Daniel Kim

Professor Witt
Phil. Of the Person I
October 20, 2010

In the debate between Callicles, Socrates explains that the truly good and ideal life results

from a restrictive and self-restrained lifestyle opposing Callicle’s proposal of a self-indulgent

lifestyle. Whereas Callicles disregards self-discipline as a man-made, conventional mechanism

designed by the weak and jealous masses to restrict the happiness of the elite, Socrates advocates

this practice as one that would build up and direct the soul to a benefitted state of wellbeing; as

one rejects the immediate pleasures that appear to be good, and instead, searches for more

beneficial goods, his soul becomes strengthened through healthy nourishment. Thus, unlike the

itchy person who constantly pleasures himself scratching himself, or like the extreme case of a

prostitute who seeks only sensual pleasure, the self-restraint person will not become a slave to

his own desires and become free to gain deeper and more meaningful pleasures in life.

If one were to read this debate in isolation, separate from the debates with Gorgias and

Polus, one would have to question the extremity of Socrates’ solution to a good life. One may

rightfully ask: if unable to explore some of these desires that Socrates claim that we should

always reject, how could one be so sure to completely distinguish the real good and the apparent

good? In other words, without experiencing immediate desires, and learning that they are

cyclical, insatiable pleasures rather than long-lasting or beneficial, one’s knowledge of what

consists of the good life becomes skewed due to his lack of experience. Ironically, he loses

knowledge and wisdom pertaining to human nature in his tunnel-visioned pursuit of philosophy

and the good life, blindly following self-restraining guidelines set before him without knowing
why he must follow the guidelines in the first place. Would one be able to understand what true

good is without a full understanding of human nature?

Furthermore, the student who blindly follows Socrates’ teachings of self-restraint may

fall vulnerable to the problems associated with rhetoric, which Socrates himself pointed out. In

the distinction he made between rhetoric and philosophy, Socrates asserted to Gorgias that the

sole aims of rhetoric were to persuade people and move them to conviction whereas the aims of

philosophy were to help people understand a deeper knowledge so that they may realize a fuller

understanding of themselves. Therefore, one can see that if students followed Socrates’

conventional arguments of self-restraint without understanding the reasons behind them, perhaps

due to lack of experience, they would not gain true expertise to protect themselves from the

dangers of the apparent good through their own will or choice, but only become a product of

conviction.

Fortunately, Socrates provides more insight on this topic, and his arguments for a self-

restraint lifestyle should be analyzed in context to his whole message. By including his debates

between Gorgias and Polus, one is able to understand how Socrates might respond to the

challenges aforementioned by an inexperienced individual.

To guide the inexperienced and confused individual who is questioning what is real good

versus apparent good, Socrates would forward some of the points that he had made against Polus

in distinguishing the good life as one that results from knowing what a person wants rather than

what he thinks he wants. He does so by explaining why dictators have no power. Socrates points

out that even though dictators may think what they are doing are in the best interest of the

community, they are eventually committing acts like executing or exiling a person, harsh acts

that they would, as individuals, choose not to do. Thus, the politician is powerless and “fails to
do what he wants” (39); he becomes caught up in the illusion of what he think he needs to

accomplish and does not invest or search for goodness in his own life. It is also significant to

point out Polus’ reaction in utter disbelief as he heard this statement which further reflects the

commonly wrong belief of power. Instead of acknowledging power as the awareness and ability

to commit acts solely out of goodness, not always doing “one thing for the sake of another

thing,”(37) people commonly associate power with material wealth and the ability to indulge in

these. The blind individual’s purpose in life and his use of ‘power’ to fulfill his purpose become

obscured, and goodness becomes hidden from his views.

After pointing out the difference between knowing what one really wants and what one

thinks he wants, Socrates would further enlighten the inexperienced individual to the nature of

the things that he should want, specifically by explaining what qualities entail in a good life. He

attributes a good and a bad life to the terms: admirable and contemptible, respectively.

Furthermore, he digresses and illustrates to Polus what it means to be admirable – things that are

“either beneficial or pleasant or both,” (50) and likewise, he describes what is contemptible in

terms of unpleasantness and harmfulness. By being able to specify what is good and admirable,

one can get a fuller sense of what Socrates is urging for his peers to achieve. He is calling people

to act morally, to think which actions are beneficial and which are harmful, and to choose their

actions rightly. It is also important to note that Socrates adds the quality of pleasure in a good

life, showing that humans do not need to reject all their pleasures to practice self-discipline and

restraint. It is only harmful pleasures that Socrates is asking people to remove in their lives to

obtain a good life.

 Socrates would then give a deeper explanation to the confused individual as to why the

self-indulgent life does not lead to the good life, and why those who live such lives need some

sort of punishment to straighten out their lives. He would first explain that a bad state for

property, body, and mind, are attributed to “poverty, sickliness, and immorality,” (55)

respectively, with immorality or psychological iniquity being the most contemptible because it

causes the most amount of unpleasantness or harm. Therefore, those who show qualities of

psychological iniquities, such as injustice and self-indulgence, are subject to care from his peers

just as those who are physically ill are subject to medicine to relieve them of their illness.

Socrates would even go further to say that it is their civic duty as friends to heal a

psychologically ill individual and in a sense, lift him from his ignorance and blindness in light of

what is really good. To relieve one from self-indulgence and injustice, Socrates claims that an

administration of justice is necessary even though it may not be pleasant. This sort of treatment

leads to goodness and an ideal life because it is beneficial and it cures the immorality with

morality, self-indulgence with self-control.

With the aid of enlightened friends, one can become cured and become knowledgeable to

goodness so that he could act consciously with goodness as his aim to reach an ideal life.

Although it is good to accept other’s wisdoms to deepen one’s own knowledge and

understanding of life, Socrates would also advise the young individual who is starting to see the

light to build up his own expertise to stabilize his state of mind so that he would be able to

further distinguish good pleasures from harmful ones. With expertise, one would be able to

“work out in advance what will be best for the mind” (95) and order his mind and his life for the

benefit and wellbeing of his state.

 To maintain a good life then, Socrates urges that people strive to maintain a “specific

state of goodness” with their expertise. (104) He specifically illustrates this when he states,

“what it takes for these states of goodness to occur in an ideal form is not chaos, but organization

and perfection and the particular branch of expertise.” (104) That is the fundamental reason and

purpose for a self-disciplined life; it is simply not that people are tunnel-visioned to mindlessly

practice philosophy while ignoring the rest of human nature. As one recognizes true goodness

and distinguishes it from other apparent goodness with a particular activity and pleasure, it

becomes appropriate to act in favor of the first. To practice his discipline, the individual must

“turn towards or away from events, people, pleasures, and irritations as and when he should, and

steadily endures what he should endure.” (105)

With the following explanation, the inexperienced and confused individual understands

Socrates’ position and advocacy for a self-restraint lifestyle. However, he still finds some

insufficient explanations as to how one would form an expertise on his own to distinguish the

good and bad pleasures. He finds more comfort in expanding that expertise through his own

experience of life and is not satisfied to live solely based on the recommendations and advice

from other so called experts. He would rather trust his own self.