In Plato’s Gorgias, which I am currently lecturing on, there is a theme that
is astonishingly relevant to Biopolitical thought. The dialogue presents a rumble between
Socrates and his students and the orator Gorgias and his. Naturally, Socrates does most of the talking. The general thematic question is “What is
rhetoric?” This quickly transforms into
the question of whether rhetoric is an art (something that can achieve some
human good) or, as Socrates argues, a species of flattery that gratifies its
practitioners and audience while doing them more harm than good.
Socrates locks horns first with
Gorgias himself, then with Gorgias’ student Polus, and finally with Gorgias’
patron in Athens, Calicles. I focus here
on the middle of the three encounters.
Polus thinks that rhetoric is something valuable because it allows one
to kill with impunity. If you can
command juries and assemblies by the power of your speech, then everyone is at
your mercy.
Socrates argues that the power
to kill without regard to justice, something that Polus admires in tyrants, is a
curse rather than a blessing. A practice
such as rhetoric is a good thing only if it is instrumental to achieving some
good purpose. This it cannot do.
To prove this, Socrates gets
Polus to admit that the power to kill with impunity but without justice is shameful even if, as Polus insists, it
is a very good thing to have. The Greek
word for shameful (aischros)
originally meant simply ugly. Socrates points out that something is ugly
for one of two reasons: either it is unpleasant or it is harmful.
This seems correct. Some things are ugly because they are
directly unpleasant, as in the example of spoiled meat. Other things are ugly because they inspire
some sense of harmful consequences, as in the example of spiders. In both cases ugliness seems to be an
instinctive warning of something harmful, though this dichotomy leaves open the
possibility that something might be immediately ugly while in fact being
good. A noxious medical procedure might
be a good example.
Polus thinks that the power to
kill someone you hate and/or someone who opposes you is clearly not unpleasant. He relishes such a power, while admitting that
it is shameful. By simple logic, then,
that power must be ultimately harmful to the one who exercises it. This effectively shuts Polus down.
I think that Socrates’ argument
is backed up by recent neuroscience. It
turns out that the part of the brain that is activated by revulsion at the
smell of rotten meat is the same part of the brain that is activated by revulsion
at immoral behavior. This suggests
(powerfully I would add) that an aversion to morally disgusting behavior was
selected for using the same mental schema as the aversion to what is physically
disgusting.
Socrates’ victory over Polus
was not mere rhetorical flourish, let alone an intellectual con job. It was based on a genuine insight into the
human soul. Human beings are indeed the
moral animal as much as and in so far as we are the political animal.
