The dialogues of Plato in five volumes, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Translated into English with analyses and introductions
Plato · en
Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the stage:
he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for if these
things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the foundations of
society are upside down. In him another type of character is represented;
he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the world, and an
accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in modern language
as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of pleasure, and
unscrupulous in his means of attaining both. There is no desire on his
part to offer any compromise in the interests of morality; nor is any
concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the Republic, though he is
not of the same weak and vulgar class, he consistently maintains that
might is right. His great motive of action is political ambition; in this
he is characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the Meno, he is the enemy
of the Sophists; but favours the new art of rhetoric, which he regards as
an excellent weapon of attack and defence. He is a despiser of mankind as
he is of philosophy, and sees in the laws of the state only a violation
of the order of nature, which intended that the stronger should govern
the weaker (cp. Rep. ii. 358-360). Like other men of the world who are of
a speculative turn of mind, he generalizes the bad side of human nature,
and has easily brought down his principles to his practice. Philosophy
and poetry alike supply him with distinctions suited to his view of human
life. He has a good will to Socrates, whose talents he evidently admires,
while he censures the puerile use which he makes of them. He expresses
a keen intellectual interest in the argument. Like Anytus, again, he
has a sympathy with other men of the world; the Athenian statesmen of
a former generation, who showed no weakness and made no mistakes, such
as Miltiades, Themistocles, Pericles, are his favourites. His ideal of
human character is a man of great passions and great powers, which he has
developed to the utmost, and which he uses in his own enjoyment and in
the government of others. Had Critias been the name instead of Callicles,
about whom we know nothing from other sources, the opinions of the man
would have seemed to reflect the history of his life.
[Sidenote: _The representation of Socrates in the Gorgias._]