vs Callicles Socrates: Part 1 This is the last part of the dialogue (thank god!!). Prof Sam Wheeler has excellent overheads on this. I am going to summarize them in a manner that makes the stuff look somewhat easier. One nice thing about this part is that Socrates keeps summarizing what Callicles says. Plato is trying to help his readers see the light through the thicket of words and arguments. OK. Some distinctions and principles we have encountered so far are: 1. Knowledge/belief 2. Reality/Appearance 3. Body/Soul 4. Doing what one wants vs. doing what one sees fit to do. 5. Knack and craft. 6. If a person learns justice or law, he will become incapable of acting unjustly. Knowing virtuous things makes us virtuous. This is the famous Socratic line: Knowledge is virtue. 7. If something is done to you, then you are physically or psychically impressed upon. If someone is disciplining you then you stand disciplined. If someone is X-ing you then u are X-ed. What does Callicles say? He says many things. Clearly Callicles dislikes philosophy. He thinks mature people should not do it. He thinks it is childish babble. He says that Socrates is faulty of the fallacy of ambiguity over the word "just". Things can be just by nature OR just by convention or law. Socrates takes doing injustice (which is shameful conventionally) and shows that this establishes that it is evil by nature. But it may not be shameful by nature. For Callicles does not think so. Callicles thinks that the weak many impose this idiotic ethics ON the strong few. Philosophy is rubbish; morality is nonsense. One should join politics and rule others for as long as possible. There is sparring with definitions regarding what strong means and what superior means but that can be left aside. The MAIN statement of Callicles is: "The man who will live correctly ought to allow his own appetites to get as large as possible and not restrain them." (pg 64) That is, pleasure and the good are the same thing.
"Wantonness, lack of discipline and freedom, if available in good supply, are excellence and happiness; as for these other things, these fancy phrases, these contracts of men that go against nature, they are worthless nonsense." (pg 65) So, 1) The life of unrestrained pursuit of pleasure is the good life. intelligent are those who lead this life. 2) It is our nature to dominate and be unjust; it is mere convention and the cowardice of society that keeps us from expressing our real nature. The brave and the intelligent are supposed to dominate the others, the stupid and cowardly masses. Socrates' Response The Argument of the Soul Leaky (pg 66-67) Socrates starts with a great analogy: that of the soul as consisting of Jars. Some perpetually leak; some don't. What is he trying to show? See, the goods of the world are scarce. That is true, isn't it? This is a basic economic fact. So if I want to enjoy all the time, this is virtually impossible. I will forever be in pain, as I will not be able to fulfill all my pleasures. This will cause suffering to me. But if I am a moderate man and not pursue pleasure then I will be happier and learn to live with the essential scarcity of goods. Nice argument. The Argument of Pleasure and Good being not Identical There are two arguments. 1) You cannot get rid of what is good and what is bad at the same time. If you have health, then u have it and if some disease invades you then your health goes away. But you can't possibly not be healthy and not be diseased!! You are either one or the other. They cannot co-exist. 2) But pleasure and pain CAN co-exist. For as u drink water when u are thirsty, then the pain (=thirst) is there and the pleasure (=when the thirst is slowly going down) is ALSO there. When your desire for drinking water is over, then pleasure and pain BOTH disappear. 3) But if pleasure would be doing well and pain doing badly then doing well and doing badly should be able to co-exist, just as pleasure and pain do. 4) But clearly if a person is good he cannot at the same time be evil. And vice versa. 5) Therefore, pleasure is not identical to what is good. The brave and the
That is a powerful and good argument. argument.
That was the first argument. Now the second
1) The foolish and the cowardly are bad (in some sense of badness) 2) The brave and the intelligent are good. 3) The foolish and the cowardly feel pleasures. And so do the brave and the intelligent!! Same for pain. So the feeling of pleasure, and enjoyment of the same, and the feeling of pain and shrinking from the same cannot be taken to be equal to goodness or badness. 4) Therefore, pleasure is not identical to what is good. This argument arises from the situation of the discussion. It is an enjoyable point. A very logical one too. Ok, now I will send notes on part II with Callicles by next week. There is not much left. Basically after this Plato sums up the dialogue. There are lots of beautiful dialogues of Socrates, but Callicles never admits defeat, which is quite unusual for Plato's dialogues. But this also shows how fair Plato was in his writings and how objective was his reporting, so to speak. Socrates waxes lyrical at the end about the body and the soul but there is debate as to how literally to take him.