On the surface, this dialogue deals with the merits of oratory, but, more deeply, it also delves into how a man should live and what role justness plays in this good life. Through the course of this dialogue Socrates deals with three sophist interlocutors in succession, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. In turn, they make the case that the powerful live the good life. These sophists argue, particularly, that it is the successful politicians, rulers, and tyrants who truly live well. Socrates disagrees. He states, “Doing what’s unjust is actually the worst thing there is…. I wouldn’t want either, but if had to be one or the other, I would choose suffering over doing what’s unjust…. I say that the admirable and good person, man or woman, is happy, but that the one who’s unjust and wicked is miserable.” Socrates will not be swayed by the consensus of the crowd. “Nevertheless, though I’m only one person, I don’t agree with you. You don’t compel me; instead you produce many false witnesses against me and try to banish me from my property, the truth…. I disregard the things held in honor by the majority of people, and by practicing truth I really try, to the best of my ability, to be and to live as a very good man, and when I die, to die like that…. Choose the orderly life, the life that is adequate to and satisfied with its circumstances at any given time instead of the insatiable, undisciplined life.”
Callicles denigrates philosophers as skilled in practicing an art only fit for children. For him, greatness lies in the oratory of politicians, skilled in the practice of persuading the masses. Socrates, in turn, questions how Callicles judges what makes a life worthy of being deemed good. “Do you also think as we [philosophers] do that the end of all action is what’s good, and that we should do all other things for its sake, but not it for their sake?… So we should do the other things, including pleasant things, for the sake of good things, and not good things for the sake of pleasant things…. As long as [the soul is] corrupt, in that it’s foolish, undisciplined, unjust and impious, it should be kept away from its appetites and not be permitted to do anything other than what will make it better…. So to be disciplined is better for the soul than lack of discipline.”
Finally, Socrates tries to get at the purpose of oratory, its uses, and how it jives with both the truth and the good. Socrates is particularly concerned with the effect of politician’s speeches on the mass of citizens and on the good of the city as a whole. “Do you think that orators always speak with regard to what’s best? Do they always set their sights on making the citizens as good as possible through their speeches? Or are they, too, bent upon the gratification of the citizens, and, slighting the common good for the sake of their own private good, do they treat the people like children, their sole attempt being to gratify them?” Socrates makes the distinction between the common will and the common weal. For Socrates, it is a great stain on even those Athenian politicians deemed great by posterity, such as Pericles and Cimon, that they left the citizenry in poorer shape than how they found them. “Shouldn’t he [the politician], according to what we agreed just now, have turned [the citizens] out more just instead of more unjust?… I’m not criticizing these men either, insofar as they were servants to the city. I think rather that they proved to be better servants than the men of today, and more capable of satisfying the city’s appetites. But the truth is that in redirecting its appetites and not giving in to them, using persuasion or constraint to get the citizens to become better, they were really not much different from our contemporaries.” Socrates contrasts the purpose of his own speeches with those of all these politicians. “I believe that I’m one of a few Athenians—so as not to say I’m the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries—to take up the true political craft and practice the true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what’s best.”
Socrates ends by recapping his view on the just and noble life. “For it’s a difficult thing, Callicles, and one that merits much praise, to live your whole life justly when you’ve found yourself having ample freedom to do what’s unjust…. Doing what’s unjust is more to be guarded against than suffering it, and that it’s not seeming to be good but being good that a man should take care of more than anything, both in his public and his private life.” For Socrates, these are the skills that all men must aspire to before they even contemplate a life concerned with politics. A citizenry composed of men unconcerned with justice is bound to be rotten, no matter their political system. Each man should first concern himself with his own soul, before trying to persuade others. “Nothing terrible will happen to you if you really are an admirable and good man, one who practices excellence. And then, after we’ve practiced it together, then at last, if we think we should, we’ll turn to politics, or then we’ll deliberate about whatever subject we please, when we’re better at deliberating than we are now. For it’s a shameful thing for us, being in the condition we appear to be in at present—when we never think the same about the same subjects, the most important ones at that—to sound off as though we’re somebodies. That’s how far behind in education we’ve fallen.”
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