Dirk Baltzly School of Philosophy

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Dirk BaltzlySchool of Philosophy Bioethics

• Callicles and Socrates on the value of rhetoric

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Our objective

• Plato depicts Socrates and Callicles as holding
  diametrically opposed attitudes to the value of
  rhetoric.
• How do these opposed attitudes flow naturally
  from their different ideas about
• Well-being (eudaimonia)
• Virtue
• Knowledge?

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Common and disputed ground

• What is worth learning?
• What will benefit you.
• What is beneficial?
• Getting what you want ? Callicles hedonism
• Getting what is good for you ? Socrates wise,
  just, self-controlled character.
• What sort of person should I become?
• The kind who can get what she wants ? a
  rhetorician.
• The kind who wants what she should ? a philosopher

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Preliminaries Gorgias and Polus

• Gorgias of Leontium
• Teacher of public speaking
• His defence of Helen of Troy
• She was either a) fated by the Gods to go to
  Troy b) taken by force c) persuaded by words
  (logoi) d) conquered by love. Not responsible.
• The power of logos is like the power of drugs
  different words can cause joy, sorrow, courage,
  etc. A person persuaded is no more responsible
  than a person drugged.

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What is rhetoric?

• Rhetoric the ability to use speech to produce
  conviction, without knowledge, in the audience
  concerning what is just and what is unjust (Gorg.
  455a)
• You cant teach the body politic about
  complicated things only persuade them.

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Socrates rhetoric as gimmick and flattery

• MERE FLATTERY
• The Body
• Cosmetics makes you look fit without really
  being so.
• Fancy cookery tastes pleasant but without being
  good for you.
• The Soul
• Sophistry
• Rhetoric
• Gorg. 463e-66a

• REAL CRAFT
• The Body
• Athletic training
• Medicine
• The Soul
• Legislation aims to make citizens whose souls
  are in good order
• Justice punishment that cures sicknesses of the
  soul

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Polus v Socrates on power and injustice

• Does rhetoric make you powerful?
• Polus it allows you to do whatever you like.
• Socrates this is not power unless you know what
  is good for you.
• Example using your rhetorical skill to
  successfully prosecute a man you know to be
  innocent.
• Polus better (for you) to be the perpetrator of
  injustice than the victim.
• Socrates better (for you) to be the victim of
  injustice than its perpetrator.

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Polus admissions

• It is better to be the perpetrator of injustice
  than the victim.
• It is more shameful to be perpetrator of
  injustice than the victim.
• The shameful is that which is painful or harmful
  or both.
• Socrates uses these admissions to trap Polus in a
  contradiction. (472c-79e)

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The world turned upside down

• The world according to Socrates
• Better to be victim of injustice than perpetrator
• Better to be caught and punished than to get away
  with it.
• Callicles
• For if you are serious and what you say is
  really true, must not the life of us human beings
  have been turned upside down, and must we not be
  doing quite the opposite, it seems, of what we
  ought to do? (481c)

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Callicles indictment of Socrates tricks

• By convention (nomos), it is more shameful to
  commit injustice rather than suffer it.
• By nature (physis), it is worse to be unable to
  stand up for oneself.
• By convention, people should all have a fair
  share.
• By nature, the strong should take more for, being
  better men, they are entitled to it.

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Callicles Diagnosis of Fairness

• Why does conventional justice require fairness?
• Our conventions are a conspiracy of the weak and
  inferior against the few who are strong and
  superior.
• The natural order reveals how things should be

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Callicles on pleasure, power, and rhetoric

• Virtue / excellence (aretê) qualities that allow
  a thing to perform its function or achieve its
  natural goal well.
• Our goal is the most pleasant life hedonism.
• Pleasure consists in the process of satisfying a
  desire
• ? Insatiable appetites and no conventional moral
  scruples about fairness are a virtue.

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Callicles Rhetoric good Philosophy bad

• Rhetoric allows one to persuade and persuasion is
  useful in getting what you want.
• Socrates absorption in philosophy has made him
  unable to defend himself from unjust treatment.
  (summary 508d)
• Such powerlessness is the most shameful thing by
  nature.

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Socrates Philosophy good Rhetoric dangerous

• Socrates appeals to argument with Polus to show
  that this is wrong the worst thing for you is
  doing injustice, not suffering it.
• (Socrates thinks that, in spite of Callicles
  nature/convention distinction, this point is
  untouched.)

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What you need

• To avoid being treated unjustly you might need
  rhetoric.
• To avoid doing injustice, you need only knowledge
  of good and evil.
• Relies on Socrates claims
• That no one does evil (what is bad for you)
  willingly
• That doing injustice is an evil (i.e. bad for you)

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A bad crowd

• Rhetoric flattery.
• To flatter those who hold power, you must become
  like them.
• Hence if one of the young men in that city
  should reflect In what way can I have great
  power, and no one may do me wrong?-- this, it
  would seem, is the path he must take, to accustom
  himself from his earliest youth to be delighted
  and annoyed by the same things as those who have
  influence, and contrive to be as like them as
  possible. (510d)

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A hidden danger

• In becoming like those in power, you increase
  the likelihood that you will do what is unjust
  (if those in power are unjust).
• Moral rhetoric may protect us from the lesser
  danger of suffering injustice only by placing us
  at greater risk of the greater danger doing
  injustice.

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Some questions to ponder

• Is there anything that plays the role for us in
  21st c. Australia that rhetoric plays for the
  ancient Greeks?
• Does ingratiating yourself to powerful people
  endanger your moral integrity?
• If it did, would what Socrates calls philosophy
  help you?