Notes on Plato’s Gorgias, Part 15
Moderation & Self-Rule

Karl von Blaas, Allegory of Self-Control, 1859

2,703 words

(Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 12 here, Part 13 here, Part 14 here)

Thus far, Callicles has maintained that it is right and just  by nature for the strong to rule the weak and have more than their inferiors. Socrates has badgered Callicles to be specific about what, exactly, the “strength” of the natural ruler is. When we left off, Socrates had wrung from Callicles the admission that the strength of the ruler lies in the ability to attend to the affairs of the city and encompasses the virtues of prudence or practical wisdom and courage.

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Socrates is pleased that Callicles has added courage to prudence. The Gorgias is slowly assembling the four so-called “cardinal virtues”: first justice (dikaion, dikaiosyne), then wisdom (sophia, phronesis), then courage (andreia). The only one left out is moderation (sophrosyne), which Socrates immediately bring into play.

Moderation, of course, is uniquely relevant to the question of having more stuff. Moderation can also be understood as self-control. Self-control, moreover, presupposes self-knowledge. To control your intake of drink, for instance, you must know your limits.

Moderation can also be understood as ruling oneself, thus when Callicles says that superior men are entitled to rule others by virtue of their prudence and courage, and have more stuff than other people, Socrates asks, “Really? More than themselves, my friend?” In other words: If the ruler is to have more than the ruled, then doesn’t that mean that the ruler will have more than himself?

The underlying assumption here is that, within each man, we can find the distinction between ruler and ruled, i.e., it is possible to rule oneself. Specifically, it is possible for one part of the self to rule over other parts.

When Callicles asks Socrates what he means, Socrates replies: “I mean that each of us is his own ruler. Or is there no need to rule oneself, but only others? Here Plato is anticipating the central teaching of the Republic: the soul has parts (reason, spirit, and desire), the different parts of the soul can rule over each other, and different types of men are distinguished by what part of the soul rules.

When Callicles asks Socrates what he means by ruling oneself, the reply is, “Nothing fancy, just what most people mean: being moderate and controlling oneself, ruling the pleasures and the desires in oneself.” This is relevant to Callicles’ claim that the superior man should have unlimited stuff, for if the superior man should also rule himself, that entails putting limits on the unlimited acquisition of stuff.

Callicles is scornful of the idea of ruling one’s appetites, speaking to Socrates as if he were a naïve child: “How sweet you are. By the moderate you mean the stupid.” Socrates rejects this indignantly, saying that everyone would know that’s not what he means. But Callicles insists on identifying moderation with stupidity, offering a splendid speech in praise of immoderation:

How can a man be happy [eudaimon] if he’s enslaved by anyone at all? I tell you now quite frankly that by nature the fine and just [to kata physin kalon kai dikaion] is this, that he who would live rightly should allow his desires [epithumia] to become as great as possible and not restrain them, and when they have waxed great, he must be adequate to minister to them with courage [andreia] and prudence [phronesis], satisfying whatever desire he may chance to have. But this I think is impossible for most men, whence it is that out of shame they find fault with such people, hiding their own powerlessness and claiming that lack of restraint is shameful. This is why men of better nature are enslaved, as I said before, and those who cannot provide for their pleasures to the full praised moderation and justice due to their own unmanliness [anandreia = unmanliness]. If they started out as sons of kings, or were adequate in nature to achieve some kind of absolute rule, sole or oligarchic, what could in truth be more shameful and evil then moderation and justice for these men to whom it is given to enjoy good things without impediment? Would they then introduce a master over themselves, namely the law [nomos], the speech [logos], and the censure [psogos] of the multitude? How would they not become wretched through the fineness of justice and moderation, distributing no greater shares to their friends than to their enemies, even though they rule in their own cities? The truth Socrates, which you claim to pursue, is this: luxury, license, and liberty, if adequately abetted, are virtue and happiness [arete kai eudaimonia], and these other embellishments, these agreements of men contrary to nature [para physin synthemata anthropon], are worthless nonsense.

Here Callicles makes clear that he is operating within the broad opposition between nature (physis) and convention (nomos, synthemata). The earlier sophists held that matters of right and wrong are wholly conventional, and that one should take one’s bearings from nature instead. But Callicles holds that there is a form or right and wrong by nature, which allows one to criticize all conventional norms. This is a step beyond the sophists and puts Callicles in the camp of Socratic philosophy.

Callicles identifies the right by nature as the satisfaction of unlimited desire. He defines the virtues of prudence and courage as instruments for the satisfaction of such desire.[1] Although Callicles claims this is freedom, his own speech hints that it is a form of slavery, speaking of desire as if it were a great beast whose appetites must be constantly catered to. How free is a man if he must minister to “whatever desire he may chance to have”?

It all depends on which part of the soul one identifies with. One is free if one identifies with unfettered desire. One is a slave if one identifies with the other parts of one’s soul that must cater to desire. In terms of the Republic, Callicles makes desire sovereign in the soul. Desire rules over reason (one aspect of which is prudence) and spirit (one aspect of which is courage).

In the Republic, the sovereignty of desire is associated with three regimes: democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. Naturally, Callicles has no truck with democracy, which is animated by the spirit of equality. Instead, he aims for oligarchy or tyranny, which allow maximum inequality of stuff.

Then Callicles offers a proto-Nietzschean argument for why moderation and justice were created and propagated as virtues: most men are weak and unable to satisfy infinite desires, so they preach moderation and justice as virtues to keep down those rare men who are capable of it. Preaching moderation and justice as virtues both protects inferior men from superior ones and also makes the inferior feel unashamed of their weakness while shaming the superior for their strength.

Socrates praises Callicles for his frankness, for saying what other men think but are unwilling to say. He does not mention whether or not he thinks Callicles’ frankness is foolhardy or that other men are perhaps prudent in being more circumspect. Nor does he mention whether he himself belongs to the frank or the prudent camp.

Socrates urges Callicles not to shrink back from his views under examination, on the grounds that Socrates wishes to learn the right way to live from Callicles. Socrates then sums up Callicles’ position as follows: “You say that the desires are not to be restrained, if one is to become the sort of person he should; he is to let them wax as great as possible, prepare to satisfy them in any way, and this is virtue?” Callicles responds, “I say exactly that.”

The idea that the happy life is the endless satisfaction of endless desires sounds a bit like the proverbial “rat race.”[2] Wouldn’t happiness be easier to secure if one had more limited desires? Socrates asks, “Is it therefore mistaken to say that those who need nothing are happy?” I take “those who need nothing” to mean: those who have limited desires and have managed to secure what they desire. This becomes clear later, when Socrates introduces a metaphor of the men with leaky and watertight jars.

Callicles parodies needing nothing as being like a stone or a corpse. Stones and corpses don’t need anything because they are dead. Rather than pushing back at this parody, Socrates for some reason runs with it, quoting Euripides: “Who knows whether to live is to be dead, and being dead is to live?” Then Socrates refers to a number of mystical and ascetic teachings, including those of the Pythagoreans, whom he refers to as Sicilians or Italians. Socrates grants that these stories are “a bit absurd” if taken literally. Yet they provide useful images.

One Pythagorean claimed that in Hades, the uninitiated will be “most wretched,” condemned to fill a leaky jar by carrying water in a sieve. Leaky jars and sieves are, of course, “incontinent,” insofar as they cannot contain something. Immoderate men who cannot rule their passions can also be called “incontinent,” meaning that they cannot contain themselves. In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the Greek word “akrasia,” which refers to the inability to resist shameful temptations, is commonly translated as “weakness of the will” but is also translated as “incontinence,” which as J. O. Urmson noted has the unfortunate connotation of bedwetting. (The opposite of akrasia is enkrateia, which is translated as continence, strength of will, or self-control.)

Socrates then offers another Pythagorean analogy about continence and incontinence:

Consider whether you are not saying something of this sort about the life of moderate and immoderate men. Picture two men, each with many jars. One has sound jars, some full of wine, some full of milk, and some of honey, and many more are full of many other things, the sources of each scarce and hard to come by, procured only with much labor and difficulty. Well, the one man, when his jars are full, gives no thought to piping more into them; His mind is at rest about it. But the other man, though he can provide sources like the first, though with difficulty, has leaky, cracked vessels, and so he is ever compelled to keep filling them day and night or else suffer the extremities of pain. Suppose then that each life is of this sort. Do you still say the life of the immoderate man is happier than that of the well-ordered? Do I at all persuade you in saying this to agree that the well-ordered life [kosmion bion] is better than the immoderate one, or do I fail?

Callicles is not persuaded: “That fellow with the full jars no longer has any pleasure, and as I just said, that is to live like a stone. Once he is satisfied, he neither rejoices nor feels pain. The life of pleasure consists in just this: maximum flow.” Socrates’ response is rather droll: “Then necessarily if the inflow is large, won’t the outflow be large too, with big holes to flow out of?”

There’s something distasteful about reducing a human being to a tube, especially when you think about the nether end. But Callicles agrees with this description without flinching. To which Socrates replies that Callicles is describing the life of a curlew, a bird that apparently drinks then vomits up water. A more pointed avian analogy would be the goose: if you have the proverbial “gut like a goose,” your food goes straight through. If Callicles thinks men are tubes, through which the things we desire pass, then the greatest men are the biggest tubes. Only the biggest tubes enjoy maximum flow.

Callicles has not flinched at the distastefulness of this description, so Socrates tries to bring it home to him. Socrates ascertains from Callicles that we live well by satisfying hunger through eating, thirst through drinking. Then Callicles brusquely cuts to the final conclusion: “Yes, and having all the other desires and being able to satisfy them, and enjoying a happy life.” Socrates says “fine,” but cautions Callicles that as they continue in this vein, he will need to fight against feeling ashamed. Socrates , for his part, will also steel himself against shame and continue.

Then Socrates asks Callicles if scratching an itch is part of the happy life (eudaimonia). An itch is a petty bodily annoyance, but if the happy life is the all about satisfying one’s desires, then scratching an itch is part of the happy life. Callicles, however, is offended: “You’re absurd, Socrates, an outright demagogue.” Actually, it is not Socrates who is absurd, but rather Callicles, since his position entails that even a mean activity like scratching an itch is part of the happy life. But Callicles is ashamed to admit it, apparently because he thinks such mean pleasures are beneath him. But if Callicles thinks that some pleasures are better than others, doesn’t this imply that he has a standard of the good over and above pleasure?

It is ironic that Callicles feels shame, for recall that he argued that shame was the fatal weakness of both Gorgias and Polus. They failed to defend their views because they were too ashamed to embrace immoral principles. Socrates now chides Callicles by reminding him of this fact: “That’s precisely how I upset Polus and Gorgias, Callicles, and made them ashamed.  But you must not be upset or ashamed, for you are manly/courageous. So just please answer the question.” At this point, Callicles agrees that a man experiences pleasure by scratching himself, and to experience pleasure is the happy life.

At this point, Socrates says that he could inquire about all the other petty pleasures that can be won by stimulating the surface of the body, or he could just sum up the life of physical stimulation with a single figure: a catamite, meaning a boy who was on the receiving end of homosexual intercourse, something far more shameful than scratching an itch. How could something so “awful and shameful and wretched” [deinos kai aischros kai athlios] be part of the happy life? Does Callicles claim that such people enjoy eudaimonia  “as long as they have a generous supply of what they need”?

Callicles tries to shame Socrates for using such an example, but Socrates stands his ground: the shame belongs to Callicles, for his premises lead to this conclusion. Callicles is a hedonist, because he “claims without reservation that those thus delighted, however they are delighted, are happy, and does not distinguish what kinds of pleasures are good and bad.” At this point, Socrates demands that Callicles make his commitments clear: “Do you claim that the pleasant and good are the same, or are there some pleasures which are not good?” Callicles’ answer is: “I say they are the same.”

Notes

[1] As Thomas Hobbes puts it in Leviathan: “For the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired” (Leviathan, chapter 8).

[2] Compare Hobbes:

For there is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man’s desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. . . .

So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. (Leviathan, chapter 11)