamilton, Mythology (1942), v, 2, p. 389), namely the individual who, claiming a superior wisdom, breaks the laws established by the whole citizenry of the state. That does not answer the nomos-physis question (482d-483a), but it does show what Callicles says the wise man must set himself against.

In contrast Thrasymachus will say in Republic Book One that "natural justice" is the right of the strongest party, which sometimes will be the citizenry of a democracy, to be served by the weaker parties, which individuals such as Callicles describes will, in that case, be and therefore obligated to obey the citizenry's laws.

Studying philosophy is proper in youth, ridiculous in the grown man

484c-486c - This is the truth then, and you will realize it if you now abandon philosophy and rise to greater things. For philosophy, you know, Socrates, is a pretty thing if you engage in it moderately in your youth; but if you continue in it longer than you should, it is the ruin of any man.... It is a good thing to engage in philosophy just so far as it is an aid to education, and it is no disgrace for a youth to study it, but when a man who is now growing older still studies philosophy, the situation becomes ridiculous, Socrates, and I feel toward philosophers very much as I do toward those who lisp and play the child.

The philosopher in contrast to the rhetorician

485e-486a - [And so CALLICLES says that he is moved to say something like what Amphion in Euripides [Antiope, fr. 21] says to his brother] "You neglect, Socrates, what you ought most to care for, and pervert a naturally noble spirit by putting on a childlike semblance, and you could neither contribute a useful word in the councils of justice nor seize upon what is plausible and convincing, nor offer any brilliant advice on another's behalf."

Of what good is an art like philosophy?

486b-c - [CALLICLES asks] what wisdom is there in [an art, namely, philosophy, which leaves a man] able neither to help himself nor to save from the extremes of danger either himself or anybody else, but fated to be robbed by his enemies of all his property .... my good fellow, "cease your questioning, and practice the fairer music of affairs" and try something that will win you a name for good sense ...

In other words, the philosopher should expect to get the worst in everything. And this makes the philosopher a fool, in Callicles' view, and what the philosopher takes for virtue is actually vice.

The Pnyx was the meeting place of the Athenian Assembly, 48 KB

Source: "The Pnyx: Meeting Place of the Athenian Assembly" (Royal Greek Embassy, Press and Information Service. Reproduced in Brumbaugh, The Philosophers of Greece (1966), p. 114). The stone steps were the speakers' platform of the Pnyx, the open-air semicircle surrounded by a wall that was the place where the Athenian people's direct-democracy decisions were made.

An English statesman (aged politician) whose name I can't remember said, "But we don't want to think too much about these things, or we won't get our work done."

But the sacred Acropolis in the left distance in the photograph is a reminder that there is something higher in our life than Callicles' lust for wealth and power, which is his only real interest in public affairs. Know thyself, know the specific excellence that is proper and unique to man. That knowledge is the wisdom philosophy seeks, the wisdom Callicles does not have.

The method of step-by-step agreement
(Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 14-15)

487d-e - SOCRATES: Evidently, then, the case at the moment is this. If at any point in our discussion you agree with me, that matter will already have been adequately tested both by you and by me, and there will no longer be any need to refer it to any other touchstone [than our step by step agreement; cf. 475e-476a]. For you would never have agreed with me through lack of wisdom or excess of modesty [which is what Callicles accused Polus of (482d-e) doing], nor again would you not agree with me with intent to deceive, for you are my friend, as you yourself claim.

Philosophy discusses no small matter but how to live (Socrates)

487e-488b - And of all inquiries, Callicles, the noblest is that which concerns the very matter with which you have reproached me -- namely [how a human being should live (472c, 487e, 492d, 500b-d)] what a man should be, and what he should practice and to what extent, both when older and when young. As for me, if I act wrongly at all in the conduct of my life, you may be assured that my error is not voluntary but due to my ignorance. [Plato has Socrates say that he has not as yet fulfilled the Delphic precept "Know thyself", "and so long as that ignorance remains, it seems to me ridiculous to inquire into" other things (Phaedrus 230a).]

488b-d - But please take up the question again from the beginning and tell me what "natural justice" is according to you and Pindar [Callicles has quoted the poet in 484b] -- that the more powerful carries off by force the property of the weaker, the better rules over the worse, and the nobler takes more than the meaner? Have you any other conception of justice than this ...?

... have you the same definition for the better and the more powerful? Please make your distinction clear ...

CALLICLES: ... they are the same.

What does Plato, that is, his translator, mean by 'definition' (the Greek word is logos) here, because it seems that, as we normally speak, Socrates and Callicles do not have different definitions of 'natural justice', but instead different answers to the same question, namely the question of what is fair (equitable) and what is not, of what is just and what isn't, a question that people very often disagree about the answer to (That is why Plato seeks an absolute standard in Euthyphro 6d-7d). If it were a question of different real definitions -- i.e. theories about "what natural justice is in itself" -- Wittgenstein could say that the distinction between a conceptual and a factual investigation is not clear to the speakers -- but Plato is not disputing metaphysical theories: the distinction is not between real and verbal definitions here. The Gorgias is an ethical rather than a metaphysical dialog. (It seems that Socrates and Callicles must have a shared verbal definition of the words 'natural justice' -- otherwise they would not be able to discuss the question of what natural justice for man is at all, because they would be like speakers of foreign languages uttering sounds at one another: they would both hear the sound 'natural justice' when the other spoke, but it would be a sound without meaning. They could substitute 'x' for 'natural justice' with no loss -- or gain -- of meaning, which they clearly cannot do here.)

My original comments here were quite mistaken: Wittgenstein's distinctions have nothing to do with this dialog.

489b-c - Tell me, Socrates, are you not ashamed to be captious about words at you age, considering it a godsend if one makes a slip in an expression?

489e-490b - SOCRATES: ... but come, tell me, whom do you mean by "the better"?

CALLICLES: I mean the nobler.

SOCRATES: You see then that you yourself are playing with words but revealing nothing. Will you not tell me whether by 'the better' and 'the more powerful' you mean the wiser or some other class?

CALLICLES: By heaven, I do mean those ... for natural justice I consider to be this, that the better and wiser man should rule over and have more than the inferior.

SOCRATES: Hold there a moment! What is it you mean this time?

And so Socrates now asks Callicles about what the better and the wiser shall have more of, which exasperates Callicles because he does not see the point of Socrates' questions. But the point is to force Callicles to say precisely what he means by 'have more', because Socrates' objection is that Callicles' general statement of what natural justice is for man cannot be used as a standard in ethics until its meaning is made clear. And, further, until its meaning is made clear, Callicles' statement cannot be agreed to or refuted in dialectic: the question of meaning precedes the question of truth, as in Plato's Republic 339a.

Always saying the same things and about the same matters ("cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors")

490c-491a - CALLICLES: You keep talking about food and drink and doctors and nonsense. I am not speaking of these things.... Garments indeed!... Shoes! You keep talking nonsense.... How you keep saying the same things, Socrates!

SOCRATES: Not only that, Callicles, but about the same matters.

CALLICLES: By heaven, you literally never stop talking about cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if we were discussing them.

Socrates says that these "supply illustrations of Justice, Holiness, and so forth" (Xenophon, Memorabilia i, 2, 37).

Self-control (mastering one's desires)

491d-e - SOCRATES: I mean that every man is his own master, or is there no need for him to govern himself, but only to govern others?

CALLICLES: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Nothing very subtle, but merely the popular notion of being temperate and in control of oneself, and mastering one's own pleasures and appetites.

Temperance (or, self-control) was one of the five cardinal virtues of ancient Greece, Guthrie says, as is reflected, I think, in the maxim "Nothing too much" (or, "Nothing in excess"), which maybe is a variation of "Know thyself", because if you know yourself you will not presume to over-reach or under-reach the limits of human or your individual nature. (About "the popular notion" Plato alludes to, see Guthrie's note about the Greek word 'sophrosyne' in Plato's Charmides.)

Self-control is happiness for man

493c-d - ... orderly folk [who live] ... the life of order that is satisfied with what at anytime it possesses ... are happier than the undisciplined [who live] an insatiable and uncontrolled life" ...

The wages of pleasure is pain, of indiscipline ruin, both physical and moral.

With that statement (493c-d) Plato breaks for the moment with his usual reason-alone, a priori, method (a priori = "knowable independently of experience"), because that remark is an observation of experience. It is a verifiable statement of fact, which might either be true or false.

Callicles explains how men think - despite their unwillingness to say - man should live his life

491d-492d - SOCRATES: ... mastering one's own pleasures and appetites.

CALLICLES: What charming innocence! By temperate you mean simpletons.

SOCRATES: How could I? Everybody must realize that that is not my meaning.

CALLICLES: Most certainly it is, Socrates.... the naturally noble and just is what I now describe to you with all frankness -- namely that anyone who is to live aright should suffer his appetites to grow to the greatest extent and not check them, and through courage and intelligence should be competent to minister to them at their greatest and to satisfy every appetite with what it craves.... Luxury and intemperance and license ... are virtue and happiness ...

SOCRATES: You make a brave attack, Callicles ... clearly you are now saying what others may think but are reluctant to express. I entreat you therefore on no account to weaken, in order that it may really be made clear how life should be lived.

"The body is a tomb" (Plato)

492e-493a - SOCRATES: Well, life as you describe it is a strange affair. I should not be surprised, you know, if Euripides was right when he said, "Who knows, if life be death, and death be life?" [cf. Aristophanes, The Frogs l. 1477] And perhaps we are actually dead, for I once heard one of our wise men say that we are now dead, and that our body is a tomb [cf. Cratylus 400b; and Orphicism and Plato], and that that part of the soul in which dwell the desires is of a nature to be swayed and to shift to and fro [cf. Phaedo 66c-d].

That is an example Plato's own notions and predilections being placed in the mouth of Socrates (Diog. L. ii, 45), as are the discussions in the Phaedo 83e, for example.

Misology as indifference to logic

494e-495a - CALLICLES: Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to drag our discussion into such topics [Plato has given an example of the basest type of pleasure, cruder still than Socrates' remark about Critias]?

SOCRATES: Is it I who do this ... or the man who says so unequivocally that pleasure, whatever its nature, is the key to happiness, and does not distinguish between pleasures good and evil? [Are the pleasant and the good identical", or are there] some pleasures which are not good[?]

CALLICLES: To avoid inconsistency if I say they are different, I assert they are same.

SOCRATES: Then you ruin your earlier statement, Callicles, and you can no longer properly investigate the truth with me, if you speak contrary to your opinions.

In order to avoid being refuted -- by being shown to contradict himself -- Callicles prefers to pretend that he has not been refuted. But that is not the way of philosophy, and it shows Callicles to be a misologist.

Are pleasure and the good the same thing for man?

Note: Plato will again ask the question of whether pleasure is the good for man in his dialog the Philebus, as he has earlier asked in the Protagoras.

495d-e - CALLICLES: But Socrates of [the deme of] Alopece [in Attica] does not agree [that pleasure and the good are the same], does he?

SOCRATES: He does not, and I think Callicles will not either when he comes to know himself aright.

497b-c - GORGIAS - Do not behave so, Callicles, but answer for our sakes too, that the arguments may be concluded.

CALLICLES: But Socrates is always the same, Gorgias. He asks these trivial and useless questions and then refutes.

GORGIAS: What difference does that make to you? In any case you do not have to pay the price, Callicles, but suffer Socrates to cross-examine you as he will.

CALLICLES: Well then, ask these petty little questions, since Gorgias so wishes.

SOCRATES: You are lucky, Callicles, in having been initiated in the Great Mysteries before the Little [The allusion is to Socrates' "petty little questions" (Callicles) that precede the answer to the question of "no small matter, but how to live"]; I did not think it was permitted.

"Everything else should be done for the sake of the good, not the good for the sake of everything else"

498e-499a - SOCRATES: ... Now do you not say that the wise and the fool, the brave and the coward feel pleasure and pain to a like degree ...?... Then reckon up along with me what is the result of our admissions, for they say that it is good to repeat and examine twice and once again what is good.

499c-d - What you now say, it seems [that is "it seems" because Callicles has claimed that in agreeing to statements that are clearly contradictory, he has been playing with Socrates as if the latter were a child; this Callicles claims rather than admit that he is refuted (498e-499b)], is that some pleasures are good, and some bad.... Are the good ones the profitable, the bad ones the harmful?... And the profitable are those that do some good, the harmful some evil?

499d-e - Now is this what you mean? Of the bodily pleasures of eating a drinking, for instance, ... are those that produce health in the body or strength or any other bodily excellence, good pleasures, and those that produce the opposite effects bad?... Now should we not choose and practice good pleasures and pains?... And not the bad?

499e-500a - ... Polus and I agreed, if you remember, that all our actions should be for the sake of the good [cf. 468b]. Do you too share our opinion, that the good is the end of all actions, and that everything else should be done for its sake, not the good for the sake of everything else?

500a - Then the pleasant as well as everything else should be done for the sake of the good, not the good for the sake of the pleasant.

Socrates, the non-metaphysical, versus Plato, the metaphysical -- good versus "the good"

Now that is quite a proposition, although what does Plato mean by it exactly, i.e. in examples? Remember, that for Socrates ethics is rational ("Their perceived good is what all living things aim for") -- it is knowledge -- not "imperative" (as in Kant): Socrates does not think of things as being "good in themselves", but only as being good for something (i.e. useful) [Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 7-8]. But maybe Plato has other ideas than Socrates has about "the good" [an "abstract term" which Plato hypostatizes into existence, unlike Socrates who uses the word 'good' as we normally use that word]. Schweitzer wrote that --

Plato, Socrates, pleasure and the good

Plato is the first of all thinkers who feels that the presence of the ethical idea in man is what it is: something profoundly puzzling. Hence he cannot profess to be satisfied with the attempt by the historic Socrates to explain the good as that which is rationally pleasure-giving. It is clear to him that it is something unconditional, with a compelling force of its own, and to preserve for it this character seems to him, as later to Kant, to be the greatest task of thought. (Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, tr. Campion (1929), p. 41)

What does Schweitzer mean by "rationally pleasure-giving" -- that only those bodily pleasures that result in a healthy body are good, and likewise with respect to the soul (499c-e). The proposition 'It is wise (reasonable, rational) to do what is good (useful, beneficial), foolish to do what is evil (bad, harmful)' is tautological. But it is more complicated. When Plato has Socrates say that the good life = happiness for man is the life of self-control (493c-d), is this because self-control is useful? In which sense of 'useful'? Self-control, or, more Socratically in this case, "self-watchfulness", is an essential tool in ethics: its use is to prevent base instinct and bad habits from acting before the rational soul can overrule them with its knowledge of the good.

Socrates does not argue that self-control is good in itself (That is not the way he thinks, the way his mind works), as if self-control when used to do evil were somehow good. Self-control is an excellence that is proper to the human soul, but it is only a moral excellence when it is guided by knowledge of the good; neither is "discourse of reason" good in itself, for reason may be used to plot an evil deed. All things are good by the standard of their own proper excellence (Gorgias 506e; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia iii, 8, 4-7). To call anything good in itself -- presuming that the combination of words 'good in itself' has a clear meaning, a use in the language [because "good in itself" or "absolutely good" would imply "good relative to nothing" (ibid. iii, 8, 2-3) or "good relative to everything"] -- would be to go outside experience, and that would not be Socrates' way, the way of Socratic ignorance. It would be thinking one knows what one does not know.

Too vague by far ("pleasure")

The concept 'pleasure' contributes more obscurity than clarity, because we can always speak of "pleasure on a higher level", so that even when we suffer pain in doing it, we may speak of there being pleasure in doing what is good. In other words, anything, whether of the body or the mind, may be called 'pleasurable' from some point of view.

Calm and Passionate

I don't know if Schweitzer is correct about Plato ("[ethics] is something unconditional, with a compelling force of its own"), but Plato does seem to contrast somewhat sharply with the calm of Socrates. Socrates is stoical, while Plato, at least in this dialog (as also in the Protagoras), is passionate.

As to "the historical Socrates" explaining "the good as that which is rationally pleasure-giving", again, 'pleasure' might mean anything. In Xenophon the good is the useful (above all, useful for care of the soul) and Socrates "always chose the better rather than the pleasanter way" (Memorabilia iv, 8, 11), as Plato also says in this dialog at 521d.

In Protagoras 358a-d, Plato discusses the proposition "The good is the pleasant, and the question of what is most pleasant is a question of knowledge, and therefore rational" or in Schweitzer's words "The good is the rationally pleasurable". The point of the tale is that in all cases to be rational is the good for man: If any pleasure is good for man, that must be decided by dialectic's tests of reason and reason judging experience.

"What kind of life should one live?" The life of rhetoric versus the life of philosophy

500b-c - And, by the god of friendship, Callicles do not fancy that you should play with me, and give me no haphazard answers contrary to your opinion [499b]. And do not either take what I say as if I were merely playing, for you see the subject of our discussion -- and on what subject should even a man of slight intelligence be more serious? -- namely, what kind of life one should live, [1] the life to which you invite me, that of a "real man" speaking in the Assembly and practicing rhetoric and playing the politician according to your present fashion, or [2] the life spent in philosophy, and how one differs from the other.

500d - Perhaps it is best for us ... to distinguish between them, and after distinguishing and coming to an agreement together, then, if there are two such lives distinct, to consider in what way they differ from one another and which one should be lived.

Since you and I have agreed that there is a good and there is a pleasant, and that the pleasant is different from the good, that there is a method of studying and contriving to acquire each of them, one method for pursuing pleasure, another for pursuing the good -- but first of all you must either agree with or reject this statement. Do you agree?

501b-c - Consider then ... whether you believe that there are certain other occupations relating to the soul also -- some in the nature of arts, exercising forethought for what is best for the soul, others [i.e. "routines" (501a-b)] neglecting this but, as in the case of the body preoccupied entirely with the soul's pleasure, and how it may be achieved -- but as to which pleasures are better or worse, this they have never considered, their sole concern being to gratify these pleasures, whether for better or for worse.

501e - And first let us look at flute playing. Do you not think, Callicles, that it conforms to this type, pursuing our pleasure only, with no thought for anything else?

Comment: There is the notion of ars gratia artis, that the composer needn't answer to anything higher. But there is another notion, namely Res severa verum gaudium, which may be translated "Seriousness alone is true amusement" (Seneca): the notion that music is able to ennoble the listener, to "somehow" improve the soul of its hearer, that even in instrumental music alone a composer may have something profound to "say" -- Would anyone dare say that Franz Schubert wrote with "no thought for anything other than our pleasure", much less that J.S. Bach did. And yet even their music must be classified as a "routine" rather than an art in Plato's scheme -- because, if music were an "art", it really would be possible to compose music using nothing more than the rules of counterpoint and a pair of dice (but, contrary to what a girl once told me, music is not "just mathematics").

501e - Do you imagine that [the chorus trainer] Cinesias, son of Meles, is in the slightest concerned with saying anything that is likely to improve his hearers ...?

502b-c - CALLICLES: It is indeed quite evident, Socrates, that [tragic drama's] impulse is rather toward pleasure and the gratification of the spectators ... [SOCRATES: rather than to saying] anything that is unwelcome but beneficial, whether they like it or not [502b].

Again, that seems a most strange thing to say about Aeschylus' Agamemnon or Sophocles' Antigone. But Plato, despite allowing that the arts can be beneficial, does say just that [502c-d], that it is the aim of the artist to flatter [rhetoric] rather than to benefit [gymnastic, medicine], and, indeed, he has said that the poets do not even understand the wisdom they speak .... And yet the Plato who wrote the Gorgias was the same Plato who invited Aristophanes to his Symposium.

Philosophy versus Poetry

502c-d - And did we not just now [464c-465b] describe such an activity as flattery?... Well now, if you should strip from all poetry its music, rhythm, and meter, the residue would be nothing else but speech?... Must it not be a rhetorical public address? Do you not consider that the poets engage in rhetoric in the theaters?

"... the residue". Well, but the residue of the sheep, as Aristophanes says in The Frogs, is mutton broth and sheepskin: If we strip a thing of its life, then ... If the essence of poetry is its "residue", then is its residue speech? But Plato's point seems clear: unlike philosophy, he says, poetry is not dialectic: poets present ideas, but they do not put those ideas to the test of reason: they persuade to belief rather than instruct to knowledge. (Does Plato neglect that, in some plays, poets have put ideas to the test of experience, through the lives of the characters who bear them -- but is that persuasion or instruction?)

The Ethical Perfecting of the Individual

502e - Do the orators seem to you always to speak with an eye to what is best, their sole aim being to render the citizens as perfect as possible by their speeches ...?

503a - CALLICLES: This is not a single question you are asking, for some say what they say in the interest of the citizens ...

SOCRATES: [This other part of rhetoric, then, would be] something fine -- the effort to perfect as far as possible the souls of the citizens and the struggle to say always what is best, whether it be welcome or unwelcome to the hearers. But you yourself have never seen rhetoric of this kind ...

Nietzsche and Ethics

The truth that ethics in their essential nature are a process of self-perfecting shines out in him.... Not what ethics mean for society [which was the then current view and against which Nietzsche was reacting], but what they mean for the perfecting of the individual, is the first question which has to be put to [ethics]. (Civilization and Ethics, p. 175-176)

Both 502e and 503a speak of "perfecting". And if the good for a thing is the excellence that is proper to its nature, then reaching that excellence is perfecting the thing. According to Plato, as well as Socrates, the excellence proper to man is the life of rationally known moral virtue, the life of reason. What Socrates practiced was knowledge of the good and perfect self-watchfulness (self-control), and thereby unbroken rational moral virtue. To this his companions testified.

According to Schweitzer, the perfecting of the individual and of society is the ethical task of civilization. Is that not Plato's view?

The spirit of philosophy and the spirit of Plato's writing in philosophy

The following (504b-c) shows the spirit of philosophy and the spirit in which Plato wrote. A philosopher is not dogmatic, nor can he be opposed to free speech (461e) -- certainly not "an enemy of the open society" (as one professor thought to call him). It is in the spirit of philosophy -- of reason seeking the true and the good -- that Plato wants to be read -- i.e. he expects the reader to argue with him as a companion or opponent, to agree or to refute. But as he writes in Phaedrus 275c-e, the written word -- in contrast to face to face dialectic -- cannot defend itself, and both the meaning of words and the spirit in which they are written may be beyond the understanding of many of the readers into whose hands the written word falls.

504b-c - Now what is the name of that bodily quality resulting from order and discipline?

CALLICLES: Health and strength, I suppose you mean.

SOCRATES: I do. And the effect of order and discipline in the soul? Try to discover and name it, as in the other case.

CALLICLES: Why do you not name it yourself, Socrates?

It is better, more useful, to be refuted than agreed with

SOCRATES: ... I will do so. And do you, if you think I am right, agree; if not, refute me and do let me escape.

506a - I will then carry the argument through in accordance with my own ideas, and if any of you believe what I admit to myself is not the truth, you must break in upon it and refute me. For I do not speak with any pretense to knowledge, but am searching along with you, and so if there appears to be anything in what my opponent says, I shall be the first to yield to him.

506c - And if you refute me, I shall not be vexed with you, as you are with me, but you shall be enrolled as the greatest of my benefactors.

504c-d - CALLICLES: Why do you not name it yourself, Socrates?

SOCRATES: ... It seems to me that the word 'healthy' is applied to all regularity in the body, and from this comes health and general bodily excellence. Is it so or not?... And the words 'lawfulness' and 'law' are applied to all order and regularity of the soul, whence men become orderly and law-abiding, and this means justice and temperance. Yes or no?

505b-c - So long as [the soul] is evil, senseless and undisciplined and unjust and impious, it should be restrained from its desires and suffered to do nothing but what will improve it [just as a doctor restrains a sick man's appetites (505a)].... For thus, I suppose, it will be better for the soul itself.... And to restrain it from its desires is to discipline it?.... Then to be disciplined is better for the soul than indiscipline, which you preferred just now (491e-492d).

CALLICLES: I do not know what you are talking about, Socrates ... ["I have not the slightest interest in what you are saying. I answered you only to gratify Gorgias." (505c)]

SOCRATES: This fellow will not put up with being improved and experiencing the very treatment now under discussion, the process of discipline [which, in this case, is the discipline of accepting refutation (cf. Plato, Sophist 230b-d)].

Plato's summary of the argument so far

506c-507a - ... let me recapitulate the argument from the beginning.

Are the pleasant and the good identical? They are not, as Callicles and I agreed. Should the pleasant be done for the sake of the good, or the good for the sake of the pleasant? [500a] The pleasant for the sake of the good. And is the pleasant that at whose presence we are pleased, the good that whose presence makes us good?... But the goodness of ourselves and of all other things is due to the presence of some excellence?... But surely the goodness of anything, whether implement or body or soul ... does not come to it merely by haphazard, but through a certain rightness and order and through the art that is assigned to each of them.... It is then the presence in each thing of the order appropriate to it that makes everything good?... The soul then that has its own appropriate order [i.e. the order appropriate to a human soul] is better than that which has none?... And the orderly is the temperate?... Then the temperate soul is the good.

"... the good whose presence makes us good" (506d). This appears to be, although I don't know that it is, Plato's strange notion of "partaking" again, a notion Aristotle called "meaningless words" (Metaphysics 991a). As if to say, if I am tall, it is because tallness is present in me (or, I partake of tallness), brave because bravery is present in me. This is not like saying that if I have a bloody nose, it is because blood is present in my nose. That is, I don't think Plato's notion is anything more than a false comparison (invalid simile) -- a picture to which no reality corresponds (About such things as tallness ("absolute tallness"), Plato asks "Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?" (Phaedo 65d), and answers that "no such real beings exist in our world" (Parmenides 133c); they are the children of reasoning only). On the other hand, maybe that notion is not what Plato is talking about here --

A standard of judgment: The appropriate excellence is the good

All things are good by this standard: the excellence that is appropriate to each (506e). And self-control is an excellence that is appropriate to the human soul. How do we know there is such an excellence? Plato, I think, will answer that we can distinguish between order and disorder, and that excellence is to be identified with order.

Where a thing has a purpose, as for example a tool, the order appropriate to it is the one that best allows it to perform the function for which it is designed.

For a living thing, the appropriate order is health, which is what allows a living thing to best live (Obviously disease, i.e. unhealth, is not that). I imagine Plato is simply calling attention to the obvious here, obvious because these are tautological propositions.

And the order appropriate to the soul? This is where Callicles and Socrates disagree. Callicles says pleasure, but uncontrolled pleasure is shown to be ruinous for the soul (and what ruins a thing obviously is not the good for the thing).

Destruction and construction in philosophy

When I began studying Plato's dialogs I found myself on strange ground. I was not used to trying to think in the way Plato does -- because I was not used to thinking constructively, but only to using reason to criticize destructively. But Plato criticized in both ways -- and destruction was really only done for the sake of construction, because Plato, like Socrates before him, was seeking a truth he believed it is possible to find.

Wittgenstein, by contrast, after his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus did no constructive criticism (PI § 118). As for ethics, he never considered whether ethics could be constructive, that is, rational rather than irrational at its foundations, but always thought it to be irrational.

Categorical versus rational ethics

I want to contrast Dogmatic Ethics -- Kant's categorical imperatives belong to this class, because "conscience" is not answerable to reason; it is an impulse, akin to instinct -- with Rational Ethics (e.g. Socratic ethics). The question is whether the Greek proposition that The good for a thing is its existence in accord with the excellence that is proper and unique to it, which is the foundation of rational ethics, is justifiable by reasoning. Perhaps yes, by using Plato's method of tautology in ethics, asking whether the negation of the Greek proposition can be true rather than false.

It is in our day the common presumption -- just as a materialist view of death is -- that Kant's view of ethics, which is also Wittgenstein's view (OC § 611), is obviously the correct one, simply to be accepted rather than questioned. Philosophy itself can suffer from its own "spirit of the age", as with Locke's "I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such ideas in men's minds: everyone is conscious of them in himself", following Descartes' New Way of Ideas, which few follow in our day.

And so we may not used to reasoning about these things -- i.e. about ethics. These questions may make us feel like Casca in Julius Caesar, crying out like a beast wanting discourse of reason: "Hands, speak for me!" Because that is what conscience seems to say when it is questioned. We are accustomed from school to the view that there are absolute and relative-to-a-purpose values -- or in other words, final and instrumental values -- and that although we can argue about the latter -- "Will this instrument, as a practical matter, actually achieve its end?" -- we cannot argue about the former. (According to Wittgenstein, final value = "absolute value", an irrational imperative.)

Socrates and Wittgenstein contrasted

But if we go back to philosophy's early days, we find that Socrates and Plato "do not think in those terms", for example, in terms of "values". That is not their vocabulary, their way of thinking about ethics. And if I am correct, then we can't make a statement such as: "For Socrates, and for Plato as well, reason can give values a foundation." Socrates does not use the concept 'values' in his ethics. And that is very different from Wittgenstein's notion "absolute value" which makes ethics non-rational (and therefore not even a part of philosophy).

Justice towards men and piety towards gods

507a-b - ... if the temperate soul is good ... the sound-minded man [i.e. the wise man or man possessed of wisdom, I think Woodhead means (Jowett's translation uses only the expression 'the temperate man', which affects Plato's argument, because although it may be wise to be temperate, it is not necessarily temperate to be pious, brave, or fair, not unless the virtues are all faces of but one thing, which is a proposition that must be proved, not assumed), unless 'temperate' = 'morally virtuously self-controlled'] would do his duty by gods and men, for he would not be sound of mind ["for he would not be temperate" (Jowett)] if he did what was unfitting.... And doing his duty by men he would be acting justly, and doing it by the gods piously [cf. Laches 199d-e; Gorgias 522c], and the doer of just and pious deeds must be just and pious.

Plato's meaning, it seems, is that the doer must "partake" of the Forms of what he does, in this instance Absolute Justice and Absolute Piety, or else he could not do those deeds. (Which seems to be the same idea as Gorgias 506d.)

507b - And further, he must be brave, for it is not the part of a man of sound mind to pursue or to avoid what he should not, but to pursue or avoid what he should, whether it be things, or people, or pleasures, or pains, and to stand his ground, where duty bids, and remain steadfast.

507c - [Thus] the sound-minded and temperate man, being ... just and brave and pious, must be completely good --

The five principal virtues according to the Greeks were courage, temperance (self-control), piety (holiness), justice (equity), and wisdom (knowledge), Guthrie says, and Plato says that the temperate man is all these.

-- and the good man must do well and finely [excellently (Jowett has "perfectly"] whatever he does, and he who does well must be happy and blessed [while the undisciplined man's condition must be just the opposite].

What is Plato's method of argument here -- is it not to show the connections (inter-relationships) among our concepts (which may be called, "grammatical reminders")? Are not Plato's statements above tautologies, or can they be false statements? Is it logically possible for the undisciplined man to be "happy and blessed"? Is it empirically possible?

Plato's Conclusion

507c-d - This then is the position I take, and I affirm to be true, and if it is true, then the man who wishes to be happy [i.e. to live the life that is the good for man] must, it seems, pursue and practice temperance, and each of us must flee from indiscipline with all the speed in his power and contrive, preferably, to have no need of being disciplined, but if he ... has need of it, then he must suffer punishment and be disciplined, if he is to be happy. This I consider to be the mark to which a man should look throughout his life ...

But ethics is about more than simply controlling appetites. And so in this dialog Plato identifies temperance (or, self-control) as the excellence proper to man -- but includes within "temperance" all the other moral virtues.

But again, the proposition "he must suffer punishment and be disciplined, if he is to be happy" ignores experience, because, as we may observe, punishment may make a man worse (he may be led into even graver wrong-doing by punishment) rather than cure him of his wrong-doing. The happy or good life for man is certainly the life free of wrong-doing, but how to attain that life cannot be decided a priori, i.e. independently of experience, as Platonic rationalism would do. For, further, if the good man harms no one, but makes even wrong-doers better, then if he is responsible for punishing wrong-doers, he must make them better, not worse, by his deeds.

509a - For what I say is always the same -- that I know not the truth of these affairs, but I do know that of all whom I have ever met, either before or now, no one who put forward another view has failed to appear ridiculous [i.e. has failed to put forth a view which when examined was not refuted (One who knows can defend what he knows in discussion; cf. Laches 190c)].

A rational versus an empirical method

Does the following apply to the author of the Gorgias? When Plato solely by reasoning declares that punishment necessarily cures the soul of evil, it seems so.

Plato seeks the general notion of the good, but he abandons the path which was pointed out ... by Socrates, the determination of it by a process of induction ["An empirical ethic, that is, one established out of past experience and with a view to future experience"]. He wants to establish it by a purely formal process by abstract logical thinking. (Civilization and Ethics, p. 40 [p. 34])

Can Ethics be derived from the Facts?

Trying to turn reason against reason

According to Hume, "it is impossible to derive an ought from an is". What kind of impossibility is this? It is as if Hume were saying: There are two kinds of propositions, empirical and ethical, and propositions of one kind cannot be deduced from propositions of the other kind. But why "cannot"?

Imagine someone said: "Why shouldn't I want to be evil! Why shouldn't I do what is harmful to my soul!" Would that not be like saying: "Why should I want to be happy rather than unhappy! Why should I want to live the life that is good for man rather than the life that is evil for him!"

As if to say: I don't need to bow to what I admit to be "reasonable", because, not being logically necessary, it is merely reasonable.

Other than for the sake of eristic, why say such things? "This ought [ethical obligation] doesn't follow from this is [matter of fact] by logical necessity." -- That is what I think Hume means by 'reason'. But what would 'logical necessity' mean here? and what is Plato's method of tautologies about if not logical necessity (i.e. the interconnection of rules of grammar)?

According to Hume, the propositions of ethics -- "In such-and-such way is how we should live our life" -- cannot be derived from statements of fact (factual propositions). But if we can identify the excellence that is proper to the human life form (which would be a matter of fact), then does it not follow that a human being should live in accord with that, functionally rather than dysfunctionally? Indeed, isn't that what we mean by 'the good for a thing' -- 'existence in accord with the excellence that is proper to that thing'? As to exactly what that excellence is for man (whether or not it is such things as reason, creativity, moral virtue), argument can be taken, but the principle of ethics (which is a rule of grammar of Plato's tautological ethics' type) will still stand.

Plato's summary against Callicles

508a-b - Well, either we must refute this argument and prove that happiness does not come to the happy through the possession of justice [lawfulness, i.e. order and regularity of the soul (504d)] and temperance [self-control: the soul ruling the body and not vice versa (465d)], nor does misery come through the possession of wickedness, or, if my argument is true [i.e. if we are in agreement], we must consider the consequences.

The evil-doer is the one most harmed by evil-doing

508d-e - I maintain, Callicles, that it is not most shameful of things to be wrongfully boxed on the ears [486c: "And such a man ... one may even box on the ears with impunity"], nor again to have either my purse or my person cut ... and further, theft and kidnapping and burglary and in a word any wrong done to me and mine [486b-c] is at once more shameful and worse for the wrongdoer than for me the sufferer.

This is related to Socrates' view that a good man has nothing to fear either in this world or in any other. But here (in contrast to Apology 41c-d), it is only claimed that there is something worse to fear than suffering wrong (and that worse thing is to do wrong), not that there is nothing at all for a good human being to fear.

How man shall best live his life

512e-513a - ["May not he who is truly a man" (Jowett)] ignore this question of living for a certain span of years and ... not be so enamored of life [cf. 522d-e], but ... leave these things to God and ... consider the ensuing question -- in what way one can best live the life that is to be his, whether by assimilating himself to the type of government under which he lives [which in Athens is democracy, and thus "assimilating" means becoming a man of public affairs, defending yourself and those dear to you, persuading to the plausible through rhetoric, indifferent to the truth (485e-486d)] ... and find that our choice of such power in the city means the sacrifice of what is dearest to us.

About Plato, Guthrie wrote that by "temperament he resembled his own philosopher in Republic [6.496c-d], who sees the impossibility of doing any good to a society bent on wickedness, and stands aside like a man sheltering under a wall while a storm drives over head" (Plato ... earlier period, p. 29). Is this a question of temperament or of observation [experience]? How does one decide what is possible or impossible with respect to doing good to the society one lives in -- and on what level should one ask that question?

In Apology 30a-b and 30e-31a, Socrates seeks to do good to society on nothing grander than a personal level (That was his method). In the Socratic dialogs he questions and cross-questions to cure presumptuous ignorance, and encourages "his companions to become skilled in discussion" because "those who do not know [but think they do] are misled themselves and mislead others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1), and further Xenophon says, Socrates tried to improve his own companions through the example he set them (ibid. iv, 3, 18).

More modestly still, Albert Schweitzer told his granddaughter, "You can have your Lambaréné anywhere." Your own village or outpost of the kingdom of God, ruled by a philosopher king, however small that village may be.

Pleasure is desired by the body, not by the soul (Plato)

513d - ... we said there were two processes that aim in each case attending body and soul [464b-465b], one makes pleasure the end of its association, the other what is best, this latter not indulging in pleasure but battling against it.

But looked at that way, in either case one is a slave, for it is impossible to escape either self-indulgence or self-discipline: one is always doing what one does not wish to do. But that way assumes that virtue is not knowledge, that one does not know that self-indulgence is evil and self-control good, because no one knowingly does what is evil. This is why Socrates always chose the better rather than the, judged by appearances, pleasanter way (Memorabilia iv, 8, 11). Otherwise, it seems that "so long as we keep to the body" with its maddening appetites (Cratylus 404a), i.e. so long as we are alive, we shall always be slaves to either temperance or intemperance.

"But did they make the people better?" (The true statesman)

517b - [Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades [the victor at Marathon, whom the people voted to throw into the pit (516d)], and Pericles, all of whom Callicles has cited as the better sort of orators (503c), were, Plato admits] able to provide the city with what she desired. But as to giving those desires a different direction instead of allowing them free scope, by persuading and compelling citizens to adopt courses that would improve them [in moral virtue] [cf. 502e, 503a] -- why, therein they were practically in no way superior to the statesmen of today, though this is the only true office of a good citizen.

518e-519a - And men say it is these who have made our city great, never realizing that it is swollen and festering through these statesmen of old, for they have paid no heed to discipline and justice, but have filled our city with harbors and dockyards, and walls and revenues, and similar rubbish, and so on ...

519c-e - Sophists, wise as they are in other matters, are at one point guilty of absurd behavior, for they claim to be teachers of goodness [460a], yet they often accuse their pupils of wronging them by withholding their fees and showing no gratitude either for benefits received from them.... tell me, does it not seem ridiculous, when you claim to have made a man good, to find fault with him because, though you have made him good and he still is, yet he remains wicked?

What is most good, not what is most pleasant

521d - I think I am one of the few Athenians engaged in the true political art, and that of the men of today I alone practice statesmanship. Since therefore when I speak on any occasion it is not with a view to winning favor, but I aim at what is best, not at what is most pleasant ...

Plato says that the "harbors and dockyards and walls" are "rubbish" because these serve the body, whereas the aim of the political art, the art of the statesman, is to serve the soul, the ethical part of man (moral virtue). Xenophon also says of Socrates that he "rather than the more pleasant, he always chose the better course" (Memorabilia iv, 8, 11).

"A jury of children"

521d-522c - ... it will be an evil man who prosecutes me -- for no good man would drag a guiltless person into court -- and it would not be surprising if I were put to death. Would you like me to tell you exactly why I expect this?... My trial will be like that of a doctor prosecuted by a cook before a jury of children [cf. 464d]. Just consider what kind of defense such a man could offer in such a predicament ... Children of the jury, this fellow has done all of you abundant harm .... What do you think a doctor could find to say in such a desperate situation?... Do you not think he would not be utterly baffled as to what to say?... Well, I too know that my experience would be similar if I were brought into court.... And if anyone claims either that I corrupt the young by bewildering them [which was the second part of the indictment against Socrates (Apology 24b, 26b)] ... I shall neither be able to tell the truth and claim that I am right in saying all that I do and that it is your interests I am serving in this [ibid. 30d-31b] ...

A life of piety and justice

522c-d - [The only help the defendant would have is] if he has helped himself by doing no wrong in word or deed either to gods or to men [for this is piety and justice (507b)], for this we have often admitted to be the best of all aids to oneself.

When asked if he was preparing for his trial, Socrates answered, "Don't you think that I have been preparing for it all my life?" (Memorabilia iv, 8, 4).

522d-e - For no one who is not utterly irrational and cowardly is afraid of the mere act of dying. It is evil doing that he fears. For to arrive in the other world with a soul surcharged with many wicked deeds is the worst of all evils.

The Soul will Face Judgment in the Afterlife

At this point in the dialog the argument ends and Plato presents a myth about the soul's coming to judgment after the body's death (522e-524b). The soul of anyone who has "lived in piety and truth" but especially "the soul of a philosopher who has applied himself to his own business and not played the busybody [(485e-486d)?] in this life" is sent "forthwith to the Isles of the Blessed" (526c).

Plato's conviction: belief in a last judgment

526d-e - Now I am convinced by these stories, Callicles, and I am considering how I may present to my judge the healthiest possible soul, and so I renounce the honors sought by most men, and pursuing the truth I shall really endeavor both to live, and when death comes, to die, as good a man as I possibly can be.

"Either in this world, or any other"

527a-b - Now perhaps this all seems to you like an old wife's tale, and you despise it, and there would be nothing strange in despising it if our searches could discover anywhere a better and truer account, but as it is you see that you three ... cannot demonstrate that we should live any other life than this, which is plainly of benefit also in the other world.

Study to be good | No harm can be done to a good man

527b-e - But amid all these arguments, while others were refuted, this alone stands steadfast, that we should be more on our guard against doing than suffering wrong, and that before all things a man should study not to seem but to be good, whether in private or in public life ... And you may let anyone despise you as a fool and do you outrage, if he wishes, ... for you will suffer no harm thereby if you really are a good man and an honorable, and pursue virtue.... For it seems to me shameful that, being what apparently at this moment we are, we should consider ourselves to be fine fellows, when we can never hold to the same views about the same questions -- and those too most vital of all [Protagoras 360e-361a] -- so deplorably uneducated are we! Then let us follow the guidance of the argument now made manifest, which reveals to us that this is the best way of life, to live and die in the pursuit of righteousness and all other virtues.

That is the meaning of Plato's words "... know this of a truth -- that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death." (Apology 41c-d, tr. Jowett)

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