Plato’s Gorgias begins with a scene that could borrow the soundtrack from Westside
Story. Gorgias, a famous orator, has
just demonstrated his talents before an audience at the house of a wealthy and
powerful Athenian politician named Callicles.
The two are standing with a third trained orator, Polus, as people do
after the show is over, when Socrates and his entourage approach. You can easily imagine Socrates’ student Chaerephon
and whoever else is with them‑Plato? Xenophon?‑snapping their fingers in rhythm
with the swing of the orchestra. The
first word of the dialogue is Πολέμου, the
Greek word for war.
Socrates engages in three dialogues,
with Gorgias, Polus, and then Callicles.
A lot of the next two thousand years of the history of philosophy play
out before your eyes. I concentrate here
on his conversation with Polus.
Polus has been trained in the art
of persuasion. He believes that this art
can empower him to convince anyone of anything.
That means that he can convince a jury of his or anyone else’s innocence
regardless of the evidence. He has a get
out of jail free card.
Why is such a power
valuable? To Polus, it is obvious: you
can abuse, rob, or kill anyone you want to.
He thinks everyone would want such a power and is charmed by the thought
that he, unlike almost everyone else, possesses it. The power to kill without regard to justice
is his treasure.
Socrates destroys Polus with a
simple disjunctive syllogism. He asks
Polus which is better: to do injustice without paying a penalty or to do
injustice and suffer the penalty? Polus
insist that the first is obviously better than the second. So far, so good. Then Socrates asks which is more disgusting? Polus admits the obvious. To do injustice and get away with it is disgusting.
It seems that Polus could hardly
deny it. His name is pronounced almost
the same as polis, the Greek word for the political community. How do we, the people of this polis‑Athens,
the United States of America‑see it when we think that someone has done a
terrible thing and gotten away with it?
We are disgusted.
The Greek word for disgusting is αἴσχιον. It indicates both moral and physical ugliness.
It is frequently translated as “shameful”
or “foul.” Socrates points out that if
something is αἴσχιον it is either unpleasant or bad for you
or both.
I offer my own illustrations. Spoiled meat is unpleasant and bad for
you. Reattaching a severed finger by the
application of leaches is disgusting enough, but good for you if it works. Shooting heroin is the very opposite of unpleasant;
it is, however, disgusting because it is very bad for you.
Since killing with impunity is
not unpleasant to the murderer at least, it must be bad for you. You shouldn’t do it, if you know what you are
doing.
Here is the disjunctive syllogism. If killing without penalty is disgusting,
then either it is unpleasant or it is bad for you. It isn’t unpleasant to kill without penalty
(it’s exquisite! Polus insists).
Therefore; it is bad for you.
1. (D É (U Ú B))
2. D
3. (U Ú B)
4. ~U
5. \ B
If you don’t follow the symbolic
logic, take my word for it. This is a
logically valid proof. If the premises
are true, the conclusion is inescapable.
At this point I can introduce a
little biosocial science. The same part
of the brain that is engaged when we sense something physically disgusting‑running
sores or spoiled meat‑is engaged when we view something morally disgusting‑someone
abusing a child or cheating a friend. If
the one clearly functions to help us avoid what is bad for us, it is likely
that the latter functions the same way.
Today I read a study by Tom R.
Kupfer and Roger Giner-Sorolla: Communicating Moral Motives: The Social Signaling
Function of Disgust, from the journal Social
Psychology and Personality Science.
The results of the study indicate that when someone expresses disgust in
reaction to some moral violation such as cheating a friend, she is signaling to
others that she cares about moral principles and is prepared to join others in
enforcing them. That is good for her because
it attracts other similar partners. It
is good for us, because it makes it possible for us to trust one another and so
cooperate more effectively.
At some point in our evolutionary
history, our biological capacity for disgust was harnessed by our evolved psychological
mechanisms for cooperation. Doing injustice
without paying a price may be good for the individual in the short run but it
is bad for the political community and therefore bad for its members in the
long run.
Socrates didn’t know about
evolution. He understood the truth about
justice and injustice perfectly. Only
now is modern science catching up to him.
