Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Apology of Socratic studies
- 2 Motivational intellectualism
- 3 The “prudential paradox”
- 4 Wrongdoing and damage to the soul
- 5 Educating the appetites and passions
- 6 Virtue intellectualism
- 7 Socrates and his ancient intellectual heirs: Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics
- Appendix: is Plato's Gorgias consistent with the other early or Socratic dialogues?
- Bibliography
- Index of passages
- General index
2 - Motivational intellectualism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Apology of Socratic studies
- 2 Motivational intellectualism
- 3 The “prudential paradox”
- 4 Wrongdoing and damage to the soul
- 5 Educating the appetites and passions
- 6 Virtue intellectualism
- 7 Socrates and his ancient intellectual heirs: Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics
- Appendix: is Plato's Gorgias consistent with the other early or Socratic dialogues?
- Bibliography
- Index of passages
- General index
Summary
WHAT WE DESIRE
Why do we do what we do?
In the Gorgias, we find an encounter between Socrates and Polus, a young follower of the sophist, Gorgias. Polus is impressed with rhetoric because he thinks a person skilled in rhetoric will be able to do whatever he wants – even to the point of becoming a tyrant who can kill off his enemies, or exile them, at will. But Socrates remains unimpressed, for although he allows that tyrants may do such things, thinking they are best, he points out that what we think is best for us is not necessarily what is really best for us. What we want, however, is what is really best for us.
SOCRATES: Now didn't we agree that we want, not those things that we do for the sake of something, but that thing for the sake of which we do them?
POLUS: Yes, very much so.
SOCRATES: Hence, we don't simply want to slaughter people, or exile them from their cities and confiscate their property as such: we want to do these things if they are beneficial, but if they're harmful we don't. For we want the things that are good, as you agree, and we don't want those that are neither good nor bad, nor those that are bad.
(468b8–c7)Socrates' view on this issue is certainly not supported by ordinary talk about the connection between desire and action (in English or in ancient Greek), which is probably one reason why Polus seems to remain suspicious of Socrates' conclusions, even as he finds himself agreeing at each step in the arguments that lead to them.
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- Socratic Moral Psychology , pp. 43 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010