• Number2018
    559
    What was Socrates vs. Callicles battle about? Was that the war that wise and noble philosopher waged against sinister and unprincipled sophist? However, after scrupulous consideration, we can find that it was actually Callicles who brought the rigorous reasoning and conscientious arguments, whereas Socrates, seemingly defending his thesis “doing injustice is worse than suffering injustice”, aggressively applied a variety of sophistic techniques and resources. He systematically substituted Callicles’s arguments with other, lower ones. Thus, he turned a desire as a productive and active drive into an endless pleasure’s chasing. Yet, it looks like Socrates himself was obsessed by the desire to win by any cost. Don’t we see nowadays a triumph of desire over pleasure? The triumph of active and constructive force over passive and reproductive? But even if one would argue that pleasure (in Socrates’s sense) is dominating, anyway, today we live in Callicles’s world and not in Socrates’s.
  • bert1
    2k
    I can't remember The Sophist (is that the right one?) very well from my A-levels, but I do remember thinking Callicles' arguments in favour of might being right were stronger than Socrates' opposing reasoning.
  • gloaming
    128
    A triumph of desire over pleasure? Hardly. Hedonism is the force majeure of modern thinking, as I see it. Self indulgence is a pressure, to be sure, but it's mostly as an end-state that it is manifested in an ocean of tattooed skin, piercings, dyed hair, possession of the latest techno-gadgets, an internet awash in selfies in stills and video, forgetting carbon footprint in favour of 'skip the dishes' door-to-door prepared meals, and a number of other self-indulgences.

    I am going to side with Socrates. There is no suffering but that it is initiated in a mind capable of administering it. Prima facie, the doer is worse than the sufferer. We all suffer in some way, even apparently unjustly. But life is transitory, whereas 'our story', our legacy, or what is left of us after we did, will suffer the ignominy of having done the injustice. Those whose legacy can lay claim to have suffered are going to be much better off in the long run for having endured it or having succumbed to its ravages.
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    Those whose legacy can lay claim to have suffered are going to be much better off in the long run for having endured it or having succumbed to its ravages.gloaming

    And they'll still be just as dead as everyone else. How will they be better off for having suffered? Because someone might write a sympathetic history of their woes? Or because the gods of the afterlife when show them more mercy?
  • gloaming
    128
    What does death have to do with the topic?
  • Marchesk
    4.6k
    I thought you were talking about death when you said:

    But life is transitory, whereas 'our story', our legacy, or what is left of us after we did, — gloaming

    If not, then you're saying those of us who suffer will be better off later on in life then those who caused the suffering (I take it by being mindless consumers)?
  • Number2018
    559
    A triumph of desire over pleasure? Hardly. Hedonism is the force majeure of modern thinking, as I see it. Self indulgence is a pressure, to be sure, but it's mostly as an end-state tgloaming
    We disagree just in terms: Hedonism is based on a desire,
    and self-indulgence is a pleasure. If you write that self-indulgence is a pressure, that means that it is a result of the more fundamental process, causing an endless pleasure-chasing.
  • Number2018
    559
    I am going to side with Socratesgloaming
    Don't you think that Socrates was using his thesis just as a pretext? Indeed, he was obsessed by the desire to win by any cost.
  • gurugeorge
    514
    Hedonism is based on a desire,
    and self-indulgence is a pleasure.
    Number2018

    Hedonism is generally understood as a philosophy that sets the pursuit of pleasure (understood in the sense of pleasures that are sensorily gratifying, ecstatic, etc.) as the primary ethical goal.
  • Number2018
    559
    Hedonism is generally understood as a philosophy that sets the pursuit of pleasure (understood in the sense of pleasures that are sensorily gratifying, ecstatic, etc.) as the primary ethical goal.gurugeorge
    I replied to gloaming, who wrote:"
    Hedonism is the forcegloaming
    ".
    If we consider again Socrates's thesis:"doing injustice is worse than suffering injustice”,
    it was deciphered recently by Deleuse and Guattari as "Where one believed there was the law, there is, in fact, desire and desire alone. Justice is desire and not law."
  • gloaming
    128


    Okay, I see that I typed 'did' instead of 'die.' Sorry for not seeing my error sooner and correcting myself.

    Death is merely an inevitable condition accruing to all of us, regardless of what brings it on. So, I see it as irrelevant in and of itself. What I meant is that, once all there is to us is history, because WE ARE history :-) ..heh!...the person perpetrating the injustice will have come off worse than the person who suffered it. I believe this is what Socrates was thinking. Life is now, but the future is forever. So is the past. We don't remember the millions of faces-with-names who were tortured, killed, or otherwise diminished by the Nazis, as a typical example, but we sure know more about those who perpetrated those indignities. And not because we hold them in high regard.
  • Number2018
    559
    Scott Berman in his essay "Socrates and Callicles on Pleasure" wrote:"Socrates himself is a hedonist...
    The difference between Callicles and Socrates on the pleasure and the good is that Callicles does not take into consideration the structures of the pleasure or the pains he avoids whereas Socrates thinks that you have to take into consideration these structures."
  • Number2018
    559
    Most likely, the thesis “doing injustice is worse than suffering injustice” was constructed by Plato to back his own presentation of the event of Socrates’s death.
    So, according to Plato, Socrates preferred “suffering injustice” and actually committed "a philosophical suicide”. Is suicide still a greatest ethical choice available for us?
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