Socrates Good Life
What makes a person’s life good? Is it virtue? Pleasure? Power? In Plato’s Gorgias, though didn’t end up with a mutual agreement, Socrates and Callacles fight each other’s views and quarrel to come to a conclusion of the meaning of a good life. What is a good life in Socrates’ perspective? In order to get his point across, Socrates first phrases the question of what is more shameful - doing what is unjust or suffering what is unjust. For him, doing what is unjust is more shameful than suffering it. Even Polus, another philosophical figure that often clashed views with Socrates, ended up agreeing with him. However, Callicles did not. Callicles counter-argues that what Socrates is saying is only true “by law” and not “by nature.” Of course
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What Callicles views as a happy and good life seemed “insatiable [and] undisciplined,” like a leaky jar. Just like it is better for a jar to be faultless, one’s soul should be faultless also because isn’t one better off with “the orderly life, the life that is satisfied with its circumstances”? Socrates states that the leaky jar equals a life that is not orderly. He says that a good life is when one has a comfortable amount of content in one’s jar, an amount that one can handle. A bad life is when the content spills, overflows, or leaks because of the lack of discipline and restraint. A bad life is when one cannot restrain oneself from getting more than one can comfortably handle. As an analogy, he talks about two men with jars full of things that scare and difficult to come by. Man #1 doesn’t put anything more into his jars and relaxes. Man #2 has jars that are leaky and rotten, so he must constantly fill them if he does not want to suffer pain. To this, Callicles says he would rather be Man #2 because since Man #1 has filled himself up, he will experience neither joy nor pain, which is a life of a stone. For him, living pleasantly isn’t being full or content; one can experience pleasure “as much as possible flow in”, because any pleasure, even scratching an itch, is pleasure. And of course Socrates disagrees saying that it isn’t right to say all pleasure is good because pleasures can be good and bad, no matter how enjoyable …show more content…
Callicles fails to see what Socrates sees as good, and Socrates fails to see what Callicles sees as good. There is no definite answer to this question. However, I cannot help but listen to Socrates more. Maybe it was the way Callicles argued, how he attacked Socrates’ character - “…aren’t you ashamed, at your age…?” - instead of what Socrates was saying, but Callicles seemed more emotional and biased compared to Socrates’ stable and factual responses. But once I put aside the two people’s tone and choice of words, I agreed with everything that Socrates said; especially that being disciplined and law-abiding is good for the soul. Because that is truth, nothing good comes to those who disobey the law, it’s better to follow it than ignore it. However, what Socrates’ thinks is a good life seems impossible. Aren’t we all leaky jars? Aren’t we all faulty in our own ways? I feel like even if we were man #1, the one who just relaxes over his full jar, we will someday later want more or get tired of the substance in that jar and want a different substance. So is it really a good life if it’s not attainable? What Callicles sees as good is the more realistic view of this world. We are constantly working to be happy, working to be good; and sure, some people do fall in the wrong path. However, experiencing the bad in life makes you appreciate the good in life more than before. So in a
What Callicles views as a happy and good life seemed “insatiable [and] undisciplined,” like a leaky jar. Just like it is better for a jar to be faultless, one’s soul should be faultless also because isn’t one better off with “the orderly life, the life that is satisfied with its circumstances”? Socrates states that the leaky jar equals a life that is not orderly. He says that a good life is when one has a comfortable amount of content in one’s jar, an amount that one can handle. A bad life is when the content spills, overflows, or leaks because of the lack of discipline and restraint. A bad life is when one cannot restrain oneself from getting more than one can comfortably handle. As an analogy, he talks about two men with jars full of things that scare and difficult to come by. Man #1 doesn’t put anything more into his jars and relaxes. Man #2 has jars that are leaky and rotten, so he must constantly fill them if he does not want to suffer pain. To this, Callicles says he would rather be Man #2 because since Man #1 has filled himself up, he will experience neither joy nor pain, which is a life of a stone. For him, living pleasantly isn’t being full or content; one can experience pleasure “as much as possible flow in”, because any pleasure, even scratching an itch, is pleasure. And of course Socrates disagrees saying that it isn’t right to say all pleasure is good because pleasures can be good and bad, no matter how enjoyable …show more content…
Callicles fails to see what Socrates sees as good, and Socrates fails to see what Callicles sees as good. There is no definite answer to this question. However, I cannot help but listen to Socrates more. Maybe it was the way Callicles argued, how he attacked Socrates’ character - “…aren’t you ashamed, at your age…?” - instead of what Socrates was saying, but Callicles seemed more emotional and biased compared to Socrates’ stable and factual responses. But once I put aside the two people’s tone and choice of words, I agreed with everything that Socrates said; especially that being disciplined and law-abiding is good for the soul. Because that is truth, nothing good comes to those who disobey the law, it’s better to follow it than ignore it. However, what Socrates’ thinks is a good life seems impossible. Aren’t we all leaky jars? Aren’t we all faulty in our own ways? I feel like even if we were man #1, the one who just relaxes over his full jar, we will someday later want more or get tired of the substance in that jar and want a different substance. So is it really a good life if it’s not attainable? What Callicles sees as good is the more realistic view of this world. We are constantly working to be happy, working to be good; and sure, some people do fall in the wrong path. However, experiencing the bad in life makes you appreciate the good in life more than before. So in a