In Gorgias, Plato unleashed one of his most searing critiques of power, rhetoric, and moral compromise. Socrates confronted three ambitious men—Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles—each who represented a different view of power and persuasion.

Should we do what is right—or just what we can get away with?

Callicles argued that morality was for the weak. Socrates instead responded with a vision of the soul, truth, and justice that defied political expedience.

Gorgias is intense, confrontational, and painfully modern. It asks:

• Is rhetoric the art of deception or of improvement?

• Can we live without harming our souls—even in a corrupt world?

• Would we rather suffer injustice or commit it?

This is Plato’s version of a moral stress test.

To use the citizen’s base desires against their long-term well-being may win immediate applause—but it damages their souls. Plato’s Gorgias demands more: that speech communicate truth about real human development, and power can only be used to redeem the ignorant.

Gorgias

Late to a sophist presentation by Gorgias, Socrates met with Callicles and Chaerephon who dawdled too much at the marketplace. As recompense, they promised to bring Socrates to their place and have a private presentation from Gorgias who was staying with them. Socrates already began with his usual question about so called “experts.”

SOC: “Chaerephon. Ask him!”

CHA: “Ask him what?”

SOC: “What he is.”

CHA: “What do you mean?”

SOC: “Well, if he were a maker of shoes, he’d answer that he was a cobbler, wouldn’t he?”

When meeting with Gorgias, he was willing to answer any questions put to him. After a lot of chin-wagging about what accurately Gorgias’ job title should be, He boastfully accepted that he was a rhetorician. It wasn’t long before Socrates decided to engage further into dialectically proving what good a rhetorician is.

SOC: “With what is rhetoric concerned?”

GOR: “With speech-making.”

After surveying the fact that speaking is involved in all the arts, then Socrates tried to narrow the conversation about the Good that speaking well can do by using a doctor’s objective to cure a disease. But speaking, which is an exchange of ideas, may or may not cure anything.

GOR: “In the case of the other crafts the expertise consists almost completely in working with your hands and activities of that sort. The knowledge of the other arts has only to do with some sort of external action, and handicrafts; but there is no such handiwork in rhetoric which works and takes effect only through the medium of making speeches. And therefore I am justified in saying that rhetoric treats of speech-making.”

SOC: “As to the arts generally, they are for the most part concerned with doing, and require little or no speaking; in painting, and sculpting, and many other arts, the work may proceed in silence; and of such arts I suppose you would say that they do not come within the wheelhouse of rhetoric. But there are other arts which work wholly through the medium of language, and require either no action or very little, as, for example, the arts of arithmetic, of calculation, of geometry, and of playing checkers; in some of these speaking is pretty nearly co-extensive with action, but in most of them the verbal element is greater—they depend wholly on words for their efficacy and power: and I take your meaning to be that rhetoric is an art of this latter sort?”

GOR: “Exactly.”

SOC: “To what class of things do the words which rhetoric uses relate?

GOR: “To the greatest, Socrates, and the best of human things.”

SOC: “That again, Gorgias is ambiguous; I am still in the dark: for which are the greatest and best of human things? I dare say that you have heard men singing at feasts the old drinking song, in which the singers enumerate the goods of life, first health, beauty next, thirdly, as the writer of the song says, wealth honestly obtained.”

Socrates then provided examples of what specialists in different interests might say they do and their responses would be “my art is concerned with the greatest good of men. I’m a physician…for is not health the greatest good?” This list also included beauty and wealth.

GOR: “That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest, being that which gives to men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their several states. What is there greater than the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other political meeting?—if you have the power of uttering this word, you will have the physician your slave, and the trainer your slave, and the money-maker of whom you talk will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who are able to speak and to persuade the multitude.”

SOC: “Is rhetoric the only art which brings persuasion, or do other arts have the same effect? I mean to say—Does he who teaches anything persuade men of that which he teaches or not?”

GOR: “He persuades.”

SOC: “And if any one asks us what sort of persuasion, and about what,—we shall answer, persuasion which teaches the quantity of odd and even; and we shall be able to show that all the other arts of which we were just now speaking are artificers of persuasion, and of what sort, and about what. Seeing that not only rhetoric works by persuasion, but that other arts do the same, as in the case of the painter, a question has arisen which is a very fair one: Of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer, and about what?”

GOR: “I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and about the just and unjust.”

SOC: “Then let me raise another question; there is such a thing as ‘having learned’? And there is also ‘having believed’? And is the ‘having learned’ the same as ‘having believed,’ and are learning and belief the same things?”

GOR: “In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same.”

SOC: “And your judgment is right, as you may ascertain in this way:—If a person were to say to you, ‘Is there, Gorgias, a false belief as well as a true?’—you would reply, if I am not mistaken, that there is. Well, but is there a false knowledge as well as a true? No, indeed; and this again proves that knowledge and belief differ.”

GOR: “Very true.”

SOC: “And yet those who have learned as well as those who have believed are persuaded? Shall we then assume two sorts of persuasion,—one which is the source of belief without knowledge, as the other is of knowledge? And which sort of persuasion does rhetoric create in courts of law and other assemblies about the just and unjust, the sort of persuasion which gives belief without knowledge, or that which gives knowledge?”

GOR: “Clearly, Socrates, that which only gives belief.”

SOR: “Then rhetoric, as would appear, is the artificer of a persuasion which creates belief about the just and unjust, but gives no instruction about them? And the rhetorician does not instruct the courts of law or other assemblies about things just and unjust, but he creates belief about them; for no one can be supposed to instruct such a vast multitude about such high matters in a short time? When the assembly meets to elect a physician or a shipwright or any other craftsman, will the rhetorician be taken into counsel? Surely not. For at every election he ought to be chosen who is most skilled…And therefore when you are interrogated by me, I would have you imagine that you are interrogated by them. ‘What is the use of coming to you, Gorgias?’ they will say—’about what will you teach us to advise the state?—about the just and unjust only, or about those other things also which Socrates has just mentioned?’ How will you answer them?”

GOR: “I like your way of leading us on, Socrates, and I will endeavour to reveal to you the whole nature of rhetoric. You must have heard, I think, that the docks and the walls of the Athenians and the plan of the harbour were devised in accordance with the counsels, partly of Themistocles, and partly of Pericles, and not at the suggestion of the builders. And you will observe, Socrates, that when a decision has to be given in such matters the rhetoricians are the advisers; they are the men who win their point. Socrates, if you only knew how rhetoric comprehends and holds under her sway all the inferior arts. Let me offer you a striking example of this. On several occasions I have been with my brother Herodicus or some other physician to see one of his patients, who would not allow the physician to give him medicine, or apply the knife or hot iron to him; and I have persuaded him to do for me what he would not do for the physician just by the use of rhetoric. And I say that if a rhetorician and a physician were to go to any city, and had there to argue in the Ecclesia or any other assembly as to which of them should be elected state-physician, the physician would have no chance; but he who could speak would be chosen if he wished; and in a contest with a man of any other profession the rhetorician more than any one would have the power of getting himself chosen, for he can speak more persuasively to the multitude than any of them, and on any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art of rhetoric! And yet, Socrates, rhetoric should be used like any other competitive art, not against everybody,—the rhetorician ought not to abuse his strength because he has powers which are more than a match either for friend or enemy, he ought not therefore to strike, stab, or slay his friends. For they taught their art for a good purpose, to be used against enemies and evil-doers, in self-defence not in aggression, and others have perverted their instructions, and turned to a bad use their own strength and skill. But not on this account are the teachers bad, neither is the art in fault, or bad in itself; I should rather say that those who make a bad use of the art are to blame. And the same argument holds good of rhetoric; for the rhetorician can speak against all men and upon any subject,—in short, he can persuade the multitude better than any other man of anything which he pleases, but he should not therefore seek to defraud the physician or any other artist of his reputation merely because he has the power; he ought to use rhetoric fairly, as he would also use his athletic powers. And if after having become a rhetorician he makes a bad use of his strength and skill, his instructor surely ought not on that account to be held in detestation or banished. For he was intended by his teacher to make a good use of his instructions, but he abuses them. And therefore he is the person who ought to be held in detestation, banished, and put to death, and not his instructor.”

SOC: “You, Gorgias, like myself, have had great experience of disputations, and you must have observed, I think, that they do not always terminate in mutual edification, or in the definition by either party of the subjects which they are discussing; but disagreements are apt to arise—somebody says that another has not spoken truly or clearly; and then they get into a passion and begin to quarrel, both parties conceiving that their opponents are arguing from personal feeling only and jealousy of themselves, not from any interest in the question at issue. And sometimes they will go on abusing one another until the company at last are quite vexed at themselves for ever listening to such fellows. Why do I say this? Why, because I cannot help feeling that you are now saying what is not quite consistent or accordant with what you were saying at first about rhetoric. And I am afraid to point this out to you, lest you should think that I have some animosity against you, and that I speak, not for the sake of discovering the truth, but from jealousy of you. And what is my sort? you will ask. I am one of those who are very willing to be refuted if I say anything which is not true, and very willing to refute any one else who says what is not true, and quite as ready to be refuted as to refute; for I hold that this is the greater gain of the two, just as the gain is greater of being cured of a very great evil than of curing another. For I imagine that there is no evil which a man can endure so great as an erroneous opinion about the matters of which we are speaking; and if you claim to be one of my sort, let us have the discussion out…Let me tell you then, Gorgias, what surprises me in your words; though I dare say that you may be right, and I may have misunderstood your meaning. You say that you can make any man, who will learn of you, a rhetorician?”

GOR: “Yes.”

SOC: “You were saying, in fact, that the rhetorician will have greater powers of persuasion than the physician even in a matter of health?”

GOR: “Yes, with the multitude,—that is.”

SOC: “You mean to say, with the ignorant; for with those who know he cannot be supposed to have greater powers of persuasion. But if he is to have more power of persuasion than the physician, he will have greater power than he who knows?”

GOR: “Certainly.”

SOC: “And he who is not a physician must, obviously, be ignorant of what the physician knows.”

GOR: “Clearly.”

SOC: “Then, when the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge?—is not that the inference?”

GOR: “In the case supposed:—yes.”

SOC: “And the same holds of the relation of rhetoric to all the other arts; the rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know?”

GOR: “Yes, Socrates, and is not this a great comfort?—not to have learned the other arts, but the art of rhetoric only, and yet to be in no way inferior to the professors of them?”

SOC: “He who has learned what is just is just? And he who is just may be supposed to do what is just? And must not the just man always desire to do what is just? Surely, then, the just man will never consent to do injustice? And according to the argument the rhetorician must be a just man? And will therefore never be willing to do injustice? If the rhetorician makes a bad and unjust use of his rhetoric, that is not to be laid to the charge of his teacher, who is not to be banished, but the wrong-doer himself who made a bad use of his rhetoric—he is to be banished—was not that said?”

GOR: “Yes, it was.”

SOC: “I was thinking at the time, when I heard you saying so, that rhetoric, which is always about justice, could not possibly be an unjust thing. But when you added, shortly afterwards, that the rhetorician might make a bad use of rhetoric I noted with surprise the inconsistency into which you had fallen.”

Out of fear of Gorgias being offended, Polus introduced himself in the dialogue to defend.

POL: “I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same question which Gorgias, as you suppose, is unable to answer: What is rhetoric?”

SOC: “To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all, in my opinion.”

POL: “Then what, in your opinion, is rhetoric?”

SOC: “I should say a sort of experience. An experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification. Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford a slight gratification to me? Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery? I should say [it’s] an experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification.”

POL: “Then are cookery and rhetoric the same?

SOC: “No, they are only different parts of the same craft.”

POL: “Of what craft?”

SOC: “In my opinion then, Gorgias, the whole of which rhetoric is a part is not an art at all, but the habit of a bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind: this habit I sum up under the word ‘pandering’; and it appears to me to have many other parts, one of which is cookery, which may seem to be an art, but, as I maintain, is only an experience or routine and not an art:—another part is rhetoric, and the art of cosmetics and sophistry are two others: thus there are four branches, and four different things answering to them. And Polus may ask, if he likes, for he has not as yet been informed, what part of pandering is rhetoric. Rhetoric, according to my view, is the ghost or counterfeit of a part of politics. Shameful. For I call what is bad shameful: though I doubt whether you understand what I was saying before. We may assume the existence of bodies and of souls? You would further admit that there is a state of fitness for each of these?”

GOR: “Yes.”

SOC: “Which condition may not be really good, but good only in appearance? I mean to say, that there are many persons who appear to be in good health, and whom only a physician or trainer will discern at first sight not to be in good health. And this applies not only to the body, but also to the soul: in either there may be that which gives the appearance of health and not the reality? The soul and body being two, have two arts corresponding to them: there is the art of politics attending on the soul; and another art attending on the body, of which I know no single name, but which may be described as having two divisions, one of them gymnastic, and the other medicine. And in politics there is a legislative part, which answers to gymnastic, as justice does to medicine; and the two parts run into one another, justice having to do with the same subject as legislation, and medicine with the same subject as gymnastic, but with a difference. Now, seeing that there are these four arts, two attending on the body and two on the soul for their highest good; pandering being aware, or rather guessing their natures, has distributed herself into four masks or simulations of them; she puts on the likeness of some one or other of them, and pretends to be that which she simulates, and having no regard for men’s highest interests, is ever making pleasure the bait of the unwary, and deceiving them into the belief that she is of the highest value to them. Cookery simulates the disguise of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. Pandering I deem this to be and of a shameful sort, Polus, for to you I am now addressing myself, because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. An art I do not call it, but only an experience, because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own applications. And I do not call any irrational thing an art…Cooking tasty food is pandering disguised as doctoring, and in this same manner, the guise of gymnastic training is worn by cosmetology, a harmful, deceitful, low-class thing unfit for free people, that tricks people by shaping, coloring, smoothing, and clothing, so as to make them wrap an extraneous beauty around themselves, to the neglect of the native kind that comes through gymnastic exercise. As cosmetology is to gymnastic training, so is cooking tasty food to doctoring—or more precisely, as cosmetology is to gymnastic training, so is sophistry to law-making, and as cooking tasty food is to doctoring, so is rhetoric to justice. Then the word of Anaxagoras would prevail far and wide: ‘Chaos’ would come again, and cookery, health, and medicine would mingle in an indiscriminate mass.”

The Presocratics: Anaxagoras: https://rumble.com/v4erh9k-the-presocratics-anaxagoras.html

POL: “So good rhetoricians seem to you to be regarded in their cities as panderers?”

SOC: “They are not regarded at all.”

POL: “How not regarded? Have they not very great power in states?”

SOC: “Not if you mean to say that power is a good to the possessor.”

POL: “That’s exactly what I do mean.”

SOC: “Then it seems to be the rhetoricians have the least amount of power in the city.”

POL: “What? Don’t they put to death anyone they want, the same as tyrants, and seize property, and expel anyone it seems good to them from the cities.”

SOC: “Are you asking me two questions at the same time? Did you not say just now that the rhetoricians are like tyrants? I say to you that here are two questions in one, and I will answer both of them. And I tell you, Polus, that rhetoricians and tyrants have the least possible power in states, as I was just now saying; for they do literally nothing which they will, but only what they think best. For you say that power is a good to him who has the power. And would you maintain that if a fool does what he thinks best, this is a good, and would you call this great power?”

POL: “I should not.”

SOC: “You must prove that the rhetorician is not a fool, and that rhetoric is an art and not pandering—and so you will have refuted me; but if you leave me unrefuted, why, the rhetoricians who do what they think best in states, and the tyrants, will have nothing upon which to congratulate themselves, if as you say, power be indeed a good, admitting at the same time that what is done without sense is an evil. Do men appear to you to will that which they do, or to will that further end for the sake of which they do a thing? When they take medicine, for example, at the bidding of a physician, do they will the drinking of the medicine which is painful, or the health for the sake of which they drink? And when men go on a voyage or engage in business, they do not will that which they are doing at the time; for who would desire to take the risk of a voyage or the trouble of business?—But they will, to have the wealth for the sake of which they go on a voyage. And is not this universally true? If a man does something for the sake of something else, he wills not that which he does, but that for the sake of which he does it. And are not all things either good or evil, or intermediate and indifferent?”

POL: “To be sure, Socrates.”

SOC: “Wisdom and health and wealth and the like you would call goods, and their opposites evils? And the things which are neither good nor evil, and which partake sometimes of the nature of good and at other times of evil, or of neither, are such as sitting, walking, running, sailing; or, again, wood, stones, and the like:—these are the things which you call neither good nor evil? Are these indifferent things done for the sake of the good, or the good for the sake of the indifferent?”

POL: “Clearly, the indifferent for the sake of the good.”

SOC: “When we walk we walk for the sake of the good, and under the idea that it is better to walk, and when we stand we stand equally for the sake of the good? And when we put to death a man or exile him or seize his property, because, as we think, it will conduce to our good? Men who do any of these things do them for the sake of the good?”

POL: “Yes.”

SOC: “But does he do what he wills if he does what is evil?”

POL: “Well, I suppose not.”

SOC: “Then if great power is a good as you allow, will such a one have great power in a state?”

POL: “He will not.”

SOC: “Then I was right in saying that a man may do what seems good to him in a state, and not have great power, and not do what he wills?”

POL: “Yeah, right, Socrates, as if you would not like to have the power of doing what seemed good to you in the state, rather than not, and wouldn’t be envious when you saw someone putting to death anyone that seemed good to him or seizing his property or locking him up.”

SOC: “Justly or unjustly, do you mean?”

POL: “In either case is he not equally to be envied?”

SOC: “Because you’re not supposed to envy the unenviable or the miserable. You’re supposed to pity them.”

POL: “Really? Is this how you think it is with the people I’m talking about?”

SOC: “Yes, certainly they are. If he killed another unjustly, in which case he is also to be pitied, inasmuch as doing injustice is the greatest of evils; and he is not to be envied if he killed him justly.”

POL: “But is it the greatest? Is not suffering injustice a greater evil?”

SOC: “Certainly not. If I must choose between them, I would rather suffer than do.”

POL: “You wouldn’t welcome being a tyrant, then?”

SOC: “Imagine me in a crowded marketplace, with a dagger up my sleeve, saying to you, ‘Polus, I’ve just got myself some marvelous tyrannical power. So, if I see fit to have any one of these people you see here put to death right on the spot, to death he’ll be put. And if I see fit to have one of them have his head bashed in, bashed in it will be, right away. If I see fit to have his coat ripped apart, ripped it will be. That’s how great my power in this city is!’ Suppose you didn’t believe me and I showed you the dagger. On seeing it, you’d be likely to say, ‘But Socrates, everybody could have great power that way. For this way any house you see fit might be burned down, and so might the dockyards and triremes of the Athenians, and all their ships, both public and private.’ But then that’s not what having great power is, doing what one sees fit. Or do you think it is?”

POL: “Because he who did as you say would be certain to be punished.”

SOC: “I say that [action is] good when [it’s] just, and evil when unjust. That is my doctrine; the men and women who are gentle and good are also happy, as I maintain, and the unjust and evil are miserable.”

POL: “I need not go far or appeal to antiquity; events which happened only a few days ago are enough to refute you, and to prove that many men who do wrong are happy.”

Polus went on to make the argument that being good is a weakness, and in his example, a slave who remained good would have remained a slave, as in the case of Archelaus of Macedon.

SOC: “You do not think that a man who is unjust and doing injustice can be happy, seeing that you think Archelaus unjust, and yet happy? May I assume this to be your opinion? I affirm that he is most miserable, and that those who are punished are less miserable.”

POL: “What do you mean? If a man is detected in an unjust attempt to make himself a tyrant, and when detected is racked, mutilated, has his eyes burned out, and after having had all sorts of great injuries inflicted on him, and having seen his wife and children suffer the like, is at last impaled or tarred and burned alive, will he be happier than if he escape and become a tyrant, and continue all through life doing what he likes and holding the reins of government, the envy and admiration both of citizens and strangers? Is that the paradox which, as you say, cannot be refuted?”

SOC: “Please to refresh my memory a little; did you say—’in an unjust attempt to make himself a tyrant?’ I say that neither of them will be happier than the other,—neither he who unjustly acquires a tyranny, nor he who suffers in the attempt, for of two miserables one cannot be the happier, but that he who escapes and becomes a tyrant is the more miserable of the two.”

POL: “But do you not think, Socrates, that you have been sufficiently refuted, when you say that which no human being will allow?”

SOC: “Polus, in your opinion, is the worst—to do injustice or to suffer?”

POL: “I should say that suffering was the worst.”

SOC: “And which is the greater shame?”

POL: “To do.”

SOC: “And the greater shame is the greater evil?”

POL: “Certainly not.”

SOC: “I understand you to say, if I am not mistaken, that the honourable is not the same as the good, or the shameful as the evil?”

POL: “Certainly not.”

SOC: “When you speak of beautiful things, such as bodies, colours, figures, sounds, institutions, do you not call them beautiful in reference to some standard: bodies, for example, are beautiful in proportion as they are useful, or as the sight of them gives pleasure to the spectators; can you give any other account of personal beauty?”

POL: “I cannot.”

SOC: “And you would say of figures or colours generally that they were beautiful, either by reason of the pleasure which they give, or of their use, or of both?”

POL: “Yes, I should.”

SOC: “Laws and institutions also have no beauty in them except in so far as they are useful or pleasant or both?”

POL: “I think not.”

SOC: “And may not the same be said of the beauty of knowledge?”

POL: “To be sure, Socrates; and I very much approve of your measuring beauty by the standard of pleasure and utility.”

SOC: “And deformity or shame may be equally measured by the opposite standard of pain and evil?”

POL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “Then when of two beautiful things one exceeds in beauty, the measure of the excess is to be taken in one or both of these; that is to say, in pleasure or utility or both? And of two deformed things, that which exceeds in deformity or shame, exceeds either in pain or evil—must it not be so?”

POL: “Yes.”

SOC: “But then again, what was the observation which you just now made, about doing and suffering wrong? Did you not say, that suffering wrong was more evil, and doing wrong more shameful?”

POL: “I did.”

SOC: “Then, if doing wrong is more shameful than suffering, the more shameful must be more painful and must exceed in pain or in evil or both: does not that also follow?”

POL: “Of course.”

SOC: “First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice exceeds the suffering in the consequent pain: Do the injurers suffer more than the injured?”

POL: “No, Socrates; certainly not.”

SOC: “Then they do not exceed in pain?”

POL: “No.”

SOC: “But if not in pain, then not in both?”

POL: “Certainly not.”

SOC: “Then they can only exceed in the other? That is to say, in evil?”

POL: “True.”

SOC: “Then doing injustice will have an excess of evil, and will therefore be a greater evil than suffering injustice?”

POL: “Clearly.”

SOC: “But have not you and the world already agreed that to do injustice is more shameful than to suffer? And that is now discovered to be more evil?”

POL: “True.”

SOC: “And would you prefer a greater evil or a greater dishonour to a less one?”

POL: “I should say ‘No.'”

SOC: “Would any other man prefer a greater to a less evil?”

POL: “No, not according to this way of putting the case, Socrates.”

SOC: “Then I said truly, Polus, that neither you, nor I, nor any man, would rather do than suffer injustice; for to do injustice is the greater evil of the two. Where there is an agent, must there not also be a patient? Then you would agree generally to the universal proposition: that the affection of the patient answers to the affection of the agent?”

POL: “I agree.”

SOC: “Let me ask whether being punished is suffering or acting? And suffering implies an agent? And he who punishes rightly, punishes justly? And therefore he acts justly?”

POL: “Justly.”

SOC: “Then he who is punished and suffers retribution, suffers justly? And that which is just has been admitted to be honourable? Then the punisher does what is honourable, and the punished suffers what is honourable? And if what is honourable, then what is good, for the honourable is either pleasant or useful?”

POL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “Then he who is punished suffers what is good? He is benefited? I mean, that if he be justly punished his soul is improved.”

POL: “Surely.”

SOC: “Then he who is punished is delivered from the evil of his soul?”

POL: “Yes.”

SOC: “In the matter of a person’s financial condition, do you detect any evil other than poverty?”

POL: “No, just poverty.”

SOC: “What about that of a person’s physical condition? Would you say that evil here consists of weakness, disease, ugliness, and the like? Do you believe that there’s also some corrupt condition of the soul? And don’t you call this condition injustice, ignorance, cowardice, and the like?”

POL: “Yes, certainly.”

SOC: “Of these three things, one’s finances, one’s body, and one’s soul, [we’ve agreed that] there are three states of corruption, namely poverty, disease, and injustice? And do you not imagine that the soul likewise has some evil of her own? And this you would call injustice and ignorance and cowardice, and the like? So then, in mind, body, and estate, which are three, [we] have pointed out three corresponding evils—injustice, disease, poverty? And which of the evils is the most shameful?—Is not the most shameful of them injustice, and in general the evil of the soul?”

POL: “By far the most.”

SOC: “And if the most shameful, then also the worst? I mean to say, that is most shameful has been already admitted to be most painful or hurtful, or both. And now injustice and all evil in the soul has been admitted by us to be most shameful? So either it’s most painful and is most shameful because it surpasses the others in pain, or else in harm, or in both?”

POL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “Now is being unjust, undisciplined, cowardly, and ignorant more painful than being poor or sick?”

POL: “No, I don’t think so, Socrates; the painfulness does not appear to me to follow from your premises.”

SOC: “So the reason that corruption of one’s soul is the most shameful of them all is that it surpasses the others by some monstrously great harm and astounding evil, since it doesn’t surpass them in pain, according to your reasoning.”

POL: “So it appears.”

SOC: “But what is surpassing in greatest harm would, I take it, certainly be the greatest evil there is.”

POL: “Yes.”

SOC: “Injustice, then, lack of discipline and all other forms of corruption of soul are the greatest evil there is.”

POL: “Apparently so.”

SOC: “Now, what art is there which delivers us from poverty? Does not the art of making money? And what art frees us from disease? Does not the art of medicine? And what from vice and injustice?”

POL: “To the physicians, Socrates.”

SOC: “And to whom do we go with the unjust and intemperate? Who are to punish them?”

POL: “To the judges, you mean.”

SOC: “And do not those who rightly punish others, punish them in accordance with a certain rule of justice?”

POL: “Clearly.”

SOC: “Then the art of money-making frees a man from poverty; medicine from disease; and justice from intemperance and injustice?”

POL: “That is evident.”

SOC: “Which, then, is the best of these three: Money-making, medicine, and justice?”

POL: “Justice, Socrates, far excels the two others.”

SOC: “And justice, if the best, gives the greatest pleasure or advantage or both?”

POL: “Yes.”

SOC: “But is the being healed a pleasant thing, and are those who are being healed pleased?”

POL: “I think not.”

SOC: “A useful thing, then? Yes, because the patient is delivered from a great evil; and this is the advantage of enduring the pain—that you get well? And would he be the happier man in his bodily condition, who is healed, or who never was out of health? Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in being delivered from evils, but in never having had them.”

POL: “True.”

SOC: “And was not punishment said by us to be a deliverance from the greatest of evils, which is vice? And justice punishes us, and makes us more just, and is the medicine of our vice? He, then, has the first place in the scale of happiness who has never had vice in his soul; for this has been shown to be the greatest of evils. And he has the second place, who is delivered from vice? That is to say, he who receives admonition and rebuke and punishment? The man who keeps vice, then, and who doesn’t get rid of it, is the one whose life is the worst?”

POL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “That is, he lives worst who commits the greatest crimes, and who, being the most unjust of men, succeeds in escaping rebuke or correction or punishment; and this, as you say, has been accomplished by Archelaus and other tyrants and rhetoricians and autocrats? May not their way of proceeding, my friend, be compared to the conduct of a person who is afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the penalty to the physician for his sins against his constitution, and will not be cured, because, like a child, he is afraid of the pain of being burned or cut:—Is not that a parallel case?”

POL: “Yes, truly.”

SOC: “It’s because he evidently doesn’t know what health and bodily excellence are like. For on the basis of what we’re now agreed on, it looks as though those who avoid paying what is due also do the same sort of thing, Polus. They focus on its painfulness, but are blind to its benefit and are ignorant of how much more miserable it is to live with an unhealthy soul than with an unhealthy body, a soul that’s rotten with injustice and impiety. This is also the reason they go to any length to avoid paying what is due and getting rid of the greatest evil; they provide themselves with money and friends, and cultivate to the utmost their powers of persuasion. If this is true, where is the great use of rhetoric? Rhetoric may be useful, but is of small, if of any use yet to be apparent, to him who has no intention of behaving unjustly.”

CAL: “Tell me, Socrates, are you in earnest, or only in jest? For if you are in earnest, and what you say is true, is not the whole of human life turned upside down? You seem to be running riot in the argument. Polus has fallen into the same error himself of which he accused Gorgias:—for he said that when Gorgias was asked by you, whether, if some one came to him who wanted to learn rhetoric, and did not know justice, he would teach him justice, Gorgias in his modesty replied that he would, because he thought that mankind in general would be displeased if he answered ‘No’; and then in consequence of this admission, Gorgias was compelled to contradict himself, that being just the sort of thing in which you delight.”

Callicles accused Socrates of switching between arguments of nature with arguments of convention to suit himself, but for his part, he merged his law of the stronger with both nature and convention, as a form of a growth in power equaling a growth in consumption, and Socrates countered that nature and convention instead supported fairness and justice.

CAL: “Suffering of injustice is not the part of a man, but of a slave, who indeed had better die than live; since when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is unable to help himself, or any other about whom he cares. The reason, as I conceive, is that the makers of laws are the majority who are weak; and they make laws and distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their own interests; and they terrify the stronger sort of men in order that they may not get the better of them; and they say, that dishonesty is shameful and unjust; meaning, by the word injustice, the desire of a man to have more than his neighbours; for knowing their own inferiority, they are quite contented, I think, if they themselves have an equal share, since they are lowlier.

“This seeking to have more than the many, is said by convention to be unjust and shameful, and they call it doing injustice. But nature, among men as well as among animals, I think, reveals that this very thing is just, for the better to have more than the worse and the more powerful than the less powerful. By molding the best and most forceful of us, catching them young, like lions, subduing them by charms and bewitching them, we reduce them to slavery, saying that one must have an equal share and that this is the noble and the just. But, I think, if a man having a sufficient nature comes into being, he shakes off and breaks through all these things and gets away, trampling underfoot our writings, spells, charms, and the laws that are all against nature, and the slave rises up to be revealed as our master; and there the justice of nature shines forth. And this I take to be the sentiment of Pindar, when he says in his poem, that…

Law is the king of all, of mortals as well as of immortals; Makes might to be right, doing violence with highest hand; as I infer from the deeds of Heracles…

Possessions of the weaker and inferior properly belong to the stronger and superior. Philosophy if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but if he fritters his time away in it further than is needed, it is the corruption of human beings. For even if he is of an altogether good nature and philosophizes far along in age, he must of necessity become inexperienced in all those things that one who is to be a noble and good man, and well reputed, must have experience of. And indeed they become inexperienced in the laws of the city, in the speeches one must use to associate with human beings in dealings both privately and publicly, in human pleasures and desires, and in sum they become all in all inexperienced in customs and characters. For, as Euripides says…

Every man shines in that and pursues that, and devotes the greatest portion of the day to that in which he most excels…

but anything in which he is inferior, he avoids and deprecates…Philosophy, as a part of education, is an excellent thing, and there is no shame while he is young in pursuing such a study; but when he is more advanced in years, the thing becomes ridiculous…For such a one, even though he have good natural parts, becomes effeminate. He flies from the busy centre and the market-place, in which, as the poet says, men become distinguished; he creeps into a corner for the rest of his life, and talks in a whisper with three or four admiring youths, but never speaks out like a freeman in a satisfactory manner.”

SOC: “I consider that if a man is to make a complete trial of the good or evil of the soul, he ought to have three qualities—knowledge, good-will, outspokenness, which are all possessed by you. Many whom I meet are unable to make trial of me, because they are not wise as you are; others are wise, but they will not tell me the truth, because they have not the same interest in me which you have; and these two strangers, Gorgias and Polus, are undoubtedly wise men and my very good friends, but they are not outspoken enough, and they are too modest. The frankness of your nature and freedom from modesty I am assured by yourself, and the assurance is confirmed by your last speech. Once more, then, tell me what you and Pindar mean by natural justice: Do you not mean that the superior should take the property of the inferior by force; that the better should rule the worse, the noble have more than the mean? And do you mean by the better the same as the superior? I could not make out what you were saying at the time—whether you meant by the superior the stronger, and that the weaker must obey the stronger, as though the superior and stronger and better were the same; or whether the better may be also the inferior and weaker, and the superior the worse, or whether better is to be defined in the same way as superior:—this is the point which I want to have cleared up. Are the superior and better and stronger the same or different?”

CAL: “I say unequivocally that they are the same.”

SOC: “So then, are the many stronger than the one according to nature? They surely do set down laws upon the one, as you too were saying just now.”

CAL: “How could they not be?”

SOC: “The lawful usages of the many, therefore, are those of the stronger.”

CAL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “So then, are they those of the superior? For the stronger are, I suppose, superior, according to your argument.”

CAL: “Yes.”

SOC: “So then are the lawful usages of these people fine according to nature, since they are stronger?”

CAL: “Yes.”

SOC: “Well then don’t the many customarily hold, as again you were saying just now, that having an equal share is just and that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering injustice? Are these things so or not? Do the many customarily hold, or not, that having an equal share but not having more is just, and that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering injustice?”

CAL: “Well, the many, at any rate, customarily hold this view.”

SOC: “Then not only custom but nature also affirms that to do is more shameful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality; so that you seem to have been wrong in your former assertion, when accusing me you said that nature and custom are opposed. Tell us again from the beginning, what on earth do you mean by the superior men, since you don’t mean the mightier?”

CAL: “The better men, I say.”

SOC: “Now then do you see that you yourself are saying words but making nothing clear? Won’t you say whether by the superior and stronger men you mean the more intelligent or certain others?”

CAL: “Yes indeed, by Zeus, I do mean these, and emphatically so!”

SOC: “Then according to you, one wise man may often be superior to ten thousand fools, and he ought to rule them, and they ought to be his subjects, and he ought to have more than they should. This is what I believe that you mean.”

CAL: “This is indeed what I mean. For I think that the just by nature is this, for one who is superior and more intelligent both to rule and to have more than the lowlier ones.”

SOC: “Stop right there. If we are many crowded together in the same place, just as now, and we have much food and drink in common, and we are of all sorts, some mighty, some feeble, and one of us, being a doctor, is more intelligent about these things, and—as is likely—he is mightier than some, feebler than others—then will not this man, being more intelligent than we, be superior and stronger in regard to these things? Should he then have more of this food than we, because he is superior? Or ought that man through his ruling to distribute it all, and he should not take more by consuming it all and using it up for his own body—if he is not to pay a fine—but should have more than some and less than others? And if he happens to be feeblest of all, should the most superior man have the least of all, Callicles? The man most skilled in weaving ought to have the biggest cloak and go around clothed in the most numerous and most beautiful ones? In regard to shoes, clearly the most intelligent and most superior man in these things ought to take more. Perhaps the cobbler ought to have the biggest shoes and walk around shod with the most numerous ones.

CAL: “You keep on driveling.”

SOC: “But if you don’t mean things of this sort, perhaps things of the following sort: a man skilled in farming, for example, intelligent about land, this man now ought perhaps to take more seeds and use as much seed as possible for his own land. In having more of what things does the stronger and more intelligent man justly take more?

CAL: I have already told you. In the first place, I mean by superiors not cobblers or cooks, but wise politicians who understand the administration of a state, and who are not only wise, but also valiant and able to carry out their designs, and not flinching through softness of soul. For it is fitting that these men rule the cities; and the just is this, that these, the rulers, have more than the others, the ruled.”

SOC: See now, most excellent Callicles, how different my charge against you is from that which you bring against me, for you reproach me with always saying the same; but I reproach you with never saying the same about the same things, for at one time you were defining the better and the superior to be the stronger, then again as the wiser, and now you bring forward a new notion; the superior and the better are now declared by you to be the more courageous: I wish, my good friend, that you would tell me, once for all, whom you affirm to be the better and superior, and in what they are better? What in relation to themselves? Rulers or ruled?”

CAL: “What do you mean?”

SOC: “I mean that every man is his own ruler; but perhaps you think that there is no necessity for him to rule himself; he is only required to rule others? A man should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions.”

CAL: “How can a man be happy who is the servant of anything? He who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not discipline them but be up to the task of ministering to them when they’re the greatest they can be, by being manly and smart, and always providing satisfaction of whatever the desire happens to be for. But I imagine this isn’t possible for most people, which is why they censure people of that sort, out of shame, to cover up their own powerlessness, and they claim self-indulgence is an ugly thing, doing exactly what I was saying before, enslaving those human beings who are superior by nature; and since they themselves lack the power to provide for the satisfaction of their own pleasures, they praise moderation and justice because of their own lack of manliness. Because, for all those who have the advantage from the start either of being kings’ sons, or of being capable by their own nature of providing themselves with some ruling position, a tyranny or a place in a dictatorial group, what could be truly more shameful and a greater evil than moderation and justice in such people, who, since they can enjoy.”

SOC: “There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of approaching the argument; for what you say is what the rest of the world think, but do not like to say. So I beg of you not to let up in any way, so that it may genuinely become crystal clear how one ought to live. Tell me, then, you’re claiming that one’s desires ought not to be disciplined if one is to be the sort of person he ought to be, but he should provide satisfaction for them from wherever he can get it after he’s let them be as great as possible, and that this is virtue?”

CAL: “Yes; I do.”

SOC: “Therefore it’s not rightly said that people are happy when they’re in want of nothing?”

CAL: “No, because in that case stones and corpses would be happy.”

SOC: “Yes, but the life of the people you’re talking about is pretty strange too, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Euripides was telling the truth in the lines where he said,

“Who knows whether to be alive is to be dead, And to be dead is to be alive?”

and that we are very likely dead; I have heard a philosopher say that at this moment we are actually dead, and that the body is our tomb, and that the part of the soul which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, invented a tale in which he called the soul—because of its believing and make-believe nature—a vessel, and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to a vessel full of holes, because it can never be satisfied. He is not of your way of thinking, Callicles, for he declares, that of all the souls in Hades, meaning the invisible world, these uninitiated or leaky persons are the most miserable, and that they pour water into a vessel which is full of holes out of a colander which is similarly perforated. The colander, as my informer assures me, is the soul, and the soul which he compares to a colander is the soul of the ignorant, which is likewise full of holes, and therefore incontinent, owing to a bad memory and want of faith. These notions are strange enough, but they show the principle which, if I can, I would fain prove to you; that you should change your mind, and, instead of the intemperate and insatiate life, choose that which is orderly and sufficient and has a due provision for daily needs. Let me request you to consider how far you would accept this as an account of the two lives of the temperate and intemperate in a figure:—There are two men, both of whom have a number of casks; the one man has his casks sound and full, one of wine, another of honey, and a third of milk, besides others filled with other liquids, and the streams which fill them are few and scanty, and he can only obtain them with a great deal of toil and difficulty; but when his casks are once filled he has no need to feed them any more, and has no further trouble with them or care about them. The other, in like manner, can procure streams, though not without difficulty; but his vessels are leaky and unsound, and night and day he is compelled to be filling them, and if he pauses for a moment, he is in an agony of pain. Such are their respective lives:—And now would you say that the life of the intemperate is happier than that of the temperate? Do I not convince you that the opposite is the truth? Do I make any impression on you, and are you coming over to the opinion that the orderly are happier than the intemperate?”

CAL: “You do not convince me, Socrates, for the one who has filled himself has no longer any pleasure left; and this, as I was just now saying, is the life of a stone: he has neither joy nor sorrow after he is once filled; but the pleasure depends on the superabundance of the influx.”

SOC: “But the more you pour in, the greater the waste; and the holes must be large for the liquid to escape.”

CAL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “The life which you are now depicting is not that of a dead man, or of a stone, but of a cormorant; you mean that he is to be hungering and eating? He is to be thirsting and drinking? Do you claim the pleasant and the good are the same thing, or is there any pleasant thing that isn’t good?”

CAL: “Well, then, for the sake of consistency, I will say that they are the same.”

SOC: “And you, Callicles, insist that this is how it really is?”

CAL: “I do.”

SOC: “So come on then, delineate the following for me: presumably you call something knowledge?”

CAL: “I do.”

SOC: “And were you not saying just now, that some manliness or courage implied knowledge?”

CAL: “I was.”

SOC: “And you were speaking of courage and knowledge as two things different from one another?”

CAL: “Certainly I was.”

SOC: “And would you say that pleasure and knowledge are the same, or not the same?”

CAL: “Not the same.”

SOC: “And would you say that courage differed from pleasure?”

CAL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “Well, then, let us remember that Callicles says that pleasure and good are the same; but that knowledge and courage are not the same, either with one another, or with the good.”

CAL: “And what does our friend Socrates say—does he assent to this, or not?”

SOC: “He does not assent; neither will Callicles, when he sees himself truly. You will admit, I suppose, that good and evil fortune are opposed to each other? And if they are opposed to each other, then, like health and disease, they exclude one another; a man cannot have them both, or be without them both, at the same time? Take the case of any bodily disease:—a man may have eye-inflammation? And doubtless he’s not also healthy at the same time in those same eyes? And what about when he’s getting over his eye-inflammation? Is he getting rid of the health of his eyes too at that time, and does he end up rid of both at the same time? Instead, I imagine, he’s getting and losing each of the two in turn? So it’s also the same way with strength and weakness? And speed and slowness? And as for good things and happiness, and their opposites, bad things and misery, does one get and get rid of each pair in turn? Therefore, if we discover certain things that a human being gets rid of at the same time and has at the same time, it’s clear that these things at any rate could not be the good and the bad. You were speaking of being hungry—as something pleasant or painful? I mean being hungry itself.”

CAL: “I say it’s painful, though eating when one is hungry is pleasant.”

SOC: “But being hungry itself at any rate is a painful thing, isn’t it? And thirst, too, is painful? So shall I keep asking about more cases, or do you agree that all lack and desire are painful?”

CAL: “I agree; don’t keep asking.”

SOC: “Very good. And you would admit that to drink, when you are thirsty, is pleasant? And in the sentence which you have just uttered, the word ‘thirsty’ implies pain? And the word ‘drinking’ is expressive of pleasure, and of the satisfaction of the want? There is pleasure in drinking? When you are thirsty? And in pain?”

CAL: Yes.

SOC: “Do you see the inference:—that pleasure and pain are simultaneous, when you say that being thirsty, you drink? For are they not simultaneous, and do they not affect at the same time the same part, whether of the soul or the body?—which of them is affected cannot be supposed to be of any consequence: Is not this true? Therefore to have pleasure is not to be doing well, and to be in pain is not to be doing badly, and so it turns out that the pleasant is different from the good. Doesn’t each of us stop being thirsty at the same time he stops feeling pleasure at drinking? And does one also cease from hunger and from the other desires at the same time as from the pleasures? And so one ceases from pains and pleasures at the same time? So, my friend, good things turn out not to be the same as pleasant ones, and bad things not the same as painful ones, because one ceases from the one pair at the same time but not from the other pair, indicating that they’re different. How, then, could pleasant things be the same as good or painful things be the same as bad? Consider: don’t you call good people good because of the presence of good things, just as you call people beautiful because beauty is present in them?

Socrates then added the time dimension to recognize that we may be fooled by the current pleasantness without reflecting on the consequences. Therefore pleasures can be of a good or bad kind.

SOC: “Those sorts of pleasures we were just talking about that apply to the body, those involved in eating and drinking, and that the ones that produce health in the body, or strength, or some other excellence of the body, are good, but the ones that produce effects opposite to these are bad? And the same way with pains, some are worthwhile and others worthless? And so the worthwhile pleasures and pains are to be chosen and taken on? But not the worthless ones? The good is the end of all actions and that one ought to undertake all other things for it’s sake and not it for the sake of anything else? Therefore one ought to take on everything else, even pleasures, for the sake of good things, and not good things for the sake of pleasures.

CAL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “And is it in every man’s power to pick out from among pleasant things which sorts are good and which sorts bad, or is there a need for someone with an art for each case?

CAL: “Someone with an art.”

SOC: “For you see, don’t you, that our discussion’s about this, about the way we’re supposed to live. There is such a thing as good, and that there is such a thing as pleasure, and that pleasure is not the same as good, and that the pursuit and process of acquisition of the one, that is pleasure, is different from the pursuit and process of acquisition of the other, which is good…Cookery in my opinion is only an experience, and not an art at all; and that whereas medicine is an art, and attends to the nature and constitution of the patient, and has principles of action and reason in each case, cookery in attending upon pleasure never regards either the nature or reason of that pleasure to which she devotes herself, but goes straight to her end, nor ever considers or calculates anything, but works by experience and routine, and just preserves the recollection of what she has usually done when producing pleasure. I would have you consider whether I have proved what I was saying, and then whether there are not other similar processes which have to do with the soul—some of them processes of art, making a provision for the soul’s highest interest—others despising the interest, and, as in the previous case, considering only the pleasure of the soul, and how this may be acquired, but not considering what pleasures are good or bad, and having no other aim but to afford gratification, whether good or bad. In my opinion, Callicles, there are such processes, and this is the sort of thing which I term pandering, whether concerned with the body or the soul, or whenever employed with a view to pleasure and without any consideration of good and evil. And now I wish that you would tell me whether you agree with us in this notion, or whether you differ.”

CAL: “I do not differ; on the contrary, I agree; for in that way I shall soonest bring the argument to an end, and shall oblige my friend Gorgias.”

SOC: “And is this notion true of one soul, or of two or more? Then a man may delight a whole assembly, and yet have no regard for their true interests?”

CAL: “Yes.”

SOC: “Can you tell me the pursuits that belong to the pleasurable class, and which of them not? In the first place, what say you of flute-playing? Does not that appear to be an art which seeks only pleasure? And is not the same true of all similar arts, as, for example, the art of playing the lyre at festivals? And what do you say of the choral art and of poetry?—are not they of the same nature? Do you imagine that Cinesias cares about what will tend to the moral improvement of his hearers, or about what will give pleasure to the multitude?”

CAL: “There can be no mistake about Cinesias, Socrates.”

SOC: “And as for the Muse of Tragedy, that solemn and august personage—what are her aspirations? Is all her aim and desire only to give pleasure to the spectators, or does she fight against them and refuse to speak of their pleasant vices, and willingly proclaim in word and song truths welcome and unwelcome?—which in your judgment is her character?”

CAL: “There can be no doubt, Socrates, that Tragedy has her face turned towards pleasure and the gratification of the audience.”

SOC: “And is not that the sort of thing, Callicles, which we were just now describing as pandering?”

CAL: “Quite true.”

SOC: “Well now, if one peels away the melody and rhythm and meter from all poetry, does what’s left turn out to be anything other than speeches? And this speech is addressed to a crowd of people? Then poetry is a sort of rhetoric? And do not the poets in the theatres seem to you to be rhetoricians?”

Plato: Ion: https://rumble.com/v6usjzp-plato-ion.html

CAL: Yes.

SOC: “Then now we have discovered a sort of rhetoric which is addressed to a crowd of men, women, and children, freemen and slaves. And this is not much to our taste, for we have described it as having the nature of flattery.”

CAL: “Quite true.”

SOC: “Very good. And what do you say of that other rhetoric which addresses the Athenian assembly and the assemblies of freemen in other states? Do the rhetoricians appear to you always to aim at what is best, and do they seek to improve the citizens by their speeches, or are they too, like the rest of mankind, bent upon giving them pleasure, forgetting the public good in the thought of their own interest, playing with the people as with children, and trying to amuse them, but never considering whether they are better or worse for this?”

CAL: “There are some who have a real care of the public in what they say, while others are such as you describe.”

SOC: “I am contented with the admission that rhetoric is of two sorts; one, which is mere pandering and shameful demagoguery; the other, which is noble and aims at the training and improvement of the souls of the citizens, and strives to say what is best, whether welcome or unwelcome, to the audience; but have you ever known such a rhetoric; or if you have, and can point out any rhetorician who is of this stamp, who is he?”

CAL: “But, indeed, I am afraid that I cannot tell you of any such among the orators who are at present living.”

SOC: “Well, then, can you mention any one of a former generation, who may be said to have improved the Athenians, who found them worse and made them better, from the day that he began to make speeches? For, indeed, I do not know of such a man.”

CAL: “What! Did you never hear that Themistocles was a good man, and Cimon and Miltiades and Pericles, who is just lately dead, and whom you heard yourself?”

SOC: “Yes, Callicles, they were good men, if, as you said at first, true virtue consists only in the satisfaction of our own desires and those of others; but if not, and if, as we were afterwards compelled to acknowledge, the satisfaction of some desires makes us better, and of others, worse, and we ought to gratify the one and not the other, and there is an art in distinguishing them,—can you tell me of any of these statesmen who did distinguish them?”

CAL: “No, indeed, I cannot.”

SOC: “Yet, surely, Callicles, if you look you will find such a one. Suppose that we just calmly consider whether any of these was such as I have described. Will not the good man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best, speak with a reference to some standard and not at random; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do not select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give a definite form to it? The artist disposes all things in order, and compels the one part to harmonize and accord with the other part, until he has constructed a regular and systematic whole; and this is true of all artists, and in the same way the trainers and physicians, of whom we spoke before, give order and regularity to the body: do you deny this? Then the house in which order and regularity prevail is good; that in which there is disorder, evil? And the same is true of a ship? And the same may be said of the human body? And what would you say of the soul? Will the good soul be that in which disorder is prevalent, or that in which there is harmony and order?”

CAL: “Based on the previous things, it’s necessary to agree with this too.”

SOC: “What is the name which is given to the effect of harmony and order in the body?”

CAL: “I suppose that you mean health and strength?”

SOC: “‘Healthy,’ as I conceive, is the name which is given to the regular order of the body, and ‘lawful’ and ‘law’ are the names which are given to the regular order and action of the soul, and these make men lawful and orderly:—and so we have temperance and justice: have we not? And will not the true rhetorician who is honest and understands his art have his eye fixed upon these, in all the words which he addresses to the souls of men, and in all his actions, both in what he gives and in what he takes away? Will not his aim be to implant justice in the souls of his citizens and take away injustice, to implant temperance and take away intemperance, to implant every virtue and take away every vice? For what use is there, Callicles, in giving to the body of a sick man who is in a bad state of health a quantity of the most delightful food or drink or any other pleasant thing, which may be really as bad for him as if you gave him nothing, or even worse if rightly estimated. And does not the same argument hold of the soul, my good sir? While she is in a bad state and is senseless and intemperate and unjust and unholy, her desires ought to be controlled, and she ought to be prevented from doing anything which does not tend to her own improvement.”

CAL: “Yes.”

SOC: “Then restraint or chastisement is better for the soul than intemperance or the absence of control, which you were just now preferring?”

CAL: “I do not understand you, Socrates, and I wish that you would ask some one who does.”

SOC: “This man can’t stand to be benefited or to undergo himself what our speech is about: accepting discipline.”

CAL: “And nothing you say is of any concern to me either; I’ve been giving you these answers to please Gorgias.”

SOC: “What are we to do, then? Shall we break off in the middle?”

GOR: “I think, Socrates, that we should not go our ways until you have completed the argument; and this appears to me to be the wish of the rest of the company; I myself should very much like to hear what more you have to say.”

CAL: “Speak, good fellow, yourself, and get it over with.”

SOC: “Listen to me, then, while I recapitulate the argument:—Is the pleasant the same as the good? Not the same. Callicles and I are agreed about that. And is the pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the good or the good for the sake of the pleasant? The pleasant is to be pursued for the sake of the good. And that is pleasant at the presence of which we are pleased, and that is good at the presence of which we are good? To be sure. And we are good, and all good things whatever are good when some virtue is present in us or them? That, Callicles, is my conviction. But the virtue of each thing, whether body or soul, instrument or creature, when given to them in the best way comes to them not by chance but as the result of the order and truth and art which are imparted to them: Am I not right? I maintain that I am. And is not the virtue of each thing dependent on order or arrangement? Yes, I say. Therefore a certain orderliness that’s native to each thing, when it comes to be present in it, is what makes each of the things there are good? Such is my view. And is not the soul which has an order of her own better than that which has no order? Certainly. And the soul which has order is orderly? Of course. And that which is orderly is temperate? Assuredly. And the temperate soul is good? No other answer can I give, Callicles dear; have you any?”

CAL: “Go on, my good fellow.”

SOC: “Then I shall proceed to add, that if the temperate soul is the good soul, the soul which is in the opposite condition, that is, the foolish and intemperate, is the bad soul. Of course. And will not the temperate man do what is proper. In his relation to other men he will do what is just; and in his relation to the gods he will do what is holy; and he who does what is just and holy must be just and holy? That’s so. And must he not be courageous? For the duty of a temperate man is to endure when he ought; and therefore, Callicles, the temperate man, being, as we have described, also just and courageous and holy, cannot be other than a perfectly good man, nor can the good man do otherwise than well and perfectly whatever he does; and he who does well must of necessity be happy and blessed, and the evil man who does evil, miserable: now this latter is he whom you were applauding—the intemperate who is the opposite of the temperate. Such is my position, and these things I affirm to be true. And if they are true, then I further affirm that he who desires to be happy must pursue and practise temperance and run away from intemperance as fast as his legs will carry him: he had better order his life so as not to need punishment; but if either he or any of his friends, whether private individual or city, are in need of punishment, then justice must be done and he must suffer punishment, if he would be happy. This appears to me to be the aim which a man ought to have, and towards which he ought to direct all the energies both of himself and of the state, acting so that he may have temperance and justice present with him and be happy, not suffering his lusts to be unrestrained, and in the never-ending desire satisfy them leading a robber’s life. For such a one would be dear friend neither to another human being nor to god; for he would be unable to share in common, and he in whom there is no community would not have friendship. And philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and orderliness and temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order, not disorder or misrule, my friend. But although you are a philosopher you seem to me never to have observed that geometrical equality is mighty, both among gods and men; you think that you ought to cultivate inequality or excess, and do not care about geometry.—So be it: either this argument must be refuted for us, to show that it is not by the possession of justice and moderation that the happy are happy and by the possession of evil that the wretched are wretched; or else if this argument is true, we must examine what the consequences are.”

SOC: “Seeing then that there are these two evils, the doing injustice and the suffering injustice—and we affirm that to do injustice is a greater, and to suffer injustice a lesser evil—by what devices can a man succeed in obtaining the two advantages, the one of not doing and the other of not suffering injustice? Must he have the power, or only the will to obtain them? I mean to ask whether a man will escape injustice if he has only the will to escape, or must he have provided himself with the power?”

CAL: “He must have provided himself with the power; that is clear.”

SOC: “Now what about doing injustice? If he does not wish to do injustice, is this sufficient—for he will not do injustice—or against this thing too must one prepare a certain power and art, as he will do injustice if he does not learn and practice them? Then, as would appear, power and art have to be provided in order that we may do no injustice?”

CAL: “Certainly.”

SOC: “And what art will protect us from suffering injustice, if not wholly, yet as far as possible? I think that such an art is the art of one who is either a ruler or even tyrant himself, or the equal and companion of the ruling power. To me every man appears to be most the friend of him who is most like to him—like to like. But when the tyrant is rude and uneducated, he may be expected to fear any one who is his superior in virtue, and will never be able to be perfectly friendly with him. Neither will he be the friend of any one who is greatly his inferior, for the tyrant will despise him, and will never seriously regard him as a friend. Then the only friend worth mentioning, whom the tyrant can have, will be one who is of the same character, and has the same likes and dislikes, and is at the same time willing to be subject and subservient to him; he is the man who will have power in the state, and no one will injure him with impunity. And if a young man begins to ask how he may become great and formidable, this would seem to be the way—he will accustom himself, from his youth upward, to feel sorrow and joy on the same occasions as his master, and will contrive to be as like him as possible? But will he also escape from doing injury? Must not the very opposite be true,—if he is to be like the tyrant in his injustice, and to have influence with him? Will he not rather contrive to do as much wrong as possible, and not be punished? And by the imitation of his master and by the power which he thus acquires will not his soul become bad and corrupted, and will not this be the greatest evil to him?”

CAL: “You always contrive somehow or other, Socrates, to invert everything: do you not know that he who imitates the tyrant will, if he has a mind, kill him who does not imitate him and take away his goods?”

SOC: “Excellent Callicles, I am not deaf, and I have heard that a great many times from you and from Polus and from nearly every man in the city, but I wish that you would hear me too. I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind—the bad man will kill the good and true.”

CAL: “And is not that just the provoking thing?”

SOC: “Nay, not to a man of sense, as the argument shows: do you think that all our cares should be directed to prolonging life to the uttermost, and to the study of those arts which secure us from danger always; like that art of rhetoric which saves men in courts of law, and which you advise me to cultivate?”

CAL: “Yes, truly, and very good advice too.”

Socrates then proceeded to defend a life of virtue being the only life worth living, and that it would not be worth living as a bad person, even if one was able to use rhetoric to avoid consequences.

CAL: “Somehow or other your words, Socrates, always appear to me to be good words; and yet, like the rest of the world, I am not quite convinced by them.”

SOC: “Must we not have the same end in view in the treatment of our city and citizens? Must we not try and make them as good as possible? For we have already discovered that there is no use in imparting to them any other good, unless the mind of those who are to have the good, whether money, or office, or any other sort of power, be gentle and good. Shall we say that?”

CAL: “Yes, certainly, if you like.”

Getting back to Socrates’ initial comparison of rhetoricians with artisans, the skill would be for rhetoric to better people, and if one doesn’t do a self-assessment, like a builder assessing their past works and seeing if they can actually handle a new project, wouldn’t a politician need to engage in the same reflection?

SOC: “Tell me, then, Callicles, how about making any of the citizens better. Was there ever a man who was once vicious, or unjust, or intemperate, or foolish, and became by the help of Callicles good and noble? Was there ever such a man, whether citizen or stranger, slave or freeman? Tell me, Callicles, if a person were to ask these questions of you, what would you answer? Whom would you say that you had improved by your conversation? There may have been good deeds of this sort which were done by you as a private person, before you came forward in public. Why will you not answer?”

CAL: “You are contentious, Socrates.”

SOC: “Nay, I ask you, not from a love of contention, but because I really want to know in what way you think that affairs should be administered among us—whether, when you come to the administration of them, you have any other aim but the improvement of the citizens? Have we not already admitted many times over that such is the duty of a public man? Nay, we have surely said so; for if you will not answer for yourself I must answer for you. But if this is what the good man ought to effect for the benefit of his own state, allow me to recall to you the names of those whom you were just now mentioning, Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and Themistocles, and ask whether you still think that they were good citizens. If they were good, then clearly each of them must have made the citizens better instead of worse? And, therefore, when Pericles first began to speak in the assembly, the Athenians were not so good as when he spoke last?”

CAL: “Very likely.”

SOC: “Nay, my friend, ‘likely’ is not the word; for if he was a good citizen, the inference is certain.”

CAL: “And what difference does that make?”

SOC: “Nothing; but in addition to this tell me the following, if the Athenians are said to have become better because of Pericles, or, quite the opposite, to have been corrupted by him. For I at any rate hear these things, that Pericles made the Athenians lazy, cowardly, babbling, and money lovers, when he first brought them into the state of mercenaries.”

CAL: “You hear these things, Socrates, from the men with cauliflower ears.”

SOC: “At first, Pericles was glorious and his character unimpeached by any verdict of the Athenians—this was during the time when they were not so good—yet afterwards, when they had been made good and gentle by him, at the very end of his life they convicted him of theft, and almost put him to death, clearly under the notion that he was a malefactor.”

CAL: “Well, but how does that prove Pericles’ badness?”

SOC: “Doesn’t any caretaker whatsoever of any animal whatsoever seem to you to be bad who, having taken them over gentler, brings them forth more savage than he took them over? Is a human being too one of the animals or not? And was not Pericles a shepherd of men? And if he was a good political shepherd, ought not the animals who were his subjects, as we were just now acknowledging, to have become more just, and not more unjust?

CAL: “Quite true.”

SOC: “Isn’t it irrational in your opinion for one who claims to have made someone good to find fault with him, because, having become and being good through him, he afterwards is base? So then, do you hear those who claim to educate human beings to virtue saying such things? And why should you speak about people who claim to be leading the city and taking care that it will be the best it can be, who then in turn accuse it, whenever it happens to suit them, of being depraved? Do you imagine they’re any different from those others? You blessedly happy fellow, a sophist and a rhetorician are the same thing, or something close to it and very much alike, as I was saying to Polus, and it’s from ignorance that you imagine the one, rhetoric, to be something completely beautiful while you look down on the other. The truth is that sophistry is more beautiful than rhetoric to the same degree that lawmaking is more beautiful than judging, and gymnastic training than doctoring. And I’d imagine public speakers and sophists are the only ones who have no room to complain about the very thing that they themselves educate, that it’s vicious toward them, or else by that same speech they’ll also be accusing themselves at the same time of having been of no benefit to those they claim to benefit. Isn’t that the way it is?”

CAL: “Quite so.”

Socrates then exposed the problem of payment for teaching. If the teaching is truly excellent, then the students will be made better, and just like a practical skill that is paid for when projects are commissioned, there’s no guilt when it comes to payment. If there’s no injustice coming from the teacher then students are motivated to return appreciation. The more good you give out, for the people capable of feeling shame, they are motivated to return the favor, even if payment is not involved.

SOC: “Then to which service of the State do you invite me? Determine for me. Am I to be the physician of the State who will strive and struggle to make the Athenians as good as possible; or am I to be the servant and panderer of the State?”

CAL: “I say then that you should be the servant of the State.”

SOC: “The panderer? Don’t say what you have said many times, that whoever wishes will kill me…”

CAL: “How confident you are, Socrates, that you will never come to harm! You seem to think that you are living in another country, and can never be brought into a court of justice, as you very likely may be brought by some miserable and mean person.”

SOC: “Then I must indeed be a fool, Callicles, if I do not know that in the Athenian State any man may suffer anything. And if I am brought to trial and incur the dangers of which you speak, he will be a villain who brings me to trial—of that I am very sure, for no good man would accuse the innocent. Nor shall I be surprised if I am put to death. Shall I tell you why I anticipate this?”

CAL: “By all means.”

SOC: “I think that I am the only or almost the only Athenian living who practises the true art of politics; I am the only politician of my time. Now, seeing that when I speak my words are not uttered with any view of gaining favour, and that I look to what is best and not to what is most pleasant, having no mind to use those arts and graces which you recommend, I shall have nothing to say in the justice court. And you might argue with me, as I was arguing with Polus:—I shall be tried just as a physician would be tried in a court of little boys at the indictment of the cook. What would he reply under such circumstances, if some one were to accuse him, saying, ‘O my boys, many evil things has this man done to you: he is the death of you, especially of the younger ones among you, cutting and burning and starving and suffocating you, until you know not what to do; he gives you the bitterest potions, and compels you to hunger and thirst. How unlike the variety of meats and sweets on which I feasted you!’ What do you suppose that the physician would be able to reply when he found himself in such a predicament? If he told the truth he could only say, ‘All these evil things, my boys, I did for your health,’ and then would there not just be a clamour among a jury like that? How they would cry out! Would he not be utterly at a loss for a reply?

Plato: Apology: https://rumble.com/v6tvdm3-plato-apology.html

Plato: Phaedo: https://rumble.com/v6uhnsv-plato-phaedo.html

CAL: “He certainly would.”

SOC: And I too shall be treated in the same way, as I well know, if I am brought before the court. For I shall not be able to tell them about pleasures that I have furnished them, and which, although I am not disposed to envy either the providers or enjoyers of them, are deemed by them to be benefits and advantages. And if any one says that I corrupt young men, and perplex their minds, or that I speak evil of old men, and use bitter words towards them, whether in private or public, it is useless for me to reply, as I truly might:—’All this I do for the sake of justice, and with a view to your interest, my judges, and to nothing else.’ And therefore there is no saying what may happen to me.”

CAL: “And do you think, Socrates, that a man who is thus defenceless is in a good position?”

SOC: Yes, Callicles, if he have that defence, which as you have often acknowledged he should have—if he be his own defence, and have never said or done anything wrong, either in respect of gods or men; and this has been repeatedly acknowledged by us to be the best sort of defence. And if any one could convict me of inability to defend myself or others after this sort, I should blush for shame, whether I was convicted before many, or before a few, or by myself alone; and if I died from want of ability to do so, that would indeed grieve me. But if I died because I have no powers of flattery or rhetoric, I am very sure that you would not find me [expressing dissatisfaction] 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.”

Socrates then recounted Homer’s description of man’s destiny in the afterlife. Those who lived in justice go to the Islands of the Blessed, but the unjust must endure punishment in Tartarus. His description of the final judgment is a ruthless examination that cannot be fooled by rank, wealth, adornments, and beautiful clothing.

SOC: “Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their several natures, as in life; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of treatment or accident are distinctly visible in it: for example, he who by nature or training or both, was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he was, after he is dead; and the fat man will remain fat; and so on; and the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair, will have flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of the scourge, or of wounds in him when he was alive, you might see the same in the dead body; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen when he was alive, the same appearance would be visible in the dead. And in a word, whatever was the habit of the body during life would be distinguishable after death, either perfectly, or in a great measure and for a certain time. And I should imagine that this is equally true of the soul, Callicles; when a man is stripped of the body, all the natural or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view…”

“He who is rightly punished ought either to become better and profit by it, or he ought to be made an example to his fellows, that they may see what he suffers, and fear and become better. Those who are improved when they are punished by gods and men, are those whose sins are curable; and they are improved, as in this world so also in another, by pain and suffering; for there is no other way in which they can be delivered from their evil. But they who have been guilty of the worst crimes, and are incurable by reason of their crimes, are made examples; for, as they are incurable, the time has passed at which they can receive any benefit. They get no good themselves, but others get good when they behold them enduring forever the most terrible and painful and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins—there they are, hanging up as examples, in the prison-house of the world below, a spectacle and a warning to all unrighteous men who come thither. And among them, as I confidently affirm, will be found Archelaus, if Polus truly reports of him, and any other tyrant who is like him. Of these fearful examples, most, as I believe, are taken from the class of tyrants and kings and autocrats and public men, for they are the authors of the greatest and most impious crimes, because they have the power.”

 

“And Homer witnesses to the truth of this; for they are always kings and autocrats whom he has described as suffering everlasting punishment in the world below. But no one ever described any private person who was a villain, as suffering everlasting punishment, or as incurable. For to commit the worst crimes, as I am inclined to think, was not in his power, and he was happier than those who had the power. No, Callicles, the very bad men come from the class of those who have power. And yet in that very class there may arise good men, and worthy of all admiration they are, for where there is great power to do wrong, to live and to die justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and few there are who attain to this. Such good and true men, however, there have been, and will be again, at Athens and in other states, who have fulfilled their trust righteously. But, in general, great men are also bad, my friend. Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the judge in that day. Renouncing the honours at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can. And I urge on all other human beings as well, to the extent of my power—and to be sure I also urge you on in return—toward this life and this contest, which I assert is the one, instead of all the contests here; and I reproach you that you will not be able to help yourself, when you have the judgment and the trial of which I was speaking just now; but when you have come to that judge, and when that one seizes hold of you and brings you in, you will be gaping and dizzy there no less than I here…”

“Perhaps this may appear to you to be only an old wife’s tale, which you will condemn. Of all that has been said, nothing remains unshaken but the saying, that to do injustice is more to be avoided than to suffer injustice, and that the reality and not the appearance of virtue is to be followed above all things, as well in public as in private; and that when any one has been wrong in anything, he is to be chastised, and that the next best thing to a man being just is that he should become just, and be chastised and punished; also that he should avoid all flattery of himself as well as of others, of the few or of the many: and rhetoric and any other art should be used by him, and all his actions should be done always, with a view to justice.

“Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as the argument shows. Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go; and in this persuade all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which you persuade me to follow you; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth.”

You get the sense from Plato that order avoids extremes because chaos will always destroy well-being and longevity. When leaders focus solely on themselves, their laws and decrees neglect the general populace and their need for social cohesion. The general public and citizenry have to bend over backwards for a tyrannical leadership, move and adjust their lives, no matter how damaging for what they need, to serve an elite sophist class. But, as pointed out in the dialogue, this can also happen without a tyranny. The public may even support the ruling class with an ignorance that it is in their own interest to follow them, and therefore be too distracted by pleasurable pandering to notice the accruing damage. There’s also an inherent contradiction to evil in that there can be only one master. The exchange must be one way, like a master and slave. Evil people cannot co-exist with other evil people who try to take their place, nor can they live with the just.

Ignorance has a time dimension to it, where people do not notice the damage until it’s too late. Wisdom precisely helps you to avoid those trap doors. Even if the general public knows that something’s wrong, unless there’s a foundation in the long-term Good, any attempts at reform are still following the said ignorance, and it’s just “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Plato, and most classic philosophy, brings up the question of what is the good life, and can that be transmitted to as many people as possible? If the populace already has differing levels of ignorance, it’s even worse if the leadership is not even attempting to contemplate it, let alone leading them out of it. The point of the dialogue is to support the use of expertise to help the ignorant mob, not to use pandering-to-power tactics, so as to sway them against their overall well-being. The ruling class may make money and thrive, but the overall city-state becomes open to vengeance, revolution or invasion.

Socrates would reencounter Gorgias again, not in person, but in the form of his influence on the political figure Meno. Ideas about how to take power and to manipulate a citizenry are viral, due to the power of short-term self-interest, so it is a sluggish process to educate and discipline a city state into the virtue of appreciating the long-term self-interest of a commonwealth.

Plato’s Gorgias – Benjamin Jowett: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1672/1672-h/1672-h.htm

Gorgias (Hackett Classics) – Donald J. Zeyl: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780872200166/

Gorgias – Plato, James H. Nichols: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801485275/

Plato’s Gorgias & Aristotle’s Rhetoric – Joe Sachs: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781585102990/

Philosophy: https://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/