Plato was a Greek philosopher who composed a number of dialogues in which an earlier philosopher, Socrates, discusses philosophical topics with various people. In my last post and in this post I consider what two of them, Laches (https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2023/07/23/1-platos-laches/) and Gorgias, say about ethics, the study of right and wrong. An introduction to Gorgias and Benjamin Jowett’s translation of it are given at https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/plato/dialogues/benjamin-jowett/text/gorgias. In preparing this article on Gorgias I’ve used the same translation of it (from Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952) guided by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain’s guide to it in volume 8 (Ethics: The Study of Moral Values) of The Great Ideas Program, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1962.
Gorgias is named after a celebrated teacher of rhetoric. He belonged to a group of educators called Sophists who focused on the study of human behaviour, institutions, and society instead of on the natural world and the ultimate principles of things. Other persons besides Socrates and Gorgias taking part in the dialogue, are Callicles, a proponent of the right-makes-right doctrine; Polus, a student of Gorgias; and Chaerephon, a companion of Socrates.
After a short conversation in which the characters are introduced, Socrates questions Gorgias on the nature of rhetoric. Gorgias defines it as “the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies … and about the just and unjust.” Socrates leads him into a contradiction, Gorgias’s asserting that a rhetorician can teach his students what is just and to be just after he’d conceded that some rhetoricians use their skill for unjust ends.
Polus now intervenes and engages Socrates in a dialogue about rhetoric. He claims that rhetoric confers great power because like tyrant those who possesses it can do whatever they want, but Socrates asserts that rhetoricians and tyrants possess no power at all “for they do literally nothing which they will, but only what they think best.” Polus exclaims, “As though you, Socrates, would not like to have the power of doing what seemed good to you in the state, rather than not; you would not be jealous when you saw any one killing or despoiling or imprisoning whom he pleased, Oh, no!” To this Socrates replies, “Justly or unjustly, do you mean?” introducing his main point that doing, not suffering, injustice is the greatest evil. He goes on to argue that it is worse to escape punishment than to suffer it.
Callicles expresses disbelief that Socrates can really be serious for this would turn everything upside down. Socrates and he then engage in a lengthy argument, of which I’ll summarize just the closing of their dialogue. An account of their full dialogue can be read in Standard Ebooks (link given above), beginning with, “Here Callicles, who has been listening in silent amazement, asks Chaerephon whether Socrates is in earnest, and on receiving the assurance that he is, proceeds to ask the same question of Socrates himself. For if such doctrines are true, life must have been turned upside down, and all of us are doing the opposite of what we ought to be doing.” and ending with “Let us follow in the way of virtue and justice, and not in the way to which you, Callicles, invite us; for that way is nothing worth.”
Socrates ends their argument by affirming, “But if I died because I have no powers of flattery or rhetoric, I am very sure that you will not find me repining at death. For no man who is not an utter fool and coward is afraid of death itself, but he is afraid of doing wrong. For to go to the world below having one’s soul full of injustice is the last and worst of all evils.” He then recounts the myth of how after death the good dwell in the Islands of the Blessed, while the bad go to eternal punishment in Tartarus. He claims that unjust men of power go to the latter but men with the soul of the philosopher “who has done his own work, and not troubled himself with the doings of other men” go to the former. He appeals, “Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in and after death.” My being a Christian, this appealed to me more than the preceding argument, which in my view contains many arbitrary generalizations and dichotomies.
Adler and Cain divide their guide to Gorgias into five parts. Part I identifies the characters taking part in the dialogue. I’ve used material from it in my second paragraph.
Parts II and II summarize the dialogue. I’ve used material from them in my third to sixth paragraphs.
Part IV describes and criticizes the form of the dialogue. I haven’t considered its form.
Part V poses and discusses five questions:
– Is doing harm and injustice ever preferable to suffering it? Adler and Cain note that Socrates excepts the case of self-defence in his injunction against harming others. They go on to observe that Socrates is portrayed in many dialogues as a loyal soldier of Athens and as if there is an inconsistency between this and his principle that one must never do harm to others. They ask, “If the use of force in self-defense or war is just, does that make the harm or violence done to others just?” The Christian also has to consider that Jesus seems to rule out even delf-defence when he tells his disciples, “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39).
– Are knowing good and doing it the same thing? Noting that “Socrates’ entrapping of Gorgias rests on the identification of knowing and being good,” Adler and Cain ask, “Is this identification of moral knowledge and moral virtue plausible? Could you conceive of a sound moral philosopher who was not a perfectly good man?”
– Is pleasure a good? Adler and Cain observe that in Socrates’s argument with Callicles he distinguishes between good and bad pleasures, the latter’s being sensual gratifications.
– Does “natural law” or justice enjoin inequality and the harming of others? Adler and Cain observe that the idea that might makes right and that the strong should rule the weak occurs in one of Gorgias’s writings and is voiced by two of his disciples. However they also observe that two other disciples concluded from the assumption of a natural law that all men are equal in nature.
– Is the philosopher’s life a self-centered life? Adler and Cain observe that Socrates holds up the life of the philosopher, wholly concerned with the good of his soul and the attainment of virtue, against the life of the popular rhetorician and politician. They then question whether there is an essential difference between the two and what the relation of the philosopher is to the community as contrasted with that of the popular orator or politician.
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