"And as I failed then, you must not ask me to count the suffrages of the company now; but if, as I was saying, you have no better argument than numbers, let me have a turn, and do you make trial of the sort of proof which, as I think, is required; for I shall produce one witness only of the truth of my words, and he is the person with whom I am arguing; his suffrage I know how to take; but with the many I have nothing to do, and do not even address myself to them."
Here Socrates contrasts rhetoric, as the art of speaking to the many, against philosophy, which is the art of speaking to the one. Clearly, Socrates is describing his one on one dialogue style with his various interlocutors, but later, we will come to see that Socrates is talking about being in conversation with oneself. Philosophy as Socrates understandings it is personal, close, intimate, and, above all, solitary, a way of rising above the world's beliefs and values and discovering for oneself those things that are eternally true.
"Well, my fine friend, but am I the introducer of these topics, or he who says without any qualification that all who feel pleasure in whatever manner are happy, and who admits of no distinction between good and bad pleasures? And I would still ask, whether you say that pleasure and good are the same, or whether there is some pleasure which is not a good?"
Here Socrates introduces a crucial distinction that would have long-lasting philosophical effects, namely, between the pleasurable and the good. There are many things and many modes of knowledge in life that only produce pleasure, but not good. Socrates mentions cooking and rhetoric as examples of giving people what they think they want, instead of what they actually need. An ice cream cone, a cigarette, a speech that rouses us to hatred: these may make us feel energized for a few minutes, but they lead to bad long-term consequences. The pleasurable corrupts because it is temporary, a passing sensation; the good, by contrast, is eternal and durable. Philosophy is the means by which we ask after what is eternal.
'Then rhetoric, as would appear, is the artificer of a persuasion which creates belief about the just and unjust, but gives no instruction about them?"
The point of "instruction" or "education," according to Socrates, is not simply to say that this or that thing is just or unjust. Socrates considers this knowledge situational and worthless. The purpose of a true education would be to give people the capacity to distinguish for themselves what is just and unjust, by allowing them to arrive themselves at a definition of justice. Therefore, education does not consist of telling people things, but of encouraging their desire to know, and sharpening their faculties of judgment.
“The point is, you see, that I certainly don’t speak as an expert with knowledge: I look into things with your help. And this means that if someone disputes something I've been saying and seems to me to be making a good point, I'm the first to admit it."
Here, Socrates describes what is called the "Socratic method." The Socratic method consists not of making statements and then proving them, but of offering hypotheses, and then questioning it to try and knock it down, until finally, you've reached a hypothesis that can't be knocked down anymore. Most importantly, Socrates does not claim to be representing a philosophical school or advancing any philosophical positions, he claims only to be asking questions, beginning with the assumption that he knows nothing.
"When there's a public meeting in Athens to elect a doctor or a shipwright or any other professional, the purpose of the meeting is obviously to choose the person with the greatest expertise for each post, so it's not going to be a rhetorician who advises them under these circumstances, is it?"
Here Socrates introduces the criterion of usefulness to judge a certain way of knowing and living. Whom does rhetoric actually serve? If you wanted to know about shipbuilding, you'd consult a shipbuilder. Rhetoricians aren't useful in that way, and don't do anything that truly helps anyone. It is Socrates' argument that modes of knowledge must correspond to the areas of human life that they improve, and that philosophy has the same relationship to the soul as shipbuilding would to the ship.
"Suppose I'd show you my dagger. 'You'd say, Socrates, in that case everyone has a great deal of power, since by the same token you could also burn down any houses you decide to burn down. [...]' So the ability to do what you feel like doing isn't a sign of a great deal of power."
Here, Socrates introduces the argument that freedom and power consist of being able to control one's own desires—not, as one might initially think, in being able to gratify them. Socrates argues that, if doing what you want when you want was truly a sign of power, everyone would be powerful, since, in principle, this is true of all of us. Everyone possesses desires, and everyone is ruled by them; Socrates makes the argument that desires are really just a form of tyranny that we install over ourselves that keeps us from living the truly free life that philosophy would make possible, because it would offer us a knowledge of the good.
"My view, however, Polus, is that although an unjust person, a criminal, is in a thoroughly wretched state, he's worse off if he doesn't pay the penalty and continues to do wrong without getting punished than if he does pay the penalty and has punishment meted out to him by gods and men."
Here, Socrates takes what appears to his interlocutors to be a counterintuitive position: that doing bad and not getting away with it is better than doing bad and getting off scot-free. Socrates believes that it is the natural task of man to care for himself and his well-being, and that by doing evil and allowing its corrupting influence to fester, a person is ultimately unhappier than a person who is punished, because the latter person at least gains a knowledge of justice, truth, and the good, even if it is at the loss of his personal well-being.
"Yes, that's what I mean. In my opinion, that's what natural right is—for an individual who is better (that is more clever) to rule over second-rate people and to have more than them."
Here Callicles expresses what is a common view among many of Socrates's interlocutors (and, in fact, of many people today): namely, that might makes right. Callicles argues that the good is when people who are smart rule over people who are stupid, and are rewarded for their rule. Socrates quickly picks him apart by observing that the mass of people is superior to the individual, and in a state, rules over him, and yet, at the same time, makes one terrible decision after another. The debate about natural right gives us a sense of Plato's politics, which are virulently anti-democratic. In Plato's view, the goal of philosophy would be to teach an individual ruler to be just and wise; the mass of people are in fact unteachable.
"Perhaps we really are corpses! In fact, I did once also hear a wise man claim that we are dead and that the body is a tomb, and that the part of the mind which contains the desires is in fact characterized by its susceptibility and its instability."
In this quote we get a glimpse of Socrates's anthropology, or his view of humanity. Daily human life, as Socrates sees it, is a kind of death, because in it we are completely ruled by our desires. The soul, the part of us that aspires to something higher, is buried in it, and it is the goal of philosophy to reign in these desires so that the soul can rise up to contemplate those things, and finally achieve a true and meaningful life.
"Argument after argument can be proved wrong, but just one holds its ground—that we have to take greater care to avoid doing wrong than we do to avoid suffering wrong, and that above all else we must concentrate not on making people believe that we're good, but on being good, in our private lives as well as in public."
Here Socrates gives us his argument in a nutshell. He dismisses rhetoric as a question of flattery and appearance—convincing people that something is good when it is in fact not, convincing others that one is good, when one might in fact be bad. Natural right consists of doing harm to others, but ultimately suffering the harm of a corroded soul. Socrates believes that only philosophy is concerned with what is good and what is true, and that only philosophy, therefore, can puncture past the world of appearances to discover what is truly good and true, and cure the corruption of the soul that comes from not having this knowledge.
