Socrates

by William J Prior

  Callicles’ response to Socrates’ final statement to Polus, and probably to his entire argument, is astonishment: “tell me, Socrates, are we to take you as being in earnest now, or joking? For if you are in earnest, and these things you're saying are really true, won't this human life of ours be turned upside down, and won't everything we do evidently be the opposite of what we should do?” (481b–c). Callicles is correct. Socrates’ philosophy is a radical critique of the Athenian way of life, if not of the human way of life. As Socrates had charged in Plato's Apology, the Athenians spent their lives in the pursuit of wealth, honors, and reputation instead of wisdom, truth, and the best condition of their souls. What Socrates sought from the Athenians was a wholesale reorientation of their lives. He really did want to turn their lives upside down.

  Conventional vs. Natural Justice

  Callicles is correct also in his diagnosis of where Polus went wrong in his argument. Polus, like Gorgias before him, was undone by his sense of shame. It was shame that made Gorgias admit that he would teach justice to any of his students who were in need of it. It was shame that made Polus admit that doing injustice was more shameful than suffering it. Socrates claims to be pursuing the truth, says Callicles, but he is in fact appealing to conventional beliefs about what is admirable. But convention and nature are opposed to each other: by convention doing injustice is shameful, but by nature it is suffering injustice that is shameful: the truth, as Callicles sees it, is that doing injustice is more shameful according to law, which is based on convention, but suffering injustice is more shameful according to nature. “No man would put up with suffering what's unjust, only a slave would do so,” he states (483b). What is just according to law is established by the weak majority, who band together to protect themselves from the few strong. They contend that wanting a larger share of good things is unjust, whereas it is just by nature for the strong to have a larger share than the weak:

  We mold the best and most powerful among us, taking them while they're still young, like lion cubs, and with charms and incantations we subdue them into slavery, telling them that one is supposed to get no more than his fair share, and that that's what's admirable and just. But surely, if man whose nature is equal to it arises, he will shake off, tear apart, and escape all this, he will trample underfoot our documents, our tricks and charms, and all our laws that violate nature. He, the slave, will rise up and be revealed as our master, and here the justice of nature will shine forth.

  (483e–484b)

  Callicles’ distinction between conventional and natural justice provides him with a powerful alternative to Socrates’ vision of the best life for human beings. Callicles threatens the democratic outlook, which he claims to serve. He claims that what is just by nature is for the superior person to have a greater share than the inferior person. Is Callicles, like Polus before him, an immoralist? It would seem to depend on what we mean by a moralist. If a moralist defends conventional justice, then Callicles is certainly an immoralist. But if a moralist defends justice, though he may understand justice in an unconventional way, then Callicles may be considered a moralist, though with a very different view of morality than Socrates. Again, if a moralist is one who defends the equality of all human beings, as do such modern moral theories as Kantian deontology and utilitarianism, then Callicles is an enemy of morality. But it looks as though Callicles and Socrates have this in common: they defend the morality of the exceptional person, though they have different ideas of what the exceptional person stands for.4 For Socrates, the virtuous person is the standard of morality; for Callicles it is the man of power.

  Callicles’ Critique of Philosophy

  Callicles follows his defense of natural justice with a sneering attack on philosophy. It is all fine and good for a young boy to practice philosophy; it makes him well bred. “But when I see an older man still engaging in philosophy and not giving it up, I think such a man by this time needs a flogging” (485d). Such a man avoids the centers of the city, where men become prominent, but “instead lives the rest of his life in hiding, whispering in a corner with three or four boys, never uttering anything well-bred, important, or apt” (485d–e). Such a person could not defend himself in court if “some no good wretch of an accuser” (486b) brought charges against him; such a person could be knocked on the jaw with impunity. The allusion to Socrates’ own trial and to his life is unmistakable, if somewhat unfair. Socrates spent a good portion of his life not whispering in a corner but in the public market-place. Socrates must respond to Callicles by defending the life devoted to the pursuit of virtue, the life of philosophy. Callicles claims to be saying all of this out of good will toward Socrates, whom he sees as a man of ability, and Socrates takes, or pretends to take, his remarks in the manner in which Callicles offers them. Socrates says Callicles has the three marks of a person who can test his views: “knowledge, good will, and frankness” (487a). Callicles has said the same thing to Socrates that Socrates has overheard him saying to his friends, so he is not afraid to say what he actually thinks. Callicles, Socrates says, is the only test he needs to establish the truth. If he and Callicles agree on something, he'll need no more proof that what they have agreed on is correct.

  Socrates’ Response to Callicles: Who is the Superior Person?

  Socrates might attack Callicles by recalling a claim from his argument with Polus, that power must be good for its possessor, and arguing that the pursuit of political power does not make people happy. Callicles would be free to dismiss such an argument, however, as applying only to inferior people, who are incapable of achieving real power. Instead, Socrates attacks Callicles’ notion of the superior person. Does Callicles mean the more powerful? If so, the many, who are collectively more powerful than the few, will be correct in legislating an equal share for all. Nonsense, replies Callicles: the superior are not the more powerful but the better: the more intelligent. Does this mean, asks Socrates, that the doctor, who is more intelligent concerning food and drink, should have a larger share of these goods? Or the weaver the larger share of clothes, or the cobbler the larger share of shoes, or the farmer the greater share of seed? “By the ones who are the superior I don't mean cobblers or cooks,” replies Callicles, “but those who are intelligent about the affairs of the city, about the way it's to be well managed. And not only intelligent, but also brave, competent to accomplish whatever they have in mind, without slackening off because of softness of spirit” (491a–b).

  Callicles’ Hedonism

  At this point the argument takes a strange turn. If asked, what is the end that this intelligent and brave individual is to seek, one would expect Callicles to state, political power. To rule is good, and the right of the superior person; to serve, bad, and the lot of the slave. Instead, Socrates asks Callicles whether the intelligent and brave ruler must be able to rule himself, to practice self-control over pleasure and the appetites. This directs the argument to the question, not of justice, but of self-control. The view that Callicles defends, at least at the start of his argument, is the view that pleasure, appetite satisfaction, is the good: “the man who'll live correctly ought to allow his own appetites to get as large as possible and not restrain them. And when they are as large as possible, he ought to be competent to devote himself to them by virtue of his bravery and intelligence, and to fill them with whatever he may have an appetite for at the time” (491e–492a). And a little later: “wantonness, lack of discipline, and freedom, if available in good supply, are excellence and happiness” (492c). It would seem that political power is not something to be sought for its own sake, but for the sake of satisfaction of one's appetites. The aim of life is appetite satisfaction, and the pleasure it brings. Callicles is a hedonist, and a rather vulgar one at that. It is not the refined pleasure of reading good books or listening to fine music that he has in mind; it is satisfying his physical appetites. It should be clear that this goal would even get in the way of the pursuit of political power as such: someone with enormous appetites would
have to spend so much time satisfying them that he could not seek to rule over others.

  Socratic Self-Control

  Be that as it may, it is Callicles’ hedonism that Socrates now attacks. The remainder of Socrates’ argument is intended to show that self-control is essential to the good life. Self-control turns out, it seems, to be the chief virtue. His argument begins with a brief myth, which he attributes to “some clever man, a teller of stories, a Sicilian, perhaps, or perhaps an Italian” (493a), an apparent allusion to Pythagorean philosophy.5 According to this myth, which consists of a number of virtually untranslatable puns, the soul is made of parts, in one of which the appetites reside. These appetites are imagined in terms of several jars: in the case of temperate persons these jars are sound and full of such things as wine and honey and milk and many other things, which are difficult to procure. The temperate person, “having filled up his jars, doesn't pour anything more into them and gives them no further thought. He can relax over them” (493e). The jars of the intemperate person, on the other hand, are “leaky and rotten. He's forced to keep on filling them, day and night, or else he suffers extreme pain” (494a). Does Callicles intend to say that the life of the intemperate person is actually happier than that of the temperate person?

  It turns out that Callicles does. The temperate person, he claims, is living the life of a stone. The good life is that in which a maximum amount of such goods flow in. And out, says Socrates, comparing this life to that of a “stonecurlew”, a bird famous for excreting as much and as often as it eats. But if pleasure is pain relief, isn't a life spent scratching pleasant? And what about the life of a catamite, the passive partner in homosexual intercourse? “Aren't you ashamed, Socrates, to bring our discussion to such matters,” responds Callicles in disgust (494e). Such a life is about as far removed as he could imagine from the life of the superior person, the person of power. Does Callicles really want to say that all pleasures are equal? To be consistent, he does. Now Socrates asks Callicles whether pleasure, knowledge, and bravery are all different from each other. Callicles agrees that they are. But those who do well (that is, are happy), have the opposite experience of those who do badly. One cannot do well and do badly at the same time. But pleasure and pain are experienced simultaneously. Being hungry is painful, but eating while hungry is pleasant. When the pain of hunger ceases, so does the pleasure of satisfying one's appetite. It is the same with drinking when thirsty. But if doing well and doing badly are opposites that can't be experienced at the same time, while pleasure and pain can be, pleasure and pain can't be the same as doing well and doing badly. “The result,” says Socrates at 497a, “is that what's pleasant turns out to be different from what's good.” Callicles refuses to accept this; “I don't know what your clever remarks amount to,” he replies. Gorgias has to intervene in the argument to get Callicles to continue. Though Socrates gets Callicles to answer his questions at several points from here on out, Callicles’ willing participation in the elenchus ceases at this point. Now it is a necessary feature of the elenchus that one must say what one believes: if the interlocutor does not answer sincerely, stating his actual beliefs, Socrates will not be able to lead him into a contradiction. Callicles, however, no longer believes the answers he gives to Socrates. He explicitly says at one point, “I couldn't care less about anything you say … I gave you these answers just for Gorgias’ sake” (505c; see also 501c). Increasingly, Socrates’ questioning of Callicles becomes an interrogation of a hostile witness, and eventually, a monologue.

  Rhetoric vs. Philosophy

  For the present the two men carry on, and Socrates’ arguments arise in quick succession. Callicles wants to call the wise and brave happy, but the ignorant and cowardly experience at least as much enjoyment as the wise and brave when a battle goes their way. Callicles now abandons the hedonism with which he had initially linked his view: “as though you really think that I or anybody else at all don't believe that some pleasures are better and others worse” he responds (499b). Socrates gets him to agree that we should “do all things for the sake of what's good” (499e). That includes pleasant things. It is not for everyone to pick out which kinds of pleasures are good and which are not; it requires a craftsman. But it is philosophy, not rhetoric, that is such a craft. Rhetoric is not the craft that seeks the good – it aims at what is pleasant – it is philosophy that aims at what is good. Rhetoric, like poetry, aims at pleasing the crowd, that is, at flattery. Socrates raises the possibility that there could be a kind of rhetoric that is aimed at “getting the souls of the citizens to be as good as possible and of striving valiantly to say what is best, whether the audience will find it more pleasant or more unpleasant” (503a), but that is not the kind of rhetoric practiced by Athenian politicians, including the great statesmen of Athens’ past. Callicles mentions Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Pericles as statesmen who had the public good in mind, but Socrates denies that they were. A craftsman makes his product more organized and orderly, and in the case of the state, this means making the people more law-abiding. As Socrates had indicated in the Crito, if someone's body is in terrible condition then life for that person is not worth living, and the same goes for the soul. So the soul must be disciplined; and when Callicles again says, “I don't know what in the world you mean, Socrates, ask somebody else,” Socrates responds, “this fellow won't put up with being benefited and with undergoing the very thing the discussion's about, with being disciplined” (505c).

  Socrates’ Defense of the Self-Controlled Life

  At this point the elenchus breaks down. Callicles won't continue to answer, except for occasional perfunctory remarks, and Socrates must continue the discussion by himself. This is what he proceeds to do, with Gorgias’ approval, asking the listeners to object if they think he makes a false step. He recapitulates the argument: the pleasant differs from the good, and we seek the pleasant for the sake of the good. It is due to organization and order that the soul becomes good, and order is produced by self-control. If a self-controlled soul is good, its opposite, an undisciplined and foolish soul is bad. The self-controlled soul would be just toward human beings and pious toward the gods, a remark reminiscent of the Euthyphro. Such a soul would also be brave; “so, it's necessarily very much the case, Callicles, that the self-controlled man, because he's just and brave and pious, as we've recounted, is a completely good man, that the good man does well and admirably whatever he does, and that the man who does well is blessed and happy, while the corrupt man, the one who does badly, is miserable. And this would be the one who's in the condition opposite to that of the self-controlled one, the undisciplined one whom you were praising” (507c). He continues: “a person who wants to be happy must evidently pursue and practice self-control. Each of us must flee away from lack of discipline as quickly as his feet will carry him” (507c–d). He brings the argument to a conclusion with the following remarks:

  Such a man could not be dear to another man or to a god, for he cannot be a partner, and where there's no partnership there's no friendship. Yes, Callicles, wise men claim that partnership and friendship, orderliness, self-control, and justice hold together heaven and earth, and gods and men, and that is why they call this universe a world order, my friend, and not an undisciplined world-disorder. I believe that you don't pay attention to these facts, even though you're a wise man in these matters. You've failed to notice that proportionate equality has great power among both gods and men, and you suppose that you ought to practice getting the greater share. That's because you neglect geometry.

  (507e–508a)6

  Socrates’ remarks give a cosmic dimension to self-control, and again suggest a Pythagorean influence. Interestingly, though justice, piety, and courage are listed alongside self-control as virtues, wisdom, the crowning virtue of the Laches and Protagoras, is not mentioned.

  Socrates now turns to Callicles’ original challenge to him to abandon philosophy and practice rhetoric. Socrates denies that being knocked on the jaw or exiled
or put to death are the worst things that can happen to someone. Rather, “to commit any unjust act at all against me and my possessions is both worse and more shameful for the one who does these unjust acts than it is for me, the one who suffers them” (508e). It is these conclusions that Socrates says have been “held down and bound by arguments of iron and adamant” (508e), though he once again denies that he knows them. Still, “no one I've ever met … can say anything else without being ridiculous. So once more I set it down that these things are so” (509a-b). If one wants to protect oneself against suffering injustice, one must either become a ruler or befriend the rulers of the city and become like them (a sentiment of which Callicles approves); and this is worse than being knocked on the jaw or exiled or even killed. No one can escape death; one should not consider how long one may live but “give consideration to how he might live the part of his life still before him as well as possible” (512e–513a). To this Callicles replies, “I don't know, Socrates – in a way you seem to be right, but the thing that happens to most people has happened to me: I'm not really persuaded by you” (513c). Socrates says this is because of his love of the people, but that “if we closely examine these same matters often and in a better way, you'll be persuaded” (513c–d). What that better way is he does not say. There follows a critique of the statesmen and politicians of Athens’ past and present. None of them, Socrates argues, aimed at the good of the city, but at what would please the citizens. Socrates says that only he is a practitioner of the true art of politics, which aims, not at the pleasant, but at the good.