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Page 1 of 2

  • Introduction

  • Edited by J. Clerk Shaw, University of Tennessee
  • Book:
    Plato's Gorgias
    Published online:
    25 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024, pp 1-6

  • Summary

    Late in the Gorgias, Socrates urges Callicles to take their conversation seriously and speak his mind: “for our discussion is about this: how one should live” (500b–c). Many find the work’s treatment of this topic profoundly moving. An example in antiquity is the Corinthian farmer who supposedly abandoned farming for philosophy after reading the Gorgias. The dialogue’s effect is not usually so drastic, but the Gorgias still speaks urgently to many readers on this central question we all face.

  • Chapter 4 - Socrates and Coherent Desire (Gorgias 466a–468e)

  • Edited by J. Clerk Shaw, University of Tennessee
  • Book:
    Plato's Gorgias
    Published online:
    25 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024, pp 68-86

  • Summary

    Polus admires orators for their tyrannical power. However, Socrates argues that orators and tyrants lack power worth having: the ability to satisfy one’s wishes or wants (boulêseis). He distinguishes wanting from thinking best, and grants that orators and tyrants do what they think best while denying that they do what they want. His account is often thought to involve two conflicting requirements: wants must be attributable to the wanter from their own perspective (to count as their desires), but wants must also be directed at objects that are genuinely good (in order for failure to satisfy them to matter). We offer an account of wanting as reflective, coherent desire, which allows Socrates to satisfy both desiderata. We then explain why he thinks that orators and tyrants want to act justly, though they do greater injustices than anyone else and so frustrate their own wants more than anyone else.

Plato's Gorgias
  • A Critical Guide
  • Edited by J. Clerk Shaw
  • Published online:
    25 May 2024
    Print publication:
    30 May 2024
  • Plato's Gorgias depicts a conversation between Socrates and a number of guests, which centers on the question of how one should live. This "choice of lives" is presented both as a choice between philosophy and ordinary political rhetoric, and as a choice between justice and injustice. The essays in this Critical Guide offer detailed analyses of each of the main candidates in the choice of lives, and of how the advocates for these ways of life understand and argue with each other. Several essays also relate the Gorgias to the philosophical and political context of its time and place. Together, these features of the volume illuminate the interpretive issues in the Gorgias and enable readers to achieve a thorough understanding of the philosophical issues which the work raises.

Plato's Anti-hedonism and the Protagoras
  • J. Clerk Shaw
  • Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    02 April 2015
  • Plato often rejects hedonism, but in the Protagoras, Plato's Socrates seems to endorse hedonism. In this book, J. Clerk Shaw removes this apparent tension by arguing that the Protagoras as a whole actually reflects Plato's anti-hedonism. He shows that Plato places hedonism at the core of a complex of popular mistakes about value and especially about virtue: that injustice can be prudent, that wisdom is weak, that courage is the capacity to persevere through fear, and that virtue cannot be taught. The masses reproduce this system of values through shame and fear of punishment. The Protagoras and other dialogues depict sophists and orators who have internalized popular morality through shame, but who are also ashamed to state their views openly. Shaw's reading not only reconciles the Protagoras with Plato's other dialogues, but harmonizes it with them and even illuminates Plato's wider anti-hedonism.

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