Nobody was more conscious than Plato that the reception of philosophy
is conditioned by each individual’s limitations. Again and again he
makes us experience how an interlocutor is hindered by his own
particular mind-set from grasping what is meant.
One of the most
famous examples is Callicles in the dialogue, the Gorgias. Callicles
represents the thesis of the so-called natural right of the stronger.
According to this it is right and proper that the man who is superior to
the others in strength and power subjugate them and ruthlessly use them
for the furtherance of his own interests. The thesis goes that nature
itself desires the dominance of the stronger; the traditional view of
justice, which limits the fulfilment of one’s own desires in terms of
the rights of others, is nothing other than an ideological construct of
the weak by means of which, for their selfprotection, they wish to
discredit the strong man’s healthy striving after the uninhibited
fulfilment of his instincts and wishes (see Gorgias 482c–486d).
Plato could have had this thesis debated in a calm and disassociated
manner as a simply theoretical contribution towards a basic foundation
of ethics. Instead, he makes Callicles express it as his own personal
belief. It is not just an intellectual ‘position’ but the direct
expression of his pathological ambition and his boundless egocentrism.
When Socrates demonstrates to him with compelling reasons that the
conventional concept of justice makes sense while the so-called right of
the stronger is self-contradictory, Callicles can no longer follow
Socrates’ reasoning — certainly not, however, out of a lack of
intelligence, because he obviously has no little of that, but because of
the limitations of his character. It is stated quite openly that it is
his unbridled drives which hinder him from understanding and accepting
Socrates’ theoretically well founded and morally wholesome view (see
Gorgias 513c).
In particular, Callicles has a perverted view of
himself: he identifies himself with his desires and instincts (Gorgias
491e–492c). He does not know and does not want to know that human beings
are more than their instincts and that reason does not exist in them to
be deployed purely instrumentally in the service of their instincts,
but is a divine force which exercises control over the lower parts of
the soul. Socrates obviously has a corresponding theory of the inner
structure of man available as a reply (see Gorgias 493aff.), but when he
sees that Callicles would not be able to know what to make of it, he
does not even begin to explain it with arguments, but is content to give
a few hints which are only understandable in their full range from the
fully developed doctrine of the soul in the Republic. Callicles is,
however, made aware that he still does not know even the ‘Lesser
Mysteries’; but initiation into the ‘Greater Mysteries’ is not
permissible without a knowledge of the lower step (497c). Put another
way, the real solution of the problem, which for Plato can be produced
only by recourse to the inner structure of man, does not need to be
imparted to a character like Callicles, since he lacks the personal
qualifications for accepting such truths adequately. Thus Callicles
receives only an ad hominem refutation as Socrates demonstrates the
contradictory nature of his position, on Callicles’ own level of
argumentation (494bff).
With this brilliant example of literary
characterisation Plato tells us with all clarity that his philosophy
demands the whole human being. Intellectual capability alone is
insufficient; what is required is an inner relationship between the
thing which is to be conveyed and the soul to which it is to be
conveyed. Anybody who is not prepared to enter upon a process of inner
transformation is not entitled to know the full solution either.
