Besides his critique of philosophy as supposedly ignorant of what makes for a good life, Callicles also argues that philosophy is unsuited to public life. If a person truly wants to be useful to society, in other words, they should pursue politics (including oratory) instead of philosophy. What good, for example, is Socrates’s argument about suffering injustice, if Socrates found himself hauled off to prison and completely tongue-tied when he faced his accuser? It’s better to live “an active life […] where you’ll get a reputation for being intelligent.” Through Socrates, Plato overturns and refutes Callicles’s argument. Building off Socrates’s earlier arguments that oratory is flattery and that the craft of philosophy is necessary for determining the good life, Plato argues that philosophers, being craftsmen, are essential to society in a way that politicians, being mere flatterers, cannot be.
First, Socrates revisits the idea that there’s a craft for obtaining both the pleasant and the good—a knack obtains what’s merely pleasant, while a craft, with an eye toward long-term benefit, obtains what’s good. Just as a pastry baker seeks to gratify the body, practices like oratory seek, through flattery, to merely gratify the soul. Socrates and Callicles agree that things like flute-playing, trained choruses, and tragic plays are for the purpose of giving pleasure. If things like melody and meter are stripped away from these activities, then just speeches are left—popular oratory “of a kind that’s addressed to men, women, and children, slave and free alike,” which he and Callicles both dismiss as mere flattery. Oratory that’s addressed to free Athenians is no better, Socrates argues. Do orators always speak, he asks Callicles, with the aim of making their hearers better citizens, 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?” Orators, in other words, treat people as children by offering them “pastries” for the soul—words that just gratify them, instead of taking thought for what’s truly best for them.
Souls require craftsmen, not flatterers. Socrates argues that a good craftsman always has a vision for what he makes: such a person doesn’t “say whatever he says […] randomly but with a view to something.” No craftsman would “select and apply randomly what he applies, but so that he may give his product some shape[.]” A soul ought to be carefully shaped, too—or, as Socrates puts it, “lawful.” That is, the craftsman of the soul should lead people to be “law-abiding and orderly,” possessing justice and self-control. Thus, a good orator should seek to apply justice and self-control to people’s souls—to create justice in souls and rid them of injustice, to build self-control and purge lack of discipline. Just as a doctor wouldn’t let a sick patient eat and drink as much as he wants, so a soul should be kept away from those appetites that contribute to indiscipline and injustice.
If the condition of citizens’ souls is important for public life, then a city needs philosophers more than it needs politicians. If it’s best to make souls as good as possible, Socrates goes on, then “Shouldn’t we then attempt to care for the city and its citizens with the aim of making the citizens themselves as good as possible? For without this, […] it does no good to provide any other service if the intentions of those who are likely to make a great deal of money or take a position of rule over people […] aren’t admirable and good.” In other words, if those who are likely to take positions of power aren’t good, then the city won’t flourish no matter what else is accomplished politically. If a citizen is going to be in charge of other citizens, they should have a proven ability to build up the souls of those in their charge. Socrates gives the example that, before undertaking some public work, like building a ship or a temple, it’s wise to check whether the builder was well trained and can demonstrate experience in having built good structures in the past. Likewise, it would be ridiculous to put someone in a position of public leadership if they’d never successfully improved another person’s soul. Socrates tells Callicles that “I believe that I’m one of a few Athenians […] 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, contrary to Callicles’s opening critique, is the true politician, because he is a craftsman of the soul, not a flattering orator.
Addressing another part of Callicles’s critique, Socrates admits it’s true that a philosopher might never be successful at defending himself in court, for example—"For I won’t be able to point out any pleasures that I’ve provided for [people], ones they believe to be services and benefits […] Nor will I be able to say what’s true if someone charges that I ruin younger people by confusing them or abuse older ones by speaking bitter words against them in public or private. […] So presumably I’ll get whatever comes my way.” In other words, a philosopher like Socrates might provide what truly benefits people through his well-crafted words, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be appreciated in his own day. Yet, paradoxically, this is better than being an orator, who wins acclaim and adulation while gratifying people with useless pleasures.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Philosophy vs. Politics ThemeTracker
Philosophy vs. Politics Quotes in Gorgias
GORGIAS: I’m referring to the ability to persuade by speeches judges in a law court, councillors in a council meeting, and assemblymen in an assembly or in any other political gathering that might take place. […]
SOCRATES: Now I think you’ve come closest to making clear what craft you take oratory to be, Gorgias. If I follow you at all, you’re saying that oratory is a producer of persuasion. Its whole business comes to that, and that’s the long and short of it.
GORGIAS: Oh yes, Socrates, if only you knew all of it, that it encompasses and subordinates to itself just about everything that can be accomplished. […] And I maintain too that if an orator and a doctor came to any city anywhere you like and had to compete in speaking in the assembly or some other gathering over which of them should be appointed doctor, the doctor wouldn’t make any showing at all, but the one who had the ability to speak would be appointed, if he so wished. And if he were to compete with any other craftsman whatever, the orator more than anyone else would persuade them that they should appoint him, for there isn’t anything that the orator couldn’t speak more persuasively about to a gathering than could any other craftsman whatever. That’s how great the accomplishment of this craft is, and the sort of accomplishment it is!
Philosophy is no doubt a delightful thing, Socrates, as long as one is exposed to it in moderation at the appropriate time of life. But if one spends more time with it than he should, it’s the undoing of mankind. For even if one is naturally well favored but engages in philosophy far beyond that appropriate time of life, he can’t help but turn out to be inexperienced in everything a man who’s to be admirable and good and well thought of is supposed to be experienced in. Such people turn out to be inexperienced in the laws of their city or in the kind of speech one must use to deal with people on matters of business, whether in public or private, inexperienced also in human pleasures and appetites and, in short, inexperienced in the ways of human beings altogether.
And so then, my dear Socrates […] don’t you think it’s shameful to be the way I take you to be, you and others who ever press on too far in philosophy? As it is, if someone got hold of you or of anyone else like you and took you off to prison on the charge that you’re doing something unjust when in fact you aren’t, you can know that you wouldn’t have any use for yourself. You’d get dizzy, your mouth would hang open and you wouldn’t know what to say. […] And yet, Socrates, “how can this be a wise thing, the craft which took a well-favored man and made him worse[?]” […] “Practice the sweet music of an active life[.]”
[W]hat in truth could be more shameful and worse than self-control and justice for these people who, although they are free to enjoy good things without any interference, should bring as master upon themselves the law of the many, their talk, and their criticism? Or how could they exist without becoming miserable under that “admirable” regime of justice and self-control, allotting no greater share to their friends than to their enemies, and in this way “rule” in their cities? Rather, the truth of it, Socrates—the thing you claim to pursue—is like this: wantonness, lack of discipline, and freedom, if available in good supply, are excellence and happiness; as for these other things, these fancy phrases, these contracts of men that go against nature, they’re worthless nonsense!
For you see, don’t you, that our discussion’s about this […] about the way we’re supposed to live. Is it the way you urge me toward, to engage in these manly activities, to make speeches among the people, to practice oratory, and to be active in the sort of politics you people engage in these days? Or is it the life spent in philosophy? And in what way does this latter way of life differ from the former?
SOCRATES: What about the oratory addressed to the Athenian people and to those in other cities composed of free men? What is our view of this kind? 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: Now, isn’t it also true that doctors generally allow a person to fill up his appetites, to eat when he’s hungry, for example, or drink when he’s thirsty as much as he wants to when he’s in good health, but when he’s sick they practically never allow him to fill himself with what he has an appetite for? […] And isn’t it just the same way with the soul, my excellent friend? As long as it’s 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.
But if “better” does not mean what I take it to mean, and if instead to preserve yourself and what belongs to you, no matter what sort of person you happen to be, is what excellence is, then your reproach against engineer, doctor, and all the other crafts which have been devised to preserve us will prove to be ridiculous. But, my blessed man, please see whether what’s noble and what’s good isn’t something other than preserving and being preserved. Perhaps one who is truly a man should stop thinking about how long he will live. He should not be attached to life but should commit these concerns to the god[.] He should thereupon give consideration to how he might live the part of his life still before him as well as possible.
[W]e’d have to check, wouldn’t we, whether we’ve ever built a work of construction in private business […] and whether this structure is admirable or disgraceful. And if we discovered on examination that our teachers have proved to be good and reputable ones, and that the works of construction built by us under their guidance were numerous and admirable, and those built by us on our own after we left our teachers were numerous, too, then, if that were our situation, we’d be wise to proceed to public projects. But if we could point out neither teacher nor construction works, either none at all or else many worthless ones, it would surely be stupid to undertake public projects and to call each other on to them.
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. They don’t aim at what’s most pleasant.
For I’ll be judged the way a doctor would be judged by a jury of children if a pastry chef were to bring accusations against him. Think about what a man like that, taken captive among these people, could say in his defense, if somebody were to accuse him and say, “Children, this man has worked many great evils on you, yes, on you. He destroys the youngest among you by cutting and burning them, and by slimming them down and choking them he confuses them. He gives them the most bitter potions to drink and forces hunger and thirst on them. He doesn’t feast you on a great variety of sweets the way I do!” What do you think a doctor, caught in such an evil predicament, could say?
But if I came to my end because of a deficiency in flattering oratory, I know that you’d see me bear my death with ease. For no one who isn’t totally bereft of reason and courage is afraid to die; doing what’s unjust is what he’s afraid of. For of all evils, the ultimate is that of arriving in Hades with one’s soul stuffed full of unjust actions.
So 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. And I call on all other people as well, as far as I can—and you especially I call on in response to your call—to this way of life, this contest, that I hold to be worth all the other contests in this life. And I take you to task, because you won’t be able to come to protect yourself when you appear at the trial and judgment I was talking about just now. When you come before that judge, […] and he takes hold of you and brings you to trial, your mouth will hang open and you’ll get dizzy there just as much as I will here, and maybe somebody’ll give you a demeaning knock on the jaw and throw all sorts of dirt at you.
As it is, you see that there are three of you, the wisest of the Greeks of today—you, Polus, and Gorgias—and you’re not able to prove that there’s any other life one should live than the one which will clearly turn out to be advantageous in that world, too. So, listen to me and follow me to where I am, and when you’ve come here you’ll be happy both during life and at its end, as the account indicates. Let someone despise you as a fool and throw dirt on you, if he likes. And, yes, by Zeus, confidently let him deal you that demeaning blow. Nothing terrible will happen to you if you really are an admirable and good man, one who practices excellence.
