Plato's Gorgias

The Gorgias consists of Socrates' conversations with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. In increasing degrees of vociferousness and bald-facedness, the three represent the position that rhetoric is a powerful tool that is morally neutral which should be used by those who can merely because they can and because it helps them fulfill their (apparent and occurrent) desires.

Those who have great power at rhetoric need not be bound by conventions: they create them. Whether it is right or wrong is beside the point for these three. What is more, they are not primarily interested in pursuing Socrates' quest for virtue: to them, philosophy is just a way to hone skills at logic as a tool of argument.

Socrates, on the other hand, holds that philosophy consists of philosophical discussions that aim at making progress towards finding the most important things in life: what human excellence consists of, how to care for one's soul. There is an answer to that question, one answer, one answer for all, thinks Socrates.

Those who do not know that 'answer' but wield rhetoric as a powerful tool harm both others and themselves. Thus although one might say that they engage in politics, they do not engage in worthwhile or 'true' politics, i.e. the caring for/improving a city full of people. True politics consists in finding the answers to Socrates' questions and having a rational explanation for them, and then leading others to understand them as well. Legislation and court-justice can follow from such a rational account, once it is found, which will result in making others good (including citizens: hence 'true' politics).

Socrates needs to show that one can be mistaken in one's desires. In other words, one can think that one wants X, but that is not really the case. How can he possibly do that? Who is a better judge of what I desire than I am? How could there be such a better judge?

Socrates also maintains that power is not power unless it is subject to justice! How can that be?

Do we want whatever we think we want? Or rather, should we make a distinction between things that we think best at any given time and those that we really want (all things considered)?

If we make that distinction, then power, as the ability to do what we want, becomes a bit more complicated. The question becomes: is it power to do what I think I want or power to do what I want all things considered? because the two may be disjunct.

George Rudebusch has written a book Socrates, Pleasure, and Value (Oxford, 1999) that treats of these questions, among others. Highlights of that book that concern the Gorgias are as follows:

Socrates of the early dialogues seems to hold the following contradictory beliefs:

  1. Virtue is the supreme good in life (Ap. and Cri.) and: Pleasure is not the supreme good in life (Gorgias)
  2. Pleasure is the supreme good in life (Prot.).

Rudebusch's book argues as follows:

  1. "Socrates (in the Protagoras and Gorgias) consistently and compellingly can speak of pleasure as the good for human beings (chapters 3-5)." (7)
  2. "Socrates' hedonism can be interpreted to be a compelling theory of modal, not sensate, pleasure (chapters 6-7)." (7)
  3. "Socrates (in the Apology, Crito, Gorgias, and Republic I) consistently and compellingly can speak of virtue as the good for human beings (chapters 8-9)." (7)
  4. Therefore, "Socrates of the Apology, Crito, Protagoras, Gorgias and Republic I consistently and compellingly can speak of pleasure and virtue as the good for human being by identifying pleasant with virtuous activity for a human being (chapter 10)." (7

Socrates' argument in the Protagoras requires all pleasure to be commensurable: the idea that there is a single standard of pleasure and pain is called pleasure monism. It is not plausible for sensate pleasures, says Rudebusch, plausibly (how do I really compare the pleasure feeling of a massage with that of hearing my favorite song?). Rudebusch will argue that Socrates is not talking about sensate pleasures, but rather another kind of pleasure (for which commensurability is plausible?).

Polus' Position

Those seem intuitively acceptable. Socrates rejects them both!

The reason for his rejection involves two distinctions:

  1. between intrinsic and extrinsic desirables, and
  2. between conditional and unconditional desiring.

The first distinction: an extrinsic desirable is something that is desirable not for its own sake, but because of something else. I desire to drink bad-tasting medicine not for its own sake, but for the sake of health.

My desire to live well is an intrinsic desire: I desire to live well for no further reason (if you desire to live well to go to heaven, then substitute "go to heaven" for "live well" and the argument works). 

The desire for an extrinsic good is conditional: I desire extrinsic good X if and only if it is in fact an extrinsic good for me. I.e. if X does not in fact lead to the desired consequence, then I do not desire to do it. What I thought I desired is not what I really desire.

If I am uncertain as to whether any given X will in fact lead to the consequence I desire, I cannot say whether or not I desire it.

Extrinsic desire is not consistent with the two claims which Polus' position makes, and so not all my apparent desires are my real desires: I can be mistaken about my desires. It may turn out to be the case that any given apparent desire is not my real desire: when the extrinsic good does not lead to some further good, I say that I did not really desire it.

Callicles' position, however, is more complicated.

Callicles claims, namely, that he desires things intrinsically, not extrinsically.

Callicles' position:

Callicles' theory of pleasure is not as clear. Rudebusch suggests four possibilities, the first three of which he will reject:
  1. Prudential hedonism: maximization of pleasure over the long-term.
  2. Indiscriminate hedonism: satisfy all appetites.
  3. Sybaritic hedonism: satisfy bodily appetites.
  4. Satisfaction hedonism of felt desire with respect to the intrinsically desirable: this is the position Rudebusch will champion.
Rudebusch says that Callicles does not hold position 1, 2, or 3 for the following reasons. That does not mean 1, 2, and 3 are uninteresting: it just means that Callicles' statements show that he does not hold one or more of them.

Position 1 above, prudential hedonism, is interesting philosophically, but the 2 arguments Socrates makes against Callicles simply do not affect it:
 So, the position which Plato is ascribing to Callicles is not likely to be prudential hedonism.

What about sybaritic or indiscriminate hedonism? The problem with these two varieties of hedonism is that they are so obviously wrong that Socrates would be arguing against an idiotic opinion. Why are they obviously wrong? Because it is obvious that some desires and appetites clash with others and simply trying to indiscriminately satisfy whatever the occurrent desire of the moment is would be the life of a dog with attention deficit disorder and really bad coordination, not that of a rational human being. As to the sybaritic hedonist, it seems obvious that there are many appetites and desires that are not bodily, and dismissing them and their role in the good life would be to relegate humans to the life of a really dumb dog as well.

Another reason why 2 and 3 are not likely to be Callicles' position is that Callicles clearly wants to value the powers of tyrants and orators. These two sorts of people do not plausibly seem to pursue things indiscriminately or to pursue only bodily appetite satisfaction or desire fulfilment. Callicles admits that there are pleasures that are not bodily: pleasures in honors, possessions, and exercising power, and they all have more-than-bodily components and they all require non-indiscriminate behavior.

Stimulation and Satisfaction

Modern hedonistic discussions distinguish between stimulation hedonism and satisfaction hedonism. Stimulation hedonism has to do with the sensations of a particular feeling. But that excludes things like the pleasure of solving a math problem, the pleasure of knowing one's friend is happy, etc. So it's not an attractive way to define pleasure.
Satisfaction hedonism holds that pleasure is the satisfaction of desire. But that is too narrow as well: what desire am I satisfying when I suddenly smell something good? None: I had no occurrent desire to do so, and yet I still experience something I would call pleasure.

But maybe pleasure is a disjunctive: it is either one of the two. That is still too narrow: I felt no antecedent desire to have a friend call, but I am still pleased, and that is neither because of a satisfied desire nor because of sense-stimulation.

Whether pleasure really is sense-stimulation and desire-satisfaction or not, Callicles is talking about desire-satisfaction. Callicles identifies pain with desire (494b1 and 496d4). Callicles' way of speaking about pleasure and pain is at odds with ordinary usage, but that does not make his theory wrong.

If you are inclined to say that some desires are pleasurable, Callicles could reply that you are confused: you are mistaking your anticipation of fulfilment of the desire with the desire itself. If you claim that there is pleasure in being sexually aroused, for instance, whether or not it is fulfilled, once again you are confused: you are confusing the pleasure of titillation with the desire itself. Being titillated is not painful nor is it an appetite.

For Callicles, one must let one's appetites grow as large as possible and must fulfill them if one is good (491e-492a). The Calliclean hero (Calliclean good person), will manage appetites (i.e. if that person cannot eat all day, that person will allow their hunger to grow to huge proportions and hence will satisfy a larger desire: at some point, this breaks down, however, and the person will not push to the point of starvation, for that will stymie other desires).

For Callicles to consistently praise the orator and the tyrant, he needs to be a felt desire hedonist. True desires require knowledge, and Callicles does not want to require knowledge, whereas felt desires do not, and being a tyrant or orator does not. He also needs that felt desire to be for intrinsically desirable things, otherwise, he will be vulnerable to the argument that defeated Polus. For Callicles, however, there is a faculty in humans that can make anything intrinsically desirable.

Socrates does not try to show us that the life of the orator or tyrant is not full of satisfaction of felt desires. He does show (see chapter 5), that satisfying Callicles' felt desires does not give us what is intrinsically desirable.

Callicles' position has great appeal. Gyges' ring (Republic 359c-360d). Why would the person with the power to satisfy their felt desires be mistaken?

At issue are a variation of the claims Polus made:
Callicles is committed to an identity thesis: the good is none other than the pleasant. I.e. the intrinsically desirable is none other than the satisfying of appetite. Socrates will try to refute that claim with two arguments (497a4-5 and d5-8 and 499a7-d1).

Rudebusch is addressing a position that he attributes to Callicles and thinks that Socrates refutes. That position is rational and ethical egoism (see chapter 4). That position is also the hedonist position that there is nothing of intrinsic value but the experience of satisfying felt appetites: the larger and more intense the appetite, the greater the value of its satisfaction. That position is interesting in just the way that a philosopher wants a position to be interesting: it is plausible enough and many people seem to hold it.

Along the way, Rudebusch makes the astonishing claim on page 58 that Socrates in Plato's early dialogues should not be taken to be trying to produce sound and valid arguments. Nor should he be taken to be trying to refute his interlocutor by any means, which would be sophistry. Rather, he is engaging in pedagogy: he is trying to foster understanding. Often enough, sound and valid arguments produce understanding, and so pedagogy and producing sound and valid arguments usually coincide. BUT what Rudebusch presumably gains from his astonishing claim is a relaxation of the demand that Socrates' arguments always be sound and valid: if they provoke understanding, that suffices. I wish Rudebusch had said more about what he takes understanding to be (for instance, does it include sound and valid argumentation?).

Rudebusch examines two arguments in the two main parts of this chapter:

  1. The argument "from opposites" Grg. 495e-497d
  2. The pleased coward argument Grg. 497d-499a

The Argument from Opposites

The aim of the argument is to determine whether the good and pleasure are identical. If they are not, Calliclean hedonism is wrong.

The argument Socrates makes claims:

  1. The good (the intrinsically desirable) and the bad are (opposites and hence are) mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive in a subject.(495e-496b establishes this via pairs such as doing well/doing poorly, which Callicles accepts)
  2. Pleasure (satisfying the appetite) and pain (the appetite) are not mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive in a subject (496c-e establishes this claim via thirst/drinking-when-thirsty: those two are neither mutually exclusive nor jointly exhaustive: they are, however, Callicles' examples of pain and pleasure).

It might seem as if Socrates can conclude from 1 and 2 that therefore pleasure is not the good, as he apparently does at 497a. That would be invalid.

1 and 2 only show that the pair good/bad and pleasure/pain are not identical pairs. It does not necessarily show that good is not pleasure.

AND YET, it is clear that Socrates thinks that he has, in this argument, identified a way that the good is distinguished from pleasure.

He is entitled to that conclusion as follows:

Rudebusch offers another argument that I don't entirely understand. The essence of the argument is that you cannot satisfy an appetite unless you have the appetite: pain (appetite) is a requisite for pleasure (appetite-satisfaction), but desire for the good (i.e. desire for the intrinsically desirable) is not a requisite for desire-fulfilment (i.e. fulfilling the desire for the intrinsically desirable).

The argument from pleased cowards

I cannot fully see how Rudebusch's argument works here. That does not necessarily mean it does not work.

Callicles claims that 1) A MAN IS TRULY GOOD (AS OPPOSED TO CONVENTIONALLY GOOD) INSOFAR AS HE CONTINUALLY SATISFIES LARGE AND INTENSE APPETITES. and that 2) A MAN LEADS A GOOD LIFE BY CREATING AND SATISFYING LARGE AND INTENSE APPETITES (491E-492A)

As counterexamples, Socrates proposes that we consider that man who continually makes himself itchy as hell and continually scratches himself as much as possible: huge desires and huge satisfactions that continually grow in a kind of itchy spiral. Callicles agrees that he is not a good man. Socrates also offers the catamite (a "bottom" in modern slang), who continually creates the desire to be penetrated and freely has that desire fulfilled (494c-e).This shows something about attitudes toward sexuality: it is offensive and I do not condone it, but it is in the text and interesting: perhaps we could update Socrates with an example we would not find offensive: examples abound, but I don't want to get into specifics of these sordid topics. Maybe serial murdering is safe enough?

These counterexamples are supposed to establish: 1a) THERE IS A MAN WHO CONTINUALLY SATISFIES LARGE AND INTENSE APPETITES BUT IS NOT TRULY GOOD. and 2a) THERE IS A MAN WHO CREATES AND SATISFIES LARGE AND INTENSE APPETITES AND WHO DOES NOT LIVE A GOOD LIFE.

It seems to me that Callicles reacts to the counterexamples by saying he thinks they are repulsive but nonetheless accepting that the scratcher and the "bottom" are good and live good lives (494e-495a). I.e. he rejects 1a and 2a. Rudebusch thinks that Socrates' examples are sufficient to disprove 1 and 2 (but offers little argument on this point-P. 61).

In any case, Callicles persists in identifying the good with the pleasurable, i.e. the intrinsically desirable with the satisfying of appetite.

Callicles and Socrates agree that the intrinsically desirable is being good and living well.

5. 3 The Results of the Argument with Callicles

Although not all of Rudebusch's arguments work, as I read them, nonetheless, at least one argument works, as I read it, that shows that the good and pleasure are not identical. By the good and pleasure, I mean the good and pleasure in Callicles' terms: the good as the intrinsically good and pleasure as appetite-satisfaction.

Rudebusch points out that most people think Callicles is wrong because he is a hedonist: he is wrong because, since some vicious people take pleasure in vicious acts, it cannot be the case that the good is pleasure. They think that hedonism combined with protagoreanism about commensurability of desire and pleasure make Callicles wrong.

Rudebusch thinks that Socrates is a hedonist and that his hedonism is right, but Rudebusch thinks that Socrates rejects Protagoreanism about desire and pleasure and is right about that too: people can be mistaken about their pleasure and their desire, and some pleasures are different from other pleasures (you'll have to read Rudebusch to discover the details of how that is cashed out).

5.4 Summary

  1. Socrates', Polus', and Callicles' position: The best life is spent in getting what one desires.
  2. Polus' interpretation: the best life is spent in getting what seems best.
  3. Callicles' interpretation: The best life is spent in satisfying appetites.
Socrates does not argue against 1, but he does argue against 2 and 3, in the Gorgias. 1 is consistent with the scientific hedonism which Socrates lays out in the Protagoras.