The Gorgias consists of Socrates' conversations with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. In increasing degrees of vociferousness and bald-facedness, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles present 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 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 Callicles at least. What is more, they are not 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. He also holds that there is one right answer to that question. 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. 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, and hence in 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 maintains that power is not power unless it is subject to justice! How can that be?

Do we want whatever we think we want? Perhaps we can reformulate that: should we make a distinction between things that we think best at any given time and those that we really want (all things considered)? Is that reformulation substantially equivalent to what Plato's Socrates is talking about?

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?



An interesting and powerful analysis of some of those issues:

The following is cribbed from Paul Rudebusch Socrates, Pleasure, and Value (Oxford, 1999): read that if you want a more fully-fleshed out version.

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 just say " I desire to go to heaven for no further reason"). 

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. 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:

For Callicles, if one is good, one must let one's appetites grow as large as possible and then one must fulfill them (491e-492a). The Calliclean hero (Calliclean good person), will manage appetites (i.e. we need to steel up his argument: if that person cannot eat all day, that person will still allow their hunger to grow to huge proportions and hence will satisfy a larger desire: at some point, this breaks down--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. For true desires require knowledge, whereas felt desires do not and neither does being a tyrant or orator. He also needs that 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.

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.

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.

This argument seems to work well against Callicles' position, and so his position is not valid.

In sum:

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

Callicles: somewhere he says that life 'according to nature' is not affected by social influences: cities are not 'natural' and neither are civic laws.