Socrates on Desire for the Good and the Involuntariness of Wrongdoing

Gorgias 466a-468e

Bibliographic Data

ID11585446
AuthorsKevin Mctighe (1Columbia University, corresponding author)
Year1984
Volume29
Issue3
Pages193-236
Publication date1984-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhronesis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8868 • E-ISSN: 1568-5284
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/156852884x00012
OpenAlexW2012618398
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited1

In the Gorgias Socrates forces his interlocutor Polus to agree that neither orators nor even the tyrants whom they emulate have any great power at all. I would like to examine the logic and dramatic context of the argument for this rather strange claim. Doing so will help clarify (1) Plato's thesis that all men desire the good and (2) the role this thesis plays in the Paradox 'No One Is Voluntarily Unjust.' The argument runs as follows (466a9-468e5). Tyrants (or orators) are typically able to do whatever they please: e.g., they can expropriate, banish, or even murder their opponents. Thus they do what seems good to them (& Boxci avcrots). Doing what seems good, however, must be distinguished from doing what one desires (a& iovXovTaL). For all men desire the good. And so if a particular action, either in itself or in its consequences, happens actually to be bad (i.e., harmful to the agent), how can it be what one desires to do? In accordance with the familiar argument of the Republic, Socrates claims that the kind of action characteristic of the tyrant unjust action is in fact always harmful to the agent (cf. 460e6,481b5). Granted this claim it seems to follow that the tyrant doesn't desire to do the thing he typically does do; or, put another way, doesn't do what he desires to do. Hence he is powerless. For how can anyone who (typically) fails to do what he desires be considered powerful?' Now it seems to follow from the above considerations that unjust action is never what any agent desires to do, tyrant or no. Isn't that to say, then, that the unjust agent always acts against his desire, or against his will which is to say involuntarily? The view that no one is voluntarily unjust is, of course, a Socratic Paradox.2 Does the foregoing argument constitute

Action (physics · Ancient philosophy · Argument (complex analysis · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Form of the Good · Law and economics · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · SOCRATES · Wrongdoing · Classical Philosophy and Thought · History · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy

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