A note on philosophy in Plato’s Gorgias
A certain amount of philosophy helps one to become a cultured person, and it’s fine to take it that far; there’s nothing wrong with studying philosophy in one’s teens. But it’s a ridiculous thing for a person still to be studying philosophy even later in life, Socrates. (Callicles, 485 a-b)
In Greece, there’s a place called Meteora, a rock formation atop of which sits a monastery. Because of the shape of the rock, it must be one of the most secluded monastery to exists. If one wanted to be left alone to meditate, that would the place to go. If Meteora had been accessible or built at the time of the first philosophers, they probably would have gone there, seeing that, according to Bellah and others, they were renouncers, people that left society to meditate and think. Unless one keeps that in mind, it’s hard to understand Callicles’ above quote.
Philosophy nowadays is very similar to what Gorgias, Callicles and the other sophists were doing. And what Socrates is doing in Plato’s dialogues doesn’t seem to be that different from it either. Why would it be ridiculous to still study philosophy “later in life?” Socrates may not be a renouncer, but philosophers were seen that way for a long time. According to a new book by C. Moore, when the word philosophy was coined, the love of wisdom it was referring to wasn’t a striving to become wiser, but a love akin to the one a drunkard has toward alcool. Philosophy was a drug, and philosophers were sages-wannabes. Seen in such a light, the word fits brooding teens fairly well, the kinds that would love to go in a retreat to Meteora. Callicles’s point is thus well taken.
Part of Plato’s point in the Gorgias, seems then to have been to rescue the concept of philosophy to make it respectable. Unless one understands that Callicles and Socrates are not talking about the same thing when talking about philosophy, I don’t think one can make sense of what is happening.
Quotes and comments from this week’s readings
À la recherche du temp perdu, Sodome et Gomorrhe II, ch. 2, p. 1456-1492
L’instinct d’imitation et l’absence de courage gouvernent les sociétés comme les foules. Et tout le monde rit de quelqu’un dont on voit se moquer, quitte à le vénérer dix ans plus tard dans un cercle où il est admiré. C’est de la même façon que le peuple chasse ou acclame les rois. (p. 1459)
For the instinct of imitation and absence of courage govern society and the mob alike. And we all of us laugh at a person whom we see being made fun of, which does not prevent us from venerating him ten years later in a circle where he is admired. It is in like manner that the populace banishes or acclaims its kings.
This goes to the heart of what the primatologist R. Wrangham calls the goodness paradox. Imitation is what gave rise to the peculiar human type of sociality and cooperation. Without it we could accomplish nothing, it nevertheless has a dark side. It helps us fight tyrants and good men alike.
Je ne saurais dire aujourd’hui comment Mme Verdurin était habillée ce soir-là. Peut-être au moment même ne le savais-je pas davantage, car je n’ai pas l’esprit d’observation. Mais sentant que sa toilette n’était pas sans prétention, je lui dis quelque chose d’aimable et même d’admiratif. Elle était comme presque toutes les femmes, lesquelles s’imaginent qu’un compliment qu’on leur fait est la stricte expression de la vérité et que c’est un jugement qu’on porte impartialement, irrésistiblement, comme s’il s’agissait d’un objet d’art ne se rattachant pas à une personne. (p. 1470)
I could not at this moment say what Mme. Verdurin was wearing that evening. Perhaps even then I was no more able to say, for I have not an observant mind. But feeling that her dress was not unambitious I said to her something polite and even admiring. She was like almost all women, who imagine that a compliment that is paid to them is a literal statement of the truth, and is a judgment impartially, irresistibly pronounced, as though it referred to a work of art that has no connexion with a person.
I won’t dwell too much on the sexism of the quote. But the notion that someone writing a 2400 pages novel filled with intense descriptions could not be observant is hilarious !
Il voyait le peu qu’on pouvait attendre des affections humaines, il s’y était résigné. Certes, il en souffrait. Il arrive que meme celui qui un seul soir, dans un milieu où il a l’habitude de plaire, devine qu’on l’a trouvé ou trop frivole, ou trop pédant, ou trop gauche, ou trop cavalier, etc., rentre chez lui malheureux. Souvent c’est à cause d’une question d’opinons, de système, qu’il a paru d’autres absurde ou vieux jeu. Souvent il sait à merveille que ces autres ne le valent pas. […] Au reste ce n’est pas le lieu de peindre ici ces hommes supérieurs à la vie mondaine mais n’ayant pas pu se réaliser en dehors d’elle, heureux d’être reçus, aigris d’être méconnus, découvrant chaque année les tares de la maitresse de maison qu’ils encensaient, et le génie de celle qu’ils n’avaient pas appréciée à sa valeur […] (p. 1471)
He saw how little was to be expected of human affection, and resigned himself to it. Undoubtedly the discovery pained him. It may happen that even the man who on one evening only, in a circle where he is usually greeted with joy, realises that the others have found him too frivolous or too pedantic or too loud, or too forward, or whatever it may be, returns home miserable. Often it is a difference of opinion, or of system, that has made him appear to other people absurd or old-fashioned. Often he is perfectly well aware that those others are inferior to himself. […] This however is not the proper place to describe those men, superior to the life of society but lacking the capacity to realize their own worth outside it, glad to be invited, embittered by being disparaged, discovering annually the faults of the hostess to whom they have been offering incense and the genius of her whom they have never properly appreciated […].
I keep coming back to these two options : Is Proust’s dim view of social relations a consequence of the society he is describing in the novel, or is he describing that society in such a way because he has a dim view of social relations? Passages like the one above make me lean toward the latter, but…
Gorgias, 481b-506b
In my opinion it’s the weaklings who constitute the majority of the human race who make the rules. In making these rules, they look after themselves and their own interest, and that’s also the criterion they use when they dispense praise and criticism. They try to cow the stronger ones - which is to say, the ones who are capable of increasing their share of things - and to stop them getting an increased share, by saying that to do so is wrong and contemptible and by defining injustice in precisely those terms as the attempt to have more than others. In my opinion, it’s because they’re second-rate that they’re happy for things to distributed equally. (Callicles, 483b-d)
This is a point often made by Nietzsche, most forcefully in the Genealogy of Morals. But thinking more and more about it, specially in the context of human evolution, and keeping in mind recent development in Cultural evolution, this seems like misguided criticism. The conflict of morality analyzed by Nietzsche, and Callicles in the above passage, between superior men and weak men, is always presented as a conflict between individual interests. Weak men want to constrain superior men because they don’t want to suffer. It is in the individual interest of weak men to push for equality because they are incapable of attaining a superior position by themselves. What the works of Boehme, Boyd, Richerson, and Henrich shows is that although the analysis of Nietzsche and Callicles might be true at an individual level, in order to give a fully detailed analysis of human morality, one has to take into account the group perspective. The function of the constraints imposed by weak men, when the analysis is done at a group level, is to insure the survival of said group. Equality might be something weak individuals want because they can’t get to the top of a hierarchy, but it is the only way to insure that the group survives.
The point is, Socrates, it’s fine for a person to dabble in philosophy when he’s the right age for it, but it ruins him if he devotes too much of his life to it. Even a naturally gifted person who continues to study philosophy far into life is bound to end up without the experience to have gained the accomplishments he ought to have if he’s to be a gentleman with some standing in society. In actual fact, philosophers don’t understand their community’s legal system, or how to address either political or private meetings, or what kinds of things people enjoy and desire. In short, they’re completely out of touch with human nature. (Callicles, 484 c-d)
This is a point that I’ve seen made over and over again in reading Humanity’s great books. Dostoesvky’s Crime and Punishment is making, in a way, the same argument: Ideas can be dangerous when they are pursued without consideration for reality.
If you confirm the beliefs I have in my mind, then I can be sure these beliefs are true, because it occurs to me that for anyone to be able to test whether or not a person’s life is as it should be, he has to have three qualities. These are knowledge, affection, and candour, and you have the complete set. (Socrates, 486e-487a)
Knowledge, affection and candour. Not only are those three things not that common when interacting with people, but the incentives structure of the current social media ecosystem make it so that these things are not rewarded. I would even go as far as saying that their opposite are rewarded. No wonder debate is impossible on Facebook and Twitter.
You accuse me of being misguided about these matters, but if I’m going wrong anywhere in my own life, the mistake isn’t deliberate, I assure you; it’s merely the result of stupidity on my part. (Socrates, 488a)
One of Plato’s most famous thesis. No one is evil intentionally. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that. But I think it’s a great rule in social life to never attribute to evil what can be attributed to stupidity.
Socrates: I’m talking about each one of them ruling himself. Or is there no need for him to rule himself but only others?
Callicles: What do you mean, “ruling himself”?
Socrates: Nothing complicated, just what people usually mean by it. That is, being self-disciplined and in control of oneself, and mastering the pleasures and desires which arise within oneself.
Callicles: What a naïve thing to say! By “self-discipline” you mean “folly”.
Socrates: I can’t believe you said that. I don’t see how anyone could fail to appreciate that I mean no such things.
Callicles: No Socrates, that’s exactly what you mean, because human happiness is incompatible with enslavement to anyone. (491d-e)
Socrates is Rama, defending Dharma and self-control. Callicles is Ravana, unable to control its urges. Reading Plato’s Gorgias at the same time as reading the Ramayana is a great exercise.
I’ll tell you how I think the argument goes on, then, but it’s up to you to challenge me and show me where I’m going wrong, if any of you get the impression that' I’m failing to recognize mistakes in my own thinking. The point is, you see, that I certainly don’t speak as an expert with knowledge: I look into things with your help. And this means that if someone disputes something I’ve been saying and seems to me to be making a good point, I’m the first to admit it. (Socrates, 505e-506a)
In a recent book, Catarina Dutilh, shows in great detail how the Greeks invented deduction. To imagine that deduction could be invented may seem weird to some of us, given how logic seems, like math, to be something that doesn’t depend on human mind. Although we have good reasons to believe there exists something like a number sense, and no culture exists that is without the ability to count, most cultures across the globe and across history don’t have anything remotely close to deductive logic. We also have good reasons to believe that we don’t have a “deductive logic sense.” It’s no surprises, then, that logic must have been invented. How else might have it come about ? The question is: why the Greeks ? Maybe one day, I’ll write an article about this. But for now, suffice to say that what gave rise to deductive logic, according to Dutilh, is the process described in the above quote. What Socrates is presenting is not a debate per se but a very specific kind of discussion where everybody is trying to get to the truth by following the implications of an argument and its structure. This way of doing things is very specific to Greece in the 5th century B.C, and it will eventually lead to Aristotle’s theory of syllogism.
Ramayana, Sundara Kanda, Sarga 50-66
How fortunate are those great and outstanding men who manage to check their rising anger with their minds, just as the blazing fire is checked by water. (Sarga 53)
Indeed, through the fault of giving way to anger, I have demonstrated the unstable nature of monkeys, which is well known throughout the three worlds. Damn that passionate nature - so unstable and out of control - on account of which I failed to protect Sita though I was fully capable of doing so. (Sarga 53)
This is a pretty good illustration of what Socrates was talking about in one of the above quotes.
You are my hero! You have so cleverly woven in the monastery and other works to reflect your general knowledge! So Proustian?