Socrates constructs two arguments in Gorgias to pummel Callicles’ stance on hedonism. The first argument argues that because happiness and wretchedness must be mutually exclusive but pleasure and pain are mutually inclusive, pleasure is not happiness. The second argument states that only good men can have happiness, but both good and bad men feel pleasure or pain to a similar extent in the same circumstance, pleasure is not pain. In this paper, I will explain the premises and conclusion of each argument and criticize the question begging and show the mutual inclusivity of extreme human emotions like happiness and wretchedness for the first argument, and attack Socrates’ unfair and self-contradicting application of the incorrigibility of tyrants onto cowards and fools for the second argument.
Socrates subtly prescribes six premises: 1. Extreme things are mutually exclusive 2. A person cannot possess/experience two extreme qualities at the same time 3. Following from premise one, good and evil are extreme qualities and must be mutually exclusive 4. Happiness and wretchedness are opposite of each other and thus also mutually exclusive 5. Desire and pleasure are different, but may or may not be mutually exclusive 6 Having desire causes pain 7 Satisfying desire brings pleasure.
Socrates avoids to define happiness because it’s impossible, so he takes the clever approach to identify one of its necessary relationships with wretchedness and show that pleasure doesn’t have it—mutual exclusivity. Socrates artfully inserts the premise that two antithetical things are always mutually exclusive. Callicles accepts this condition by default when he agrees with Socrates’ list of supposedly mutually exclusive extreme things. Socrates makes a simple move to also present happiness as an antithesis of wretchedness and claim premise three that they are mutually exclusive, which Callicles also accepts. After establishing mutual exclusivity between wretchedness and happiness, all Socrates has to do is to demonstrate that mutual exclusivity is absent between pleasure and pain. His last step convinces Callicles to accept an example that shows the mutual inclusivity of pleasure and pain: A thirsty person who is drinking water experiences both pain and pleasure at the same time (premise six and seven). They reach this agreement easily because humans have similar sensory experiences when satisfying thirst. Since both events, pain and pleasure, are occurring at the same time when a thirsty person drinks water, they are mutually inclusive. Thus, pleasure and pain lack the necessary mutual exclusivity that happiness and wretchedness possess (premise three).
Despite Socrates’ success in defeating Callicles, his argument has two problems—question begging and the groundlessness of premise one. His argument is begging the question, so it has a serious validity issue. Premise seven already contains the conclusion. When one is thirsty, pain is already present. When one is satisfying one’s thirst, pain doesn’t disappear immediately; pain still exists and coexists with pleasure temporarily. Satisfying a desire is a gradual rather than immediate process, so urge doesn’t vanish. And premise seven captures this definite physiological phenomenon and therefore covers all scenarios when someone has an urge and tries to satisfy himself, the urge disappears slowly while he experiences satisfaction. Premise seven already implies both pleasure and pain can occur together. Premise seven and the conclusion are saying the same thing. Thus, if Callicles accepts that the mutual exclusivity is necessary for happiness (premise four) and premise seven, he has already accepted the conclusion. To grant premise seven opens an enormous loophole and builds an unhindered path for Socrates to rephrase and use it as his conclusion.
On the other hand, premise one, the building block of Socrates’ first argument, is arbitrarily established, while its truthfulness is highly questionable. I will narrow the discussion to purely extreme mental emotions that are less physiological because Socrates regards pleasure and pain as impure mental phenomena that are influenced by physiology. I will show mutual exclusivity is not always present between extreme emotions. Love and hatred are extreme pure emotions, so mutually exclusive. However, many lovers, friends, or family members hold these two extreme emotions in mind towards each other. Let’s do a thought experiment. The wife cheats on the husband, and the husband starts hating her. But they’ve been together for so many years, he still loves her. Here love and hatred are antithetic but not mutually exclusive. Similarly, hopefulness and hopelessness are direct opposite of each other because one describes the plentifulness of hope and another describes the lack of hope. Although they are disparate, I have felt them together during my darkest times. One does realize the hopefulness within the hopelessness when they know they cannot fall any farther. In the future one can only go up. However, one still senses the presence of both hopelessness and hopefulness because hopelessness doesn’t disappear immediately. Mutual exclusivity do not always hold for extreme human emotions. At least human emotions and mental states do not occur in a binary manner. Assigning mutual exclusivity to happiness and wretchedness is groundless. Human emotions can be a hodgepodge of contradictory feelings. And thus we are so conflicted.
As I have finished illustrating and assessing Socrates’ first argument, I will now move on to examine his second argument. It has six simple premises: 1. Good men are good 2. Bad men (here Socrates means cowards or fools, not evil men) are bad 3. Good men are not bad men, and vice versa 4. Only good men feel happiness because pure good only exists in something purely good (good men) 5. Good men and bad men both have the capacity to experience pain or pleasure, while bad men possibly feel them more intensely.
He uses these premises to make happiness only applicable to a few good men. Therefore, the goal is to show pleasure and pain are different from happiness and wretchedness by demonstrating both types of people feel pleasure and pain similarly. Using premise one and two, Socrates simply divides humans into only two groups, good and bad men. Premise four states that only the group of good men can feel happiness since only good men possess pure good qualities, so bad men can’t. It naturally follows that to prove that pleasure is not happiness is to make Callicles accept it’s possible for both good and bad men, not just good men, to experience pleasure and pain. The battlefield example has made the point that in the same situation, not only both good and bad men experience pleasure or pain, but also they feel them to a similar extent. Because unlike happiness, pleasure is available for both good and men, happiness and pleasure are separate things.
Although Socrates silenced his opponent, this is a sloppy argument based on a ridiculous assumption. Premise four implies cowards and fools cannot have happiness and contradicts Socrates’ earlier view on qualifications for tyrants. This premise characterizes them “powerless” and incurable as tyrants. However, they are not tyrants. Socrates treats them as such by calling them bad men to distract Callicles from his subtle shift in demonizing silly/foolish men. I will show that they are not tyrants and can still achieve happiness because they have more power, unlike the tyrant who has no chance, and why Socrates contradicts himself. It is unreasonable to put silly or foolish men into the tyrant’s category. His definition of bad men in the premise is nothing close to the tyrant whose destined misery he has argued successfully for. Cowards and fools cannot simultaneously possess the cruelty, ignorance and absolute power of tyrants. Without these three qualities, they cannot become as corrupt and unsalvageable as the tyrant. Otherwise, they will not be called cowards and fools but tyrants. Their role and fate are casually set equal to those of the tyrant who will suffer from eternal misery and lack of power. Being a coward or fool is not the absolute indicator of his inability to behave “willfully” and determine the right goals for themselves, or the total corruption of his character. Furthermore, according to Socrates, does not the coward have more power and potential than the tyrant to strive for happiness, who is the weakest among all anyway? Because coward has more power and potential, he is not incorrigible. He has room for intellectual growth and character development. The premise that disqualifies bad men from achieving happiness like tyrants is unjustified and inconsistent with Socrates’ prior argument with Gorgias, unless he justifies that cowards and fools are tyrants. Thus, his unsound argument against hedonism based on an inconsistent premise that categorizes bad men as tyrants fails to distinguish between happiness and pleasure.
Overall, Socrates’ first argument is invalid because of question begging and his both arguments are unsound because of the usage of debatable premises.
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