Well?

Jesus holy Christ!

What can I say to a post of that calibre!?

How's about this ...

To what extent are polite society and ethical society the same?

Immortalist wrote:

[3] - PLATO: VIRTUE AS THE HEALTH OF THE SOUL

Plato thinks that virtue is to the soul what health is to the body. What
might a "healthy soul" be like? And what is the difference between healthy
and unhealthy souls?

A) Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls

Everybody understands the difference between healthy and unhealthy bodies,
so let's start there before we extend the comparison to souls.

A healthy body is free of disease and in relatively good shape. When you are
healthy, you may not feel euphoric, but you probably feel calm and
contented. When you are healthy, you hardly notice any physical discomfort.
Your body has its full range of capabilities and you can do what you want
to. When you are sick, on the other hand, all you can think about is how
rotten you feel. You are too weak to do things. Your discomfort keeps
pushing itself into your awareness, and everything seems worse than it is.

In other words, as long as we stay healthy, we can do what we choose and we
can choose what we want. The effects of illness and neglect-clouded minds
and weak, damaged bodies-limit our activities. With health comes freedom and
control over our lives. Health is intrinsically enjoyable and it enables us
to get more of what we want. Thus, we are more likely to live happier lives.

What can we say, now, about the healthy "soul" (or "character," or
"personality")? Much the same thing that we said for the healthy body. The
absence of disease in your "soul" means that your mind is clear and you can
see things as they really are. Your view of the world is not distorted by
fears, insecurities, irrational anxieties, or overpowering desires. Your
judgment is not blinded by greed or self-interest. Thus, your assessment of
whether something is right or wrong can be objective. We might say that a
healthy soul has a fairly clear moral vision. Like the healthy body, the
healthy soul has its own kind of freedom and control. Once you decide about
something, you have the capacity to carry it out. We might call this
strength of will.

Say that a friend asks you to help him cheat in his history course. He wants
to take a paper you wrote last term and change it just enough so that it
won't be recognized as yours. "Come on," he says, "everybody does it.
There's nothing wrong. Besides, I'd do it for you." You feel uneasy, but
clearly he expects you to do it, and you don't want him to get angry. To see
this situation for what it is and to do what you know you should do takes
clarity of mind and courage-that is, the strength of a "healthy soul." If
your fear of your friend's anger controls you, you won't have the nerve to
stand up to him. With a weak and "unhealthy soul," you compromise your own
beliefs and allow your fears to take control. With a healthy soul, on the
other hand, you have the freedom to live according to your own moral
insights. Once you decide what the right thing to do is, you can do it. You
have the power to live according to your sense of right and wrong.

Think back to the story about cheating on someone with whom you have a
relationship. What would someone with a strong character do when confronted
with that dilemma? First, that person could see the ethical issues of the
situation without being blinded by selfish desires. Such a person could also
act on his or her decision. That is, the strong soul would not immediately
reach for a cheap rationalization ("Everybody does something like this now
and then-besides, no one will get hurt"). If that person wanted to pursue
the new relationship, he or she would probably find the courage to discuss
it honestly with the other person.

B) Plato's Idea of the Healthy Soul: Balance & Control

In the Republic, Plato uses this simple parallel between bodies and souls to
distinguish between healthy and unhealthy souls. Each of us, he says, is
made up of three parts: the physical, the spirited, and the intellectual.
(The "spirited" part is our emotions.) In the healthy soul, these three are
properly balanced. As we make decisions about how to live, our minds give
due regard to our emotional and physical needs, and each of the three parts
performs its proper role. The mind is in control, and our emotions help us
follow the mind's judgment, particularly when it goes against the
inclination of our physical desires. In an unhealthy soul, the balance is
lost. Our actions flow not from our good judgment, but from either our
emotions or our physical appetites.

For example, think of people who are obsessed with their bodies or their
physical appearance. You may know some people who expend huge amounts of
energy playing sports, working out, worrying about their diet, or spending
time shopping for the right clothes or getting their hair or make-up just
right. Virtually everything in their lives-what they do, what they don't do,
whom they hang out with-revolves around the physical side of their beings.
They may even be addicted to, say, their daily five-mile run, or to buying
new clothes. Such people are so driven by their bodies that they cut
classes, miss work, or neglect a relationship because of their obsession.
Clearly, the physical part of their nature dominates their lives.

Others are driven by their emotions. They need to be in love, to be popular,
to be admired by others, or to be famous. Think of people who will do
anything to be liked by someone they are involved with. They may even do
things that hurt others-or themselves-to hold onto their latest love. And
when that relationship ends, they immediately hunt for someone new. These
People may also seem to be addicted to whatever they are driven by. Clearly,
their lives are dominated by their emotions.

Plato thinks that the unhealthy soul is out of balance and controlled by the
wrong aspect of our being. The mind yields to the body or the emotions. The
healthy soul is balanced. It gives due weight to bodily and emotional needs,
but the head remains in control and keeps things from going overboard. In
Plato's opinion, the person with a healthy soul has a clear mind, freedom,
and self-control. In his judgment, this is simply the way things are
supposed to be.

C) The Soul's Health and Virtue: The Ethical Connection

Plato believes that physical and emotional desires, particularly when they
are out of balance, are the primary factors that cloud our judgment about
right and wrong. Unethical people, he thinks, generally act wrongly to serve
some physical desire (sex, alcohol, the physical pleasures that money can
buy) or some emotion (jealousy, ambition, anger, fear, greed). People with
unbalanced, unhealthy souls are so driven by physical or emotional wants
that they do not think straight about right and wrong. Their mental power is
put to use in servicing their wants, not in examining the morality of their
actions. Their minds follow their bodies or their feelings. When we allow
this to happen, Plato thinks that there is a strong chance that we will
behave unethically in order to get what we want. Having a soul that is out
of balance, "unhealthy" in Plato's terms, goes hand in hand with wrongdoing.

By contrast, the freedom, control, and balanced perspective that come with
the soul's health result in ethical behavior, Plato believes. Good decisions
come only when you are not dominated by your physical or emotional wants.
Thus, virtue is an expression of the strong, healthy soul-the soul in which
a clear mind is in charge.

At this point, you, like Glaucon, may still be skeptical. It is one thing to
talk about virtue and health, you say. But if a little larceny helps us get
what we want, why is that so bad?

And what about Plato's claim that acting unethically hurts us? At this
point, we must turn from Plato's thought to that of his teacher, Socrates,
who had more to say about the unhealthy soul. In particular, it was Socrates
who formulated the idea that vice harms the doer more than those who are its
victims.

[4] - SOCRATES: VICE HARMS THE DOER

The philosopher who could be said to have "invented" ethics is Socrates.
During the two centuries before Socrates, Greek philosophers had speculated
about the nature of reality. They were interested in "natural philosophy,"
what we would today call "science," speculating on questions such as: What
is the world made of? Is there a basic element out of which everything else
is composed? How does the cosmos work? In the words of the Roman philosopher
Cicero, "Socrates was the first one to call philosophy down from the heavens
and put it into the cities with people and make it ask questions about life
and about right and wrong." He was the first philosopher to take how we
should live as his main concern.

Socrates is an interesting figure for a number of reasons. For one thing, he
represents the rare case of a major philosopher who never wrote down a word.
We know about his ideas primarily through the writings of his pupil Plato,
who makes Socrates the main figure in most of his dialogues. For another,
Socrates was an eccentric character in ancient Athens, having come to
believe that he had a mission from the god Apollo to go around encouraging
people to live a moral life.

Socrates did not do what most religious teachers do, however. He did not try
to change people by preaching to them about the need for virtue. Instead, he
approached his fellow Athenians individually, engaging them in philosophical
dialogues that tested the validity of their deepest beliefs. For example,
Socrates would ask someone what was most important in life. If the person
answered "money," for example, or "fame," Socrates would ask for an
explanation. When the person responded, Socrates would ask for more,
pursuing every point of the answer, trying to show the problems with the
other person's thinking. Back and forth it went like that until Socrates had
convinced his partner. This "Socratic method" of question/answer,
question/answer is still used by many teachers, and especially those in law
schools.

A) An Overview of Socrates' Ethical Beliefs

For someone who is universally considered one of philosophy's brightest
lights, Socrates advanced some unusual ideas about how to be happy in life.
In terms of everyday life and the dominant values of Western culture from
Athens to the present day, Socrates' moral beliefs seem at best peculiar.

For example, Socrates claims:

"All that we really need in order to be happy is to live a moral life. Even
though we suffer poverty, injustice, illness, or some other misfortune,
moral virtue is enough to guarantee our happiness."

"Our greatest protection is moral virtue. Even though someone may kill us,
our virtue makes it impossible for anyone to harm us."

"When we treat someone unethically and escape unpunished, we hurt ourselves
more than we hurt our victim."

Using the image that virtue is the soul's health and vice its disease, an
idea that Plato later developed further, Socrates talks about immorality in
a way that suggests that moral compromise makes as little sense as
deliberately infecting ourselves with a terminal illness. If we do something
wrong, Socrates believes that we should seek someone to punish us with the
same speed and care that we use when we look for someone to cure us when we
are sick.

Citing divine revelation, religious teachers preach ideas every bit as
peculiar as those of Socrates. But Socrates does not attribute his beliefs
to special advice from Apollo. Rather, he believes that the truth of these
propositions can be made evident through intellectual examination and
rational argument. In fact, Socrates takes these ideas to be absolutely
certain, observable facts of human nature, no more "opinions" or "beliefs"
than the idea that drinking contaminated water makes us sick.

If we look at human behavior from the Athenian agora to Wall Street,
however, we find little support for Socrates' ideas. Most people don't live
as though they agree with Socrates. Many contemporary Americans, like
ancient Athenians, believe that success, wealth, power, and fame-not moral
virtue-are the keys to happiness. Human opinion does not see virtue as the
way to the "good life," and human behavior has not changed much in two
thousand years.

Nonetheless, the fact that most people disagree with him would not convince
Socrates that he was wrong. He would simply find it irrelevant. Socrates
takes it as an empirical fact that virtue is necessary for happiness and
that when we do something wrong, we are hurt by it. This is a truism of
human nature, he believes. And when he talks about virtue as the health of
the soul, this is not some figure of speech. Socrates means it literally. No
one can be fully healthy without moral virtue. In that unethical people lack
certain capacities and strengths, they are genuinely unhealthy. And they are
made that way by their wrongdoing.

How did Socrates try to argue for these odd ideas: that we cannot be happy
without moral virtue and that unethical actions actually harm the soul of
those who perform them?

B) Philosophical Interpretation

The fact is that Socrates did not provide us with a fully developed
explanation and conclusive proof of these ideas. Socrates wrote down nothing
himself, and even Plato's account of Socrates' ideas is incomplete. Getting
less than we want in explanation of a philosopher's ideas is not, however,
an unusual problem when we study the history of philosophy, particularly
when we talk about thinkers who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Many writings have been lost forever over the years, and for some thinkers,
we have only a small portion of what they wrote or even simply a few
fragments.

So what do we do about this? Speculate and interpret. We look at the
writings we do have, and we try to fill in the gaps as best we can. We try
to imagine what Socrates, for example, might have meant by certain ideas or
how he might have answered our questions. We take what we know for certain
as our point of reference and see what other ideas are consistent with this.
Thus, when we do philosophy, not only do we speculate about life's basic
issues, but we often also speculate about the missing pieces of a
philosopher's thought. When we do this, we must keep in mind that our
speculations might not be correct, and we have to remain open to opposing
interpretations. Nonetheless, sometimes speculation and interpretation are
our only choice.

In working out Socrates' ideas that happiness stems from virtue and that
vice harms the doer, then, we are forced to speculate. We begin with
teachings that Socrates unquestionably held, but in short order we enter the
world of philosophical interpretation.

What might Socrates mean by these unusual ideas? Let's begin with his idea
that vice harms the doer. That will lay the groundwork for his belief that
virtue is all we need for happiness.

C) How Vice Changes Us: An Ordinary Example

The idea that doing wrong harms the doer is a prominent Socratic idea, yet
it is puzzling. Socrates says, "Wrongdoing is in every way harmful and
shameful to the wrongdoer." It is so harmful, counsels Socrates in the
Platonic dialogue Crito, that even if somebody else hurts us first, "we
should never do wrong in return, nor injure any man, whatever injury we have
suffered at his hands."* But precisely how are we hurt if we do something
wrong? How are we harmed if we hurt somebody else, especially if they have
already wronged us? And what is it that we have to lose?

*Plato wrote his dialogues using Socrates as the main character. This, of
course, produces problems of philosophical interpretation because the
Socrates in the dialogue ultimately becomes a mouthpiece for Plato's ideas.
However, scholars generally agree that the Crito is one of the "Socratic"
dialogues in which we can take the Socrates of the dialogue to be speaking
ideas held by Socrates himself.

At stake here is what Socrates calls "that part of ourselves that is
improved by just actions and destroyed by unjust actions." Today we call
this our character, or our personality, or our self. As you saw earlier, the
Greeks called it the soul. Whatever we call it, it is that essence which we
feel is most uniquely who we really are, and Socrates takes it to be far
more important than our bodies.

Because Socrates believes that moral virtue is all we need to be happy, the
only thing he sees as harmful is something that makes us less able to be
virtuous-and therefore less able to be happy. Unethical actions corrupt us
and break down our ability to act virtuously. Thus, each unethical act makes
it more likely that we will act unethically in the future by weakening those
capacities and faculties we need in order to act more morally.

At first, Socrates' belief that doing wrong hurts the wrongdoer may strike
you as odd. Hurting other people-that seems obvious. But hurting
ourselves-that seems unlikely.

Yet take a simple example. Most people think there is something wrong with
telling lies. (Virtually all of us do it at one time or another, but we
still believe something is not quite right about it.) Think back to your
first lie. It was probably after you had disobeyed your parents and knew
you'd be in trouble if they found out. That first lie was probably hard to
tell, and you probably felt guilty afterwards. But if your parents believed
you, you found out that lying can get you out of some tough spots. Now think
of your second lie, your third lie, and on down the line. Odds are that it
got easier and you felt less guilty the more you did it. At this point in
your life, you probably feel that lying is not as wrong as you once thought
it was, and you probably feel less guilty when you do it.

The question here is, what has happened to you? Socrates would say that
you've been corrupted by this whole, gradual process. You haven't turned
into Jack the Ripper, but you are less likely now to tell the truth than you
were before. You've lost some ground. Getting away with lying lowers our
resistance to it in the future. It makes it easier to do, and increases the
odds that we will do it again in tight spots. It also changes our thinking
about how wrong it is. Most people come to feel that there is some good in
any act that gets you out of trouble.

How did this happen to you? Did someone force this on you? No, you chose it
each time, little by little, by doing what you did. Your allegiance to the
truth lessened, even if only to a small degree, with each falsehood.
Socrates would argue that you harmed, or weakened, yourself each time by
acting unethically. He would claim that it's now less likely and more
difficult for you to do the right thing and tell the truth in a tight spot.

Whether or not you agree that you've been harmed or weakened in this
process, you have been changed by it. What you do and what you think about
what you do have been changed by actions that were initially at odds with
your original values. So Socrates' argument has a common-sense validity. We
haven't seen enough specifics about precisely how you were harmed for you to
judge whether you completely accept this notion, but you can probably agree
that the process actually exists.

D) How Vice Harms Us: An Example from the Gorgias

If the process that Socrates is talking about is plausible, is his claim
that it leads to serious harm equally plausible? If we are to have good
reason to be ethical, we should also have good reason not to be unethical.
So far, however, we are still missing a description of exactly how Socrates
sees such vice harming us.

An excellent place to find such a description is in the ideas attributed to
Socrates in the philosophical dialogue entitled Gorgias.* This dialogue
begins with a discussion of the value of rhetoric (the art of public
speaking). Soon, however, the question of how we should live our lives and
the value of moral virtue comes up, and it takes over the discussion.

*Like the Crito, mentioned above, the Gorgias is considered to be one of
Plato's "Socratic" dialogues in which we can take the Socrates of the
dialogue to be speaking ideas held by Socrates himself.

Four characters speak in the dialogue. There is Socrates, of course. Then
there is Gorgias, a well-known and highly respected teacher of public
speaking, for whom the dialogue is named. Gorgias travels from city to city
teaching the skills of rhetoric, and, at the beginning of the dialogue, he
has just arrived in Athens. Such teachers were common in ancient Greece and
they were particularly popular in Athens where speaking eloquently was
essential to success. Athens was a democracy in which any citizen could
speak at the city's democratic Assembly, and politics was at the heart of
the city's life. The key to success in Athens was a reputation as an
intelligent and effective speaker.** The third character, Polus, is Gorgias'
rambunctious young student and follower. And then there is Callicles.

**Teachers like Gorgias were commonly called "sophists." Originally the term
"sophist," which means "expert in wisdom," or just "wise man," was a title
of respect. Gradually, however, a group of sophists arose who were less
concerned with teaching how to argue honestly than with teaching rhetorical
tricks that would help you in court or in the Assembly even if your case
were bad and your reasoning weak. At this point, "sophist" came to mean
something akin to "shyster." You can'see a residue of this idea in modern
English. To engage in "sophistry" or to argue "sophistically" today is to
use linguistic trickery. If someone calls you a sophist, you may safely take
it as an insult.

Callicles is a bright, ambitious young Athenian who is hungry for wealth and
power. He is talented, educated, refined - but also quite immoral. He
believes that people who are bright and cunning should rule the city because
they are superior to the rest of the citizenry. He also thinks the strong
should take whatever they want as long as they can get away with it, and
indulge themselves in all kinds of pleasures as well. He rejects fairness,
equality, and moderation as conventional ideas of morality which he
dismisses as ways that inferior people make virtues out of their own
weaknesses and hold superior people in check. It is in Socrates' discussion
with Callicles that we get a clear picture of the harm vice does. After all,
considering how unethical-and dangerous-Callicles is, he ought to be a prime
example of the damage wrongdoing can do.

- Setting Up the Issue

The dialogue starts as a conversation between Socrates and Gorgias about the
nature of rhetoric. Gorgias sings the praises of the art he teaches, but
Socrates points out its weaknesses - especially that it can be used for
unjust ends.

At this point Polus speaks up. Unlike Gorgias, who is a man of great
integrity, Polus is not really bothered by the abuse of rhetoric. The
discussion slides from the nature of rhetoric to how we ought to live, and
Polus holds up the example of Archelaus, the king of Macedonia, who acquired
his throne through injustice and brutality. To be a tyrant and to have your
evil go unpunished, claims Polus, is a life that everyone envies.
Disagreeing, Socrates argues that doing wrong, particularly if you go
unpunished, is the greatest of evils. It is always better, argues Socrates,
to be the victim of injustice rather than the person who does it. Polus
laughs at Socrates, but eventually he is shamed into silence. In the
presence of his teacher, the virtuous Gorgias, he is obviously embarrassed
to press his point with Socrates.

Callicles, however, has no such shame. Taking up the dialogue at this point,
Callicles too ridicules Socrates' idea that the key to happiness lies in
moral virtue. Then he launches into a passionate defense of the unbridled
pursuit of pleasure and of the strong dominating the weak. "A man who is
going to live a full life," proclaims Callicles,

"must allow his desires to become as mighty as may be and never repress
them. When his passions have come to full maturity, he must be able to serve
them through his courage and intelligence and gratify every fleeting desire
as it comes into his heart. This, I fancy, is impossible for the mob. That
is why they censure the rest of us, because they are ashamed of themselves
and want to conceal their own incapacity. And, of course, they maintain that
licentiousness is disgraceful, as I said before, since they are trying to
enslave men of a better nature. Because they cannot accomplish the
fulfillment of their own desires, they sing the praises of temperance and
justice out of the depths of their own cowardice. But take men who have come
of princely stock, men whose nature can attain some commanding position, a
tyranny, absolute power; what could be lower and baser than temperance and
justice for such men who, when they might enjoy the good things of life
without hindrance, of their own accord drag in a master to subdue them- the
law, the language, and the censure of the vulgar? How could such men fail to
be wretched under the sway of your "beauty of justice and temperance" when
they can award nothing more to their friends than to their enemies? And
that, too, when they are the rulers of the state! The truth, which you claim
to pursue, Socrates, is really this- luxury, license, and liberty, when they
have the upper hand, are really virtue, and happiness as well, everything
else is a set of fine terms, man-made conventions, warped against nature, a
pack of stuff and nonsense!"
-Gorgias

This speech sets the terms of a long debate between Socrates and Callicles
that dominates the rest of the dialogue. The philosopher champions virtue
and self-control-a life of being "one's own ruler." The aspiring politician
endorses the uncontrolled and self-interested pursuit of pleasure by
whatever means you can get away with.

In the ensuing discussion, Socrates goes on to identify two distinct ways we
harm ourselves when we do something wrong. Our ability to control ourselves
is weakened, and so is our intellect. Although Socrates did not put it in
these words, we might interpret him as saying that when we do wrong we
weaken our strength of will and our moral vision. In other words, Socrates
suggests that vice destroys precisely those qualities that, as we saw above,
characterize the healthy soul.

- The Wine Jar Metaphor: Desires and Strength of Will

Socrates would surely see Callicles as an example of someone who's been
badly damaged by vice. And the first thing Socrates would point to is that
Callicles' remarks show that he has lost control over his desires. What
Callicles takes as a strength, Socrates regards as a weakness.

Trying to show Callicles the error of his ways, Socrates contrasts the
uncontrolled life his opponent praises with that of a self-controlled and
ethical person. To illustrate his point, he draws an analogy to wine
jars-some intact, others leaky. "See if you do not say," proposes Socrates,

"that, in a fashion, this metaphor expresses the difference between the two
lives-, the self-controlled and the unrestrained. There are two men, both of
whom have many jars; those of the first are sound and full, one of wine,
another of honey, a third of milk, and many others have a multitude of
various commodities, yet the source of supply is meager and hard to obtain
and only procurable with a good deal of exertion. Now the first man, when he
has filled his jars, troubles no more about procuring supplies, but, so far
as they are concerned, rests content; but the other man, though his source
of supply is difficult also, yet still possible, and his vessels are
perforated and rotten, is forced to keep on trying to fill them both night
and day on pain of suffering the utmost agony."
-Gorgias

The healthy, self-controlled individual is like a solid wine jar, while
someone like Callicles, an unethical person who gives in to his desires, is
like the leaking wine jar. If you are like a leaky wine jar, Socrates
suggests, you inevitably feel the growing hunger of desire, no matter what
you do. And the longer you wait to "fill up," the worse you feel. Thus, your
desires run your life. You must constantly satisfy them or feel pain. By
contrast, if you are like the solid wine jar, you are content and
untroubled. You do not feel the growing craving of unsatisfied desire and
you can do with your life what you want, not what your desires compel you to
do.

Thus, the unethical person's ability to experience a stable sense of
contentment or satisfaction has been harmed. Someone like Callicles cannot
be satisfied because his desires are unchecked and any satisfaction is only
temporary. If an unethical person is like a leaky wine jar, then he or she
is ultimately unsatisfiable. As soon as she feels a comfortable contentment
or fulfillment, the feeling starts slipping away. She is then unsatisfied
again and looking around for her next thrill. And this pattern simply
repeats itself over and over.

Not surprisingly, Callicles is unpersuaded. He rejects Socrates' ideas,
saying that the life of someone like the intact wine jar is dull and boring,
"For the man who is full has no longer the slightest taste for pleasure; his
life is the life of a stone. Once he is sated, he no longer feels pleasure
or pain. But in the other life is the true pleasure of living, with the
greatest possible intake." Callicles constantly needs new gratifications of
his desires in order to feel pleasure. He finds no stimulation in a
temperate and ethical life which includes only what he has rightfully
earned.

Most of us would not succeed if we tried to live as Callicles recommends.
Constantly finding new sources of pleasure-more money, more power, new jobs,
new successes, different lovers, new drugs, exotic places to travel to-is a
tall order. Of course, Callicles believes that a truly superior man, a man
such as he is, will be able to do this. Surely, he thinks, this refutes the
idea that he has been damaged in any way. Socrates, of course, disagrees.

The key to this dispute is who is in control. Callicles himself describes
the situation as one in which he ministers to his desires. He does not see,
however, that this makes him weaker than his own desires-in fact, the
servant of those desires. It is not whether someone can satisfy his or her
desires that matters to Socrates, but whether a person is his or her "own
ruler." An ethical person like Socrates can decide which of his desires
he'll satisfy. Callicles does not have this choice-his only decision is how
to satisfy them. His desires control his life. Furthermore, if Socrates is
correct and the desires of someone like Callicles (a leaky wine jar) are
ultimately unsatisfiable, the whole project is doomed to fail.

In other words, someone like Callicles does not have the strength of will to
resist his own desires. In Socrates' opinion, when a man goes from virtue to
vice, his "wine jar" goes from being solid to leaky, and that individual has
lost some power over his own life.

- Noncognitive Harm: Insatiable Desires & Loss of Control

The first kind of harm that comes from vice, then, is that the person who
indulges in it is uncontrolled and intemperate. Socrates' wine jar analogy
inplies that the intemperate person lives a life that is out of her or his
own control. Driven by the need to satisfy the gnawing hunger of unfulfilled
want, unethical individuals experience only fleeting satisfactions because
such people are essentially unsatisfiable. This literally compels them to
seek more and different pleasures.

There are three important points here. First, the fact that a vice-ridden
person's desires become insatiable means that at least part of the harm vice
does affects the noncognitive dimension of the human personality. That is,
the first kind of harm that Socrates points out involves not the mind, but
the will and our feelings of desire and satisfaction. The point at which we
are satisfied by food, money, sex, power, or whatever is largely a
psychological, not an intellectual matter. For example, people with eating
disorders "know" perfectly well that their behavior makes no sense. Some
psychological difficulty beyond their conscious control, however, makes them
unable to control themselves. If we become "leaky wine jars," the
psychological mechanism that produces our sense that our wants have been
satisfied has been disabled. In this case, instead of feeling a stable sense
of contentment with what we have and , how we get it, we feel unsatisfied.*

*By using modern, psychological concepts at this point, our interpretation
moves beyond notions available to the ancient Greeks. It does appear,
however, that much of the harm that Socrates describes is connected to what
we today call the "unconscious." Feelings of contentment are generally not
under our conscious control.

*One obvious example of this is eating. Many people overeat, and many are
anorexic or bulimic-despite what their minds tell them about how much food
their bodies need in order to be healthy, and despite any signals their
bodies send them. Even though such people know and, perhaps, want to act
differently, something makes them so discontent with normal eating that they
cannot stop themselves.

*Or think about some of the quirks you or your friends have. Some people
never feel that they have enough money. Others aren't satisfied to have just
one of anything - even boyfriends or girlfriends. Some can do things only
one way - theirs. Some people are not happy unless everything is neat;
others are just the opposite.

*Where do these extreme differences in what people want come from? It is
largely a function of unconscious forces in our personalities.

Second, it does seem as if genuine harm has been done. To go from master to
servant in one's own life is a significant reversal. It is much like the
dynamic of addiction in which most of the addict's life becomes geared to
gratifying the desire for whatever he or she craves. Although Socrates did
not have the concept of "addiction" that we have today, he describes it well
where he claims that the "leaky-jar" person "suffers extreme distress" if he
does not satisfy his desires. With desires this compelling, the victim will
not spend much time worrying about the ethical character of what has to be
done to satisfy them. Such a person is in a downward spiral, becoming even
more damaged, out of control, and corrupt the more he tries to satisfy his
desires.

Third, Socrates describes a behavior that seems real enough. Think about
what happens to people once they give themselves over to self-interest and
start acting unethically. Nothing is ever enough for them. Think about the
number of times you've heard about someone rich and powerful-a stockbroker,
a politician, a minister-who gets caught doing something crooked to get a
little more. Haven't you said to yourself, "I don't get it. This guy already
has it all, and now he risks losing everything." There is an ongoing stream
of such people, many of them otherwise bright, talented people who are
caught taking stupid chances for what amounts to small change. The only
explanation that makes sense is that these people somehow lost control.
Their strength of will has all but evaporated. On this evidence, at least,
we can say that Socrates has a real point in suggesting that once we cross
the line from ethical to unethical behavior to get what we want, our "wine
jar" starts to erode, and we lose some control over what we want and what we
do.

This loss of control that vice causes, then, is serious. To use an analogy
of our own, we might say that vice turns the unethical person into someone
trying to navigate a rudderless sailboat, at the mercy of the winds of his
or her own desires. If virtue and happiness are analogous to reaching a safe
harbor, this person hasn't a chance of getting there.

- Cognitive Harm: Weakened Intellect & Damaged Moral Vision

It may surprise you that the first kind of harm that Socrates sees as coming
from vice is not intellectual. After all, Socrates is a philosopher. If vice
harms the doer, you would think he would find the mind affected. And indeed
he does. We just have to dig for it.

Socrates sometimes refers to unscrupulous people who make mistakes in
judging what is actually in their own interest. Vice, he implies, has
somehow clouded their view of situations and altered their perception of
what advances their own ends.*

*For example, Socrates proposes the paradox that the tyrant with the
reputation for absolute power in re ality neither has great power nor even
the power to do what he wants. The tyrant wants what is in his in~ terest,
but Socrates believes that it is likely that such a person will do only what
seems best to him ana that his actions will in reality often be to his
disadvantage. Since the tyrant never wants what is to his o's" advantage,
Socrates argues that he often ends up doing what he does not really want to
do. If he were as powerful as he seemed, he would not make such mistakes.
Hence, the "powerful" tyrant is not powerful.

This is nothing new, of course. Take the financier, already a
multimillionaire, who gets caught cheating his way to a little more money.
To an outside observer, this man cannot be thinking straight. In terms of
what he gets by breaking the law, the risks of losing what he already has
are extremely high. A little more money, bending the rules, outwitting a few
more people-none of this adds anything significant to his life. Yet the cost
is astronomically high-public disgrace, divorce, a ruined career, dreams
shattered, jail.

What was he-and everyone like him-thinking when he took the first step over
the line and then got himself in deeper and deeper? He must have thought
something-he is a bright, accomplished, highly rational person. But somehow
he just didn't think straight. Socrates would probably say that he didn't
think straight because he couldn't think straight. His earlier unethical
behavior had dramatically eroded that ability.

Part of that erosion occurs in what we can call someone's conscience, or
their moral vision-their basic sense of right and wrong. Like Callicles,
people who have suffered this damage come to believe that ordinary ideas of
right and wrong do not apply to them. There also seems to be additional
damage to one's practical ability to identify and carry out what is truly in
one's own interest. Wrongdoers end up misreading the odds, misjudging the
likelihood of getting away with their deeds, and taking chances so foolish
that they are sure to be caught.

Common sense shows you how Socrates might be right when he implies that vice
harms its doer by causing us to lose some control over our desires. Now you
can see as well the validity of the idea that vice also causes the rational
faculties to deteriorate.

- Callicles as the Embodiment of Vice

Because Callicles embodies so clearly what Socrates regards as vice, he
should also display the full range of the harm Socrates alleges that vice
does. Callicles certainly endorses the unordered, intemperate, and
licentious life as the path to happiness. We might expect, then, that he
lives that way himself, that is, out of control. If so, then we can also
expect to see signs of a weakened intellect. In fact, the way that Socrates
responds to Callicles' entry into the conversation suggests just such a
possibility.

Callicles begins by asking Socrates if he really means what he has been
saying to Polus-that it is worse to be the doer than to be the victim of
injustice. Instead of answering directly, however, Socrates starts by
pointing out how out of control Callicles is. Socrates describes Callicles
as someone enslaved by the idea of pleasing the two current loves of his
life-one, a beautiful young man, the other, the Athenian public.*

*It may or may not surprise you that homosexuality and bisexuality were
quite acceptable among upper-class men in ancient Greece. Socrates is
implying no criticism of Callicles on this score, at least.

Socrates remarks,

"How I have noticed that in each instance, whatever your favorite says,
however his opinions may go, for all your cleverness you are unable to
contradict him, but constantly shift back and forth at his whim. If you are
making a speech in the Assembly and the Athenian public disagrees, you
change and say what it desires- and in the presence of the beautiful young
son of Pyrilampes your experience is precisely similar. You are unable to
resist the plans or the assertions of your favorite; and the result of this
is that if anyone were to express surprise at what you say on various
occasions under the influence of your loves, you would tell him, if you
wanted to speak true, that unless uour favorites can be prevented from
speaking as they do, neither can you."
-Gorgias

Socrates' unflattering remarks reinforce our picture of Callicles as someone
who can control neither his desires nor the behavior those desires dictate.
In the hope of getting their approval, and probably something more than
that, Callicles cannot resist agreeing with either of his two loves-the boy
or the people in the Assembly. And because each is fickle, Callicles is also
constantly changing. Of course, this is in keeping with Socrates' idea that
the person analogous to the "leaky wine jar" is going to be always seeking
"refilling," that is, gratification. Callicles desperately wants the
adulation of the Athenian public and their support for his rise to power in
the democracy. He is also looking for admiration and sexual pleasure from
the boy. Socrates' point is that Callicles has no strength of will. He
cannot control himself in either his professional or personal life.

Note that Socrates makes a point of saying that what Callicles says is
influenced by his desires. That Callicles' very words are now aligned with
his search for pleasure and not with his reason and the search for truth is
a major sign that his intellect has been affected by the way he is living-a
life Socrates no doubt considers far from virtue.

However, Callicles' unwillingness to change his position during his
conversation with Socrates is the most powerful sign that vice has harmed
his ability to think rationally. Callicles is Socrates' strongest opponent
in the dialogue-far stronger than Gorgias or Polus. Despite all the damage
that Callicles has presumably suffered by being unethical, his mental
faculties seem undiminished. Callicles hangs in there against Socrates; he
does not allow Socrates to refute him on trivial grounds, and he even toys
with the philosopher a couple of times in the argument to show his mastery
of the issue. Socrates gets Gorgias and Polus to back off and change their
minds, but he makes no headway with Callicles. Even though Socrates tries to
point out a number of contradictions in Callicles' position, Callicles is
convinced that he is right and that Socrates hasn't been able to show
otherwise.

Callicles no doubt thinks that he is holding his own against Socrates, that
his selfish and relentless pursuit of power and pleasure has in no way
diminished his intellectual prowess. Socrates would say, however, that the
fact that Callicles does not budge an inch in their discussion is proof
enough of the harm done to him. It is because Callicles' intellect is in
such bad shape that he believes he has held his own against Socrates.

The damage to Callicles' intellect shows up in two main ways. First, in the
course of the discussion, Socrates tries to show Callicles that as long as
he believes as he does about pleasure and power, right and wrong, his
thinking will be riddled with confusion and contradictions. Callicles simply
cannot see it. His mind has been so clouded that either he doesn't know or
he doesn't care whether he contradicts himself or not. And since tolerating
contradictions is an obvious sign of weak thinking, to disregard them in
such a cavalier fashion is a serious matter.

Second, and more important, is why contradictions don't matter to Callicles.
It's not that Callicles' unethical behavior has disabled some neurons in his
brain. Rather, we can speculate that it's because most of his mental energy
is spent on keeping himself convinced that what he thinks is right.

No doubt you have met people who are so intent on being right that they
won't listen to anybody with facts to the contrary. Or if they do listen,
they're only waiting to shoot back an answer that proves they're right. Such
people may even try to convince you that they're right about something you
don't even care about. You wonder why they're wasting their time with
you-you don't care, so who are they trying to convince? And that question is
the key to understanding what's going on here. People like this-and like
Callicles-are really trying to convince themselves that they're right. It
may look as if they're trying to convince other people, but other people
have nothing to do with it. They're talking only to themselves.

When this happens, some part of us other than our conscious mind is
controlling our life. As we have already seen, in Callicles' case it's his
physical and emotional desires. And when our desires become obsessive, the
mind is pulled in to help the cause and keep everything in place. It has to
come up with reasons for why the course we're following is the right way to
go. An outside observer, of course, does not see these as good reasons.
They're just excuses we give to people so that we don't have to consider the
possibility that we're wrong.

Psychologists call this process rationalizing. When confronted with
something negative about ourselves, we often feel internal pressure to make
ourselves feel better, and so we sometimes reinterpret our behavior to make
it seem more rational and acceptable. For example, if you do poorly on an
exam, instead of feeling regret for spending so much time in fraternity
activities and not studying very hard, you may convince yourself that
academic success is less important than being involved in campus
organizations. You change something wrong into something right. In a genuine
case of rationalization, we don't even realize that we are just making
excuses. At such times, unconscious forces rule our lives*.

*If you're sceptical about all this and tempted to downplay the power of the
unconscious, bear in mind that unconscious forces can dramatically alter our
perception of reality, block facts or memories from our awareness, and even
impel us to act in self-destructive ways. Predisposing us to believe
arguments that are objectively irrational is a relatively small matter by
comparison.

If we interpret Callicles' behavior this way, we can say that his arguments
are nothing more than a sophisticated set of rationalizations that keep him
from seeing his condition. Because Callicles' intellect now serves his
desires, he is forced to reinterpret how he lives justifying it to himself
as rational, sensible, and defensible. He has been completely fooled by his
own greed, lust, and ambition.*

*Be sure to realize that all this talk about rationalization and unconscious
mechanisms is part of our speculation about and interpretation of Socrates'
ideas. The ancient Greeks, after all, did not have a modern concept of the
unconscious, and we certainly cannot say that Socrates did or necessarily
would put thing this way.

*However, the human psyche hasn't significantly changed in the last two
thousand years, and the unconscious was as much a part of the actions of
ancient Athenians as of anyone today. The force of the un conscious is at
times painfully apparent, and Socrates must have noticed it, even if he did
not have a con venient way of referring to it. In essence, this
interpretation of Socrates' ideas suggests that using 3 contemporary concept
may let us better understand this ancient thinker's claims. This kind of
interprets tion is allowable in philosophy as long as we acknowledge what we
are doing and accept the limitations of such speculation.

E) A Common-Sense Assessment

Socrates sees virtue as necessary for the health of our "souls" and vice as
unhealthy. Vice, he suggests, harms the doer in two specific ways.

First, when we get caught up in the selfish pursuit of our own ends at
others' expense, we damage a basic mechanism within ourselves that gives us
emotional stability and a sense of satisfaction, or contentment, with our
lives. This means that we lose some control over ourselves. We don't remain
content once our desires are satisfied, and we're driven to find and gratify
more needs. Ultimately, our desires become insatiable. We're never really
happy, we just want, want, want.

Second, when we becomes slaves to our desires, our minds are pulled into
their service too. Our intellects become dulled, we may become less
sensitive to important contradictions in our thoughts or behavior, and
internal pressures cause us to devise rationalizations that keep us on the
path we've chosen. We may explain to others-but primarily to ourselves-that
such behavior is reasonable, good, and fulfilling. But we're only kidding
ourselves, and we don't even know it.

Such a claim about the harm done by vice seems to make sense. Most of us
already know that as we do unethical things, they get easier to do and
harder to resist. Ultimately, we lose our sense that anything is really
wrong with them. If you've ever cheated on a test, for example, you know
that it's easier to do the next time and easier to live with. Or look at
someone you know who manipulates people all the time. He doesn't hurt others
on purpose. He believes he's only doing what is best for himself, his
company, or some cause he believes in, and he doesn't see the suffering he
causes. Or take a millionaire who gets caught cheating to avoid paying the
sales tax on her jewelry purchases. Somehow these people could not see how
foolish they are.

This is what corruption is all about. It involves a deterioration of
strengths and abilities accompanied by blindness to what is happening. Do
you think that corrupt people think they are corrupt? Hardly. They think
they've finally gotten smart, or courageous, or realistic. They think they
have now found the guts to do what ordinary people dare not do. And when
they're caught, do they think that punishment is justified? No, they feel
that they were trapped unfairly and that they are being held to unreasonable
standards while the real crooks get away with murder.

People are not born corrupt. And in most cases no one coerces them into
corruption. How, then, does it happen? Unethical behavior starts with a free
choice. But once made, people are drawn in deeper and deeper until their
"souls" have sustained serious harm.
Our speculation that this damage takes place on an unconscious level also
makes Socrates' claim that vice harms the doer more plausible. The fact that
self-interest, greed, jealousy, and hatred lead people into self-destructive
behavior, the risks of which they cannot assess rationally, is explained
more effectively by an unconscious process than a conscious one. Even though
Socrates himself does not put it this way, his ideas are supported by a
contemporary psychological understanding of the human personality.

Is Socrates right that vice harms the doer? Without a doubt.

By now you should be able to guess why Socrates thinks that we need to live
virtuous lives in order to be happy. If acting unethically affects both our
ability to be satisfied and our ability to see things clearly, no matter how
much money, beauty, power, or success we have, we will never be content. We
will constantly want more. And our vision will be so distorted that we will
see things incorrectly, make mistakes, and probably get caught. This is not
the path to happiness.

Socrates thinks of happiness as a state of stable contentment produced by
satisfying desires that are reasonable and within our power. For this we
need to have a realistic view of what is within our reach, enough
self-control to keep our desires within bounds, and the good sense not to
take foolish, self-destructive risks. And, as we have seen, Socrates claims
that we retain these capacities only if we are virtuous. Not that we must
live like saints to be happy. But living a decent life is the only way to
get the inner contentment, freedom, and self-control that we need to feel
good about life. As Socrates expresses it to Polus, "I call a good and
honorable man or woman happy, and one who is unjust and evil wretched. . . .
You believe it is possible for a happy man to be wrong and be unjust, . . .
and I say this is impossible."

F) What About a Moderate Callicles?

Despite the common-sense validity of Socrates' ideas, you may have some
doubts about all of this. "This talk about self-control, rationality,
virtue, and happiness seems all well and good," you might say, "but isn't it
possible to be a really successful unethical individual? The trick is to let
your desires grow, but not let them get out of hand, to be prudent in your
larceny, to assess the odds of success and failure realistically. In short,
if you can be a moderate and more restrained Callicles, you'll have the
happiest life imaginable. You'll get most of what you want, you'll be
satisfied with it, and you won't get caught."

This brings us full circle to the unprincipled person with the reputation
for integrity that we saw Plato describe and reject at the start of this
chapter. The problem is, however, that a "moderate Callicles" may simply be
impossible. There are too many highly intelligent, successful, talented
people who run foolish risks, make mistakes, and get caught to suggest that
everyone who gets mired in scandal is second rate. It does seem that
objective judgment is one of the first casualties of moral corruption. And
if the harm done by vice does take place on an unconscious level, it's no
surprise that these people couldn't control how corrupt they were becoming.

Socrates' "wine jar" analogy becomes useful again here. Unethical behavior
erodes the "wine jar" of our "soul," and as the jar's contents leak out, the
bottom becomes more and more porous. Aware of the empty feeling, we are
gradually overwhelmed by our desire to fill up again. We can neither control
our desires nor maintain our rational perspective. We become like the addict
who believes that his next fix is worth any risks to get the money to pay
for it.

You still may not be convinced by this. Perhaps you think that we don't know
about truly capable wrongdoers because they never get caught. However, the
point here is not to settle the issue unequivocally. Rather, when we
confront a philosophical position without as much detail as we need to
answer it, we can only try to understand what these ideas might mean and to
consider the plausibility of our interpretation. At this point, we can say
that our interpretation fits well enough with what we know of the human
psyche that it deserves serious consideration.

G) Repairing the Damage Vice Does

The two main consequences of vice that we speculated about occur largely in
the unconscious. The essence of Socrates' claim that vice harms the doer,
then, is that it affects that part of the personality that lies beneath our
conscious awareness. Thus, the overwhelming danger of vice is that it hurts
us in ways that we cannot see, and also builds a psychological mechanism
that keeps it in place even after we have noticed a problem. Does the fact
that we cannot see the damage as it is being done mean that it cannot be
repaired. It's not easy, but it can be done.

Sometimes people do not get the point until they have suffered severe
consequences as a result of their own vice. Confronting hard, cold
reality-getting caught, fired, jailed, having those you love leave you-can
shock some people into realizing they were deceiving themselves, and only
themselves-The world did not work the way they thought it did. Seeing the
ruin they brought on themselves, they are then willing to approach life
differently.

It doesn't always have to be so painful, however. Socrates thought that a
"diseased" soul could be healed by getting the afflicted person to see that
he can never be happy the way he is living. Psychologists and psychiatrists
today also think that unconscious mechanisms can be neutralized and
dismantled if they are brought up into conscious awareness. We might say,
then, that in his dialogues Socrates aims to bring these self-defeating
unconscious mechanisms to the surface. He engages people in exhaustive
conversations trying to get them to see the truth about their behavior. He
attempts to convince them that as long as they believe that moral virtue is
not the most important thing in their life, they cannot be happy. And if the
conversation concentrated on an interlocutor's most deeply held beliefs
about what is important in life, an encounter with Socrates could be a very
powerful emotional experience-the kind that can get you to doubt some of
your most basic values and loosen the grip of unconscious forces.

But you don't need a Socrates to do this. Socrates often told people that
"the unexamined life is not worth living." In other words, if you don't
scrutinize your own life, you may not realize that you're making some fairly
significant moral compromises while thinking that there's no problem. The
unexamined soul may very well be an unhealthy soul, and the unhealthy soul
lacks the freedom, control, and perspective that Socrates thinks is
necessary for true human happiness.

One of the most useful things that philosophy can do for you is to train
your mind so that you can examine your own life. If you're truthful with
yourself, you will notice when you start to give in to excessive desires, to
let your wants control you, and to rationalize indefensible behavior. And if
you're thinking right, you can correct yourself before you go too far.

Discovering philosophy / Thomas I. White. --Brief ed.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0135080037/