Shame and Moral Truth in Plato’s Gorgias:

The Refutation of Gorgias and Callicles

Presented to: The Political Theory Workshop

Presented by: Christina Tarnopolsky
Date: Monday, April 3rd

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 This paper is the first of a series of two that will examine the relationship between
shame and moral truth as exemplified by the practice of Socratic elenchus in Plato's
Gorgias. It contains a detailed examination of the refutations of Gorgias and Callicles as
a way of illustrating the different responses that can be made to the phenomenon of
shame utilized by the Socratic elenchus. These two refutations also reveal how the
recognition of an other, which is involved in the phenomenon of shame, can prove to be
either a support or a barrier to the discovery of a new moral truth.

In my next paper, I will examine whether and how Socrates, himself, is subject to
these different aspects of shame. If shame is indeed involved in the search for moral
truth, as I try to argue in this paper, then there must be some sense in which he is subject
to this phenomenon. This second paper will also focus on the explicit definition of the
shameful that is offered in the refutation of Polus. Here I will examine Socrates' own
understanding of to aischron (shameful) in relation to its opposite, to kalon
(fine/beautiful/noble), as a way of exploring the role of perspective in these two
phenomena, and the implications of this for the notion of moral truth.

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Introduction:

In the first section of this paper, I examine the logical structure of the Socratic
elenchus in order to illustrate those aspects of it that have traditionally been considered
problematic in terms of its efficacy for discovering moral truths. Here, I argue that there
are in fact three separate but related problems that tend to be conflated by Gregory
Vlastos' seminal article concerning the Socratic elenchus. The first is a question about
logical validity and soundness. It is concerned with how the elenchus is able to move
from revealing inconsistent premises or beliefs to establishing true or sound conclusions.
The second is a question about certainty and probability, demonstrative and dialectical
reasoning. It is concerned with whether the elenchus can establish true conclusions that
have any validity outside of the particular audience they are aimed at. The third is a
question about rhetoric and dialectic. It is concerned with whether Socrates is genuinely
searching for the truth with his interlocutors or is only trying to beat his opponents with
tricky or ad hominem arguments.

Once these aspects of the problem are distinguished, it becomes clear that a
crucial assumption underlies Vlastos' analysis of the elenchus in Plato's Gorgias. This is
the assumption that Socrates, himself, views the logic of morality and practice along the
same lines as mathematics and analytical reasoning. Thus, in the next section, I argue
that the model Vlastos uses to explicate the elenchus overlooks the model that Socrates
himself explicitly uses in the Gorgias to describe his elenctic activity: i.e. the art of
medicine. It is this analogy that gives us insight into the kind of inter-subjective moral
truth that Socrates is attempting to discover. It is a truth that arises out of the
complexities of the relationships between the agent and patient, the teacher and student,
the active and passive participants in a dialogue. Moreover, it is a relationship that
includes the dialogue that Socrates and his interlocutors have with themselves.

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 In the next section I argue that it is this dialectical and inter-subjective character
of moral truth that accounts for the central role shame has in the Socratic elenchus of the
Gorgias. And here, I show that it is precisely the ambiguous and complex nature of this
phenomenon, and the possible reactions to it, which problematizes and continually
threatens to disrupt the explicit distinction between Gorgianic rhetoric and Socratic
dialectic. By examining in detail the refutations of Gorgias and Callicles, and the ways in
which these interlocutors react to the feeling of shame, I hope to reveal the kinds of
necessities and the dangers that underlie this phenomenon.

My own account is sympathetic to the analyses of shame in the Gorgias offered

by Charles Kahn and Richard McKim, but it diverges from theirs in two ways. First, they
both offer only one mechanism for how a shame refutation works. Thus, while Kahn
argues that the interlocutors assert out of shame what they really believe to be false,
McKim argues that they assert out of shame what they really believe to be true. Instead, I
argue that there is a great deal of uncertainty or ambiguity about whether the interlocutors
are being sincere or not with Socrates, or whether they are simply perplexed and
confused by his arguments. This ambiguity arises from the fact that there are a number
of related but distinct senses of shame operative in the dialogue, which I outline in this
section. Here, I show that Socrates, himself, skillfully manipulates these different
mechanisms in ways that undermine any absolute distinction between Gorgianic rhetoric
and Socratic dialectic.

Secondly, I argue that the phenomenon of shame is not simply a psychological

mechanism that reveals the unconscious beliefs or desires of a particular individual. Both
McKim and Kahn argue that if there is a common moral truth that is discovered by
Socratic elenchus, this must reside in the unconscious desires (Kahn) or beliefs (McKim)
that each individual carries around with them. And they argue that Socratic elenchus is
meant to get the individuals to recognize, either their rational desire for the good (Kahn),
or their unconscious beliefs in Socrates' maxims (McKim). Instead, I argue that a
phenomenon such as shame points both inwards to what the individual desires and
believes, and outward to the world of laws and practices within which they move and

4
live. It is the mechanism by which individuals incorporate certain norms of practice, and
it can be used to reveal a realm of reasons for action that are independent of any
individual's particular psychology. The common moral truth, discovered by Socrates and
his interlocutors, is thus found not in the depths of their psyche but in the kinds of
practices that are actually on display in the Gorgias.

Finally, I argue that the success or failure of a shame refutation depends in part
upon the possible reactions of the individual. Although, McKim and Kahn illuminate
many of the ways in which recognition is a crucial element of the phenomenon of shame,
they tend to assume that the reactions of the interlocutors to this phenomenon are always
identical. Thus, while Kahn thinks that none of Socrates' interlocutors in the Gorgias has
a conversion experience, McKim thinks that they all do! Instead, I argue that the Gorgias
reveals a number of positive and negative reactions to the feeling of shame. These are
shown both by the interlocutor's immediate reaction to Socrates, and the ways in which
they re-enter the dialogue during the refutations of other interlocutors. This also means
that whether Socrates' refutations benefit the soul (as is the aim of dialectic) or leave their
existing prejudices and opinions intact (as is the aim of Gorgianic rhetoric) depend, in
part, upon the 'patient's' reaction to Socrates' refutations.

The Problem of the Socratic Elenchus:

In his well-known article, "The Socratic Elenchus", Gregory Vlastos defines the
Socratic method of refutation in the following way:

Socratic elenchus is a search for moral truth by adversary argument in

which a thesis is debated only if asserted as the answerer's own belief,
who is regarded as refuted if and only if the negation of the thesis is
deduced from his own beliefs.1

1
Vlastos, Gregory, "The Socratic Elenchus" in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy I (1983), p. 30.

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This picture of the Socratic method of argument is vividly illustrated in many of Plato's
early "Socratic" dialogues: i.e. those dialogues which depict Socrates questioning various
people about their beliefs in an effort to discover the truth about such virtues as justice,
courage, piety, and moderation. But as Vlastos and others have pointed out, it is only in
the Gorgias that the method of the Socratic elenchus itself seems to be brought under
close scrutiny.2 Vlastos cites the Gorgias as the crucial text for the view that the Socratic
elenchus goes beyond the negative project of revealing inconsistencies between an
interlocutor's beliefs, and actually proves certain Socratic theses to be true.3

The primary evidence Vlastos uses to support this assertion is Socrates' refutation
of Polus. The thesis of Polus targeted for refutation is that 'doing injustice is better than
suffering it.' But Polus' assertion is not just that he believes this, but rather that this is
what all other human beings (including Socrates) also believe to be the case. (474b4,
474b9) As so often happens in the earlier dialogues, Polus thinks that Socrates is being
ironic and that the thesis he propounds is not what he really believes to be the case.
Socrates, on the other hand, asserts that his refutation will show that he (Socrates) and
Polus and all other human beings consider doing injustice worse than suffering it.
(474b3-5) Then when he has finished refuting Polus' thesis, he reiterates this claim to
universality: "What I was saying was therefore true, that neither I nor you nor any other
human being would welcome doing injustice rather than suffering injustice; for it
happens to be worse." (475e5-7)

According to Vlastos, the refutation of Callicles follows a similar pattern. Here

Socrates refutes Callicles' thesis that the best way of life involves the hedonistic pursuit
of maximum pleasure, and outdoing or taking more than everyone else (pleonexia). (He

2
See Vlastos, pp. 46-57, Kahn, p. 75 and 119, McKim, pp. 35-36. Thus, for Vlastos, the Gorgias is the
transitional dialogue between the earlier "aporetic" dialogues, where the negative function of Socratic
argumentation ends in Socrates' own professions of ignorance, and the middle "dogmatic" dialogues, where
Socrates asserts positive theses about the virtues. For the purposes of this paper, I will not be examining
the issue of whether the Gorgias is a transitional dialogue, whether such a distinction can be made between
the aporetic and the dogmatic dialogues, or whether Socrates' profession of ignorance in the earlier
dialogues is consistent with his profession of (a certain type of) knowledge in dialogues such as the
Republic.
3
Vlastos, pp. 46-47.

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does this by showing, first, that Callicles himself does not truly believe that pleasure is
the sole standard of value because even he is forced to admit that some pleasures are
better than others (494b-499b). Once Socrates has shown this, then he spends the rest of
the refutation showing how temperance and justice, rather than intemperance and
injustice, benefit the individual and the city. (499b-507e)) At the end of the refutation,
Socrates asserts that unless this argument is refuted,
All those earlier things follow, Callicles, upon which you asked me if I was speaking
seriously, when I said that one must accuse oneself, one's son, and one's comrade, if he is
doing an injustice, and one must use rhetoric for this. And the things you thought Polus
granted because of shame were therefore true, that doing injustice is as much worse than
suffering injustice as it is more shameful; and he who is to be correctly rhetorical must
therefore be just and a knower of the just things, which in turn Polus said Gorgias agreed
to through shame. (508c)

Now if one extracts the formal structure of the refutations (which is similar in
both cases), a number of problems with the Socratic elenchus become clear. The
refutations follow the pattern of "standard elenchus" as defined by Vlastos:
(1) The interlocutor asserts a thesis [p], which Socrates considers false and targets for
refutation.
(2) Socrates secures agreement to further premises, say q and r (each of which may
stand for a conjunct of propositions). The agreement is ad hoc: Socrates argues
from q and r, but not to them.
(3) Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees, that q and r entail not-p.
(4) Thereupon Socrates claims that not-p has been proved true, p false.4

I will illustrate this with Socrates' refutation of Polus' thesis:

(1) p - Doing injustice is better than suffering injustice. (474c5)
(2) q - Doing injustice is more shameful (aischron) than suffering injustice. (474c7)
r (1) - All fine/admirable (kalon) things are kalon because they are useful/beneficial
(chresimon/ophelimon) or pleasant (hedu) or both.
(Derived from a survey of examples) (474d2-475a2)
r (2) - The shameful (aischron) is defined by the opposite of the beautiful (kalon),
which is pain (huperon) and badness (kakon). (475a5)
r (3) - If doing injustice is more shameful than suffering injustice, then it exceeds
suffering injustice in pain or in badness, or in both. (From r (2))(475b7-9)
r (4) - Doing injustice does not surpass suffering injustice in pain. (475c1-2)
r (5) - So doing injustice cannot surpass suffering injustice in both pain and badness.
( From r (3) ) (475c6)
(3) q + r - Therefore doing injustice must surpass suffering injustice in badness. In
entail other words, doing injustice is worse than suffering injustice. (475c8-10)
not - p
(4) not-p - What I was saying was therefore true, that neither I nor you nor any other
4
Vlastos, Gregory, "The Socratic Elenchus" in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy I (1983), p. 39.

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 human being would welcome doing injustice rather than suffering injustice;
for it happens to be worse. (475e5)

Vlastos' criticism of this argument (what he calls "the problem of the Socratic
elenchus"5) is that in point of logic Socrates has not proven his interlocutor's thesis (p)
false and his own thesis (not-p) true, but rather only that (p) is inconsistent with his
interlocutor's other agreed-upon premises ( q and r ). Confronted with this inconsistency,
it is still possible for Polus to reject one of his premises ( q or r ), and maintain his thesis
(p) as true. In fact, this is precisely what Callicles does when he enters the discussion.
He rejects Polus' premise q - that 'doing injustice is more shameful than suffering
injustice' and maintains Polus' thesis p that 'doing injustice is better than suffering
injustice.' He does this by distinguishing between what is shameful by nature and what is
shameful by convention. He argues, that, by nature, doing injustice is both better and less
shameful than suffering it, even though the many, who set down conventions and laws,
call doing injustice more shameful ( 483a1-483b5).

The movement of the dialogue from Polus to Callicles thus seems to illustrate the
provisional character of the truths or conclusions that Socrates expounds. The elenchus
doesn't seem to establish universal conclusions (i.e. conclusions that all human beings
have reason to accept), but rather only shows that one must accept Socrates' theses if they
accept certain other premises. Moreover, it also seems to appeal to the particular
character of each of Socrates' opponents: Polus accepts the premise that 'doing injustice
is more shameful than suffering it' because he is a slave to public opinion and
conventional wisdom in his own life and thinks that gratifying the public is a noble
pursuit (462c). Indeed, the other aspect of the Socratic elenchus, which Vlastos himself
sees as crucial to it, is that the interlocutor always state what he believes and not simply
change his assertions in order to win the argument. It is this aspect of Socratic refutation,
which distinguishes it from the 'eristic' verbal battles characteristic of sophists and
rhetors6. But this only seems to make the problem more acute by making Socrates' use of
the elenchus rhetorical or ad hominem.

5
Vlastos, Gregory, "The Socratic Elenchus", p. 49.
6
Vlastos, Gregory, "The Socratic Elenchus", p. 31.

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 Now, although Vlastos speaks here of "the" problem of the Socratic elenchus
illustrated by these examples, I think that there are a number of separate problems or
puzzles that tend to be conflated in his discussion. The first is a problem about logical
validity and soundness: How does the Socratic elenchus move from revealing
inconsistencies within an interlocutor's beliefs to establishing certain Socratic theses to be
true? And here one first has to ask what it means for a moral thesis to be true. What is
the test of the truth that Socrates' himself uses in the Gorgias to establish his conclusions?
The second is a question about certainty and probability. It is concerned with whether the
elenchus can establish universally true or certain conclusions that have any validity
outside of the particular audience they are aimed at. What is the audience that Socrates
claims to be addressing in the Gorgias? As I shall argue below any resolution to this
puzzle requires distinguishing between analytical and dialectical reasoning. Finally, there
is the question of whether Socrates is genuinely searching for the truth with his
interlocutors or is only trying to beat his opponents with tricky, ad hominem arguments.
The premises Socrates uses to refute each of his interlocutors in the Gorgias seem to be
tailored to their particular beliefs and desires. A problem then arises as to why Socrates
thinks that his arguments can have any logical validity even for this particular audience if
they are merely targeted at a specific interlocutors' desires or sense of shame. This final
puzzle concerns the distinction between the dialectical and the rhetorical aspects of the
dialogue.

The first two problems tend to be conflated in Vlastos' presentation because he

models the logic of Socrates' moral arguments on the pattern of analytical arguments.
This becomes clear if one turns to the solution he proposes for resolving the problem of
the Socratic elenchus. Vlastos argues that Socrates must be making an assumption to the
effect that: "Anyone who ever has a false moral belief will always have at the same time
true beliefs entailing the negation of that false belief."7 And he elaborates this in terms

7
Vlastos, Gregory, "The Socratic Elenchus", p. 52. According to Vlastos, this meta-elenctic assumption is
not fully cached out by Plato until the Meno where he has Socrates introduce the theory of recollection.
According to this theory each soul is said to have experienced many previous incarnations thus allowing it
to acquire true knowledge about everything that can then be recollected through dialectical argument.

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of what he calls "overt" and "covert" (or "explicit" and "tacit") beliefs. His example is as
follows: "if I believe that a given figure is a Euclidean triangle, then I believe covertly the
proposition which is so surprising when we first learn it in geometry, that the figure's
interior angles sum to two right angles."8 His other example involves two overt beliefs:
'Mary is John's sister' and 'John is Bill's grandfather' which are said to entail the covert
belief that 'Mary is Bill's great-aunt.'9 Both of Vlastos' examples thus follow the pattern
of deductive, analytic arguments wherein the overt beliefs or premises logically entail the
covert belief or conclusion because this is part of the definition of a Euclidean triangle or
a great-aunt. In other words, the relationship between 'overt' and 'covert' beliefs is
patterned on the logic of deductive argumentation. Thus the common moral truth we all
possess is grasped using the same tools of logic by which mathematical and grammatical
truths are discovered. It then becomes clear why Vlastos conflates questions about truth
and soundness with questions about universality and certainty in his presentation. If the
truth of a conclusion depends on an analysis of the meaning of a concept, then it is
obviously independent of the vicissitudes of experience or the opinions of any particular
audience.

However, I think it is incorrect to assume that the Socratic elenchus, as it

presented in the Gorgias (as opposed to a dialogue like the Meno), is modeled on the
structure of mathematical demonstrations. First, it is not at all clear that Socrates thinks
that we discover and test moral truths in this way. Secondly, it is not clear that Socrates
always assumes his conclusions are valid for a universal audience outside his particular
audience. Finally, none of the crucial refutations in the Gorgias actually follow the
pattern that Vlastos outlines. Instead as Charles Kahn and Richard McKim have
shown10, shame is a crucial weapon in the Socratic elenchus of the Gorgias. Here, it is
not so much that shame works against the logicality of Socrates' moral arguments but that
it involves a different type of logic. I will develop each of these arguments as a way of
responding to the three separate puzzles I outlined earlier regarding the Socratic elenchus.

8
Vlastos, Gregory, "The Socratic Elenchus", p. 51.
9
Vlastos, Gregory, "The Socratic Elenchus", p. 51.

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Gorgianic Rhetoric vs. Socratic Dialectic:

The dialogue itself opens with an examination of many of these problems in

Socrates discussion with the foreign teacher of rhetoric, Gorgias, and his student, Polus.
Here Socrates attempts to specify the differences between Gorgianic rhetoric and Socratic
dialectic. The distinction appears to be between rhetoric, which wins over its audience by
flattery (i.e. by appealing to the audience's existing prejudices and opinions) and
dialectic, which appeals to the force of the most rational argument to persuade its
audience of the truth. But even in this initial discussion, there are certain features that
upset this traditional distinction between rhetoric and philosophy. The following table
lists a number of the main features and points of difference between Gorgianic rhetoric
and Socratic dialectic:

Gorgianic rhetoric: Socratic dialectic:

1. A form of flattery that aims at what is
pleasant to the soul without the best. (465a)
2. A form of persuasion that produces
belief without knowledge. (454d-455a)
3. A knack based on previous experience
(with crowds, etc,) that allows one to guess
at what pleases the audience. ( 465a)
4. Addresses itself to law courts and other
mobs. (454e5)
5. Tools of persuasion: calls in "false
witnesses" of good repute to support the
speeches. ( 471e)
- laughs at opponents thesis (473e)
- tries to frighten opponent from his
thesis by showing him that holding
such a thesis will cause him grave
injury or death. (473d) (508d)
1. Aims at what is best for the soul (464c)
2. A form of persuasion that produces
knowledge. (454e5)
3. An art ( techne) based upon a reasoned
account of the true nature of the audience it
addresses and the tools it uses. ( 465a)
4. Addresses itself to the individual (to
whom Socrates' speech is directed ) (474a-
b)
5. Tools of persuasion: calls in one witness
to support the speeches: the man to whom
the speeches are directed. (474a)

10
Kahn, Charles, "Drama and Dialectic in Plato's Gorgias" in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy I
(1983) p 115. McKim, Richard, "Shame and Truth in Plato's Gorgias" in Platonic Writings, Platonic
Readings. New York: Routledge, 1988, p. 37.

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 Now there are a number of interesting things about this explicit distinction
between Gorgianic rhetoric and Socratic dialectic that do not fit the pattern that Vlastos
outlines. The first is that the analogy that Socrates continually uses to describe his own
activity in the Gorgias is the art (techne) of medicine and not the science of mathematics.
(See 3 above.) According to Socrates, the practitioner of the true political art must
understand both the nature of the tools he uses and the nature of the individuals to whom
his arguments are addressed, (465a) in the same way that a doctor must know which
medicines to give to which type of patients. This analogy suggests that Socratic dialectic
must somehow be tailored to the character of the particular interlocutor to whom
Socrates' arguments are directed. This fact sets it apart from a science like mathematics,
and it accounts for several of the other characteristics of dialectic I have indicated in the
table above.

One of these is the fact that Socratic dialectic aims at what is best for the soul.
(See 1 above) When Socrates develops his own analogy between medicine and the
political art of justice, he tries to reinstate the doctor's concern for his patient's health.
But, he also tries to warn the patients of their own integral role in the goal of attaining
health. He compares Gorgianic rhetoric to cookery, which directs itself to the pleasures
of the palate with no concern for the health of the body. As Socrates warns his
interlocutors, the attainment of health requires some sort of knowledge on the part of the
patient, if he is not to be deceived into taking 'remedies' which taste pleasant but actually
harm his body (465b-465d). The attainment of health thus arises out of the inter-
relationship between the activities of both the doctor and the patient. And he uses this as
the explicit analogy for understanding the health of the soul that arises through the
practice of justice (465c).

It is precisely because the search for moral truth requires a certain degree of
mutuality and reciprocal activity between Socrates and his interlocutors, that Gorgianic
rhetoric poses such a threat to it. The goal of Gorgianic rhetoric, as Gorgias himself
boasts, is "freedom for human beings themselves and at the same time rule over others in
each man's own city" ( 452d). Such rhetoric envisions a situation wherein discussion and

12
refutation have become means for taking up strategic positions in a battle where there is
no common goal between the interlocutors. Thus, when Gorgias himself invokes the
example of medicine, he does so to demonstrate that the rhetorician is better than the
doctor at persuading sick people to "drink a drug or to submit [themselves] to the doctor
for surgery and cautery" (456c). And like Socrates, he uses this as an analogy to describe
the political situation within law-courts and assemblies. Here it is not the person knows
what is best for the people who are successful, but rather the rhetorician who flatters the
people by telling them what they want to hear as a means of gaining power over them
(456c).

This analogy with medicine, that both Gorgias and Socrates use to describe their
activities, points to another way in which these practices differ from mathematics.
Dialectic, like Gorgianic rhetoric, is a form of persuasion that addresses itself to a
particular audience. And here it is important to note that the audience Socrates addresses
is actually smaller than the one to which Gorgianic rhetoric is directed. (See 2 and 4
above.) Thus, later in the dialogue, Socrates contrasts his own form of refutation with
that of Gorgias and Polus accordingly:

For you do not compel me, but, providing many false witnesses against me, you are
attempting to expel me from my substance and the truth. But if I do not provide you
yourself, being one man, as the witness in agreement with the things I'm saying, I think I
have accomplished nothing worth speaking of concerning the things that our argument is
about; nor, I think, have you, unless I, being one man alone, bear witness for you, and
you bid all these others farewell. (472b).

The criterion of truth that Socrates offers here is not self-evidence or analytical
clarity, but rather depends crucially upon the agreement with another person. And
Socrates reiterates this criterion of refutation in a number of other places in the Gorgias. 11
Thus, Socrates style of argument in the Gorgias is closer to what Aristotle will later
describe, in his Topics, as dialectical reasoning. This style of argument begins with

11
At 474a Socrates describes his "sort of refutation" in the following manner: "For I know how to provide
one witness for what I say, the man himself to whom my speech is directed, while I bid the many farewell;
and I know how to put the vote to one man, while I don't converse with the many either." At 476a, he tells
Polus, "all other men agree with you except me, whereas for me you being one man alone, are quite enough
both to agree and to bear witness, and I put the vote to you alone and bid the others farewell.

13
premises that are constituted by generally accepted opinions.12 And, unlike analytic
reasoning, it derives its significance from the fact that it is directed at a particular
audience.13 Unfortunately, accounts such as Vlastos' tend to overlook the particular and
inter-subjective character of the truth claims that Socrates makes in the Gorgias. This is
not to deny, as Vlastos shows, that there are other places in the text where Socrates
claims to have discovered a truth that all other human beings will assent to. But, rather
what I am suggesting is that the criterion for this type of universality does not rest upon
the kinds of epistemological grounds which Vlastos invokes or which Plato will later try
to elaborate in the Meno. Instead, as Peter Euben puts it, the Socrates of the Gorgias puts
forth a politically rather than an epistemologically grounded notion of knowledge and
wisdom. This type of knowledge relies crucially on the actual or anticipated
"communications with others with whom I share a world and with whom I have to come
to some agreement."14

And it is this fact that explains the central role which shame occupies in the
elenchic refutations Socrates has with his interlocutors in the Gorgias. Attic Greek
actually has two words for shame: aischyne and aidos. The first word connotes dishonor
or disgrace, while the second one ranges from modesty or shyness to awe and
reverence.15 These words are also used to refer to conscience, self-respect, and regard for
others. The word that is used for shame in the Gorgias is aischyne, as it is the term most
commonly used within the context of conventional codes of morality. As Bernard
Williams argues, what is common to all of these manifestations of shame is the idea of
the gaze of another, whether this other is actually present or only imagined.16 According
to Williams, the primary experience connected with shame is "that of being seen,
inappropriately, by the wrong people, in the wrong condition."17 And for this reason, the

12
Aristotle, Topics, 100a.
13
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1356b.
14
Euben, Peter, "Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 211.
15
Scheff, Thomas J. “Shame in Social Theory” in The Widening Scope of Shame, Ed. Melvin R. Lansky
and Andrew P. Morrison. Hillsdale: The Analytic Press, 19978, p. 209. See also Kurt Riezler, “Comment
on the Social Psychology of Shame” in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48 Issue 4, p, 463.
16
Williams, Bernard, Shame and Necessity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 82.
17
Williams, Bernard, Shame and Necessity, p. 78.

14
emotion of shame points both inward to what I am and outwards to how I am viewed by
others, even when this other consists of those internalized expectations and hopes I have
of myself. It is a sentiment which binds people together into a community, and which is
also involved in the individual's relationship to himself, i.e. to how he views and judges
his own actions. Hence the range of meanings of shame from 'self-respect' to 'respect for
others' indicated above.

The final distinction Socrates elaborates between Gorgianic rhetoric and Socratic
dialectic actually shows that a phenomenon such as shame is crucial to both of these
forms of refutation. (See No. 5 on page 10, above.) In a number of places in the
Gorgias, Socrates describes his method of refutation as one that calls in one witness to
support his speeches: the man to whom the speeches are directed (472b, 474a). As will
be seen in what follows, this is actually elaborated in two different ways. The first is that
the person himself must become a witness to his own assertions. The second is that
Socrates attempts to confirm his theses by the very responses he obtains from his
particular interlocutor. And he contrasts his method with a type of refutation which calls
in "false witnesses" of good repute to support the speeches (471e), and which uses both
threats and derision as a means of refuting the opponent's thesis. In both forms of
refutation there is a witness who judges the utterances of the speaker, and in this sense
some type of recognition or 'gaze' by an other is crucial to both of them. Moreover, both
forms of argument point inward to how the person feels and what he does in response to
the other's assertions or threats.

Now one thing that the Gorgias does illustrate is that Socrates is more adept at
manipulating the tool of shame, in all of its different manifestations, than Gorgias, Polus,
or Callicles. There are numerous occasions where he coerces his interlocutors into
continuing with the conversation and accepting conclusions that they don't fully
understand only to 'save face', avoid embarrassment or gratify the other interlocutors,
who are eagerly following Socrates' every move and like to see a good 'fight.' In the
Gorgias, as in so many other early dialogues, it is Socrates who knows how to "work" the

15
audience so that they are cheering on his refutations, while his interlocutors squirm with
discomfort or anger.

Unfortunately, most of the accounts of the Socratic elenchus in the Gorgias

ignore this dimension of the dialogue because they fail to link the whole examination of
the elenchus to the Gorgias' explicit theme, which is rhetoric. Even those accounts,
which focus on the role of shame in the elenchus, do not address the fact that this tool can
be used in either the cooperative pursuit of Socratic dialectic or the competitive battle of
Gorgianic rhetoric.18 In addition, they fail to address the fact that Socrates, himself,
makes use of both types of shame in his refutations. The question for them is simply why
does Socrates think that he arrives at the truth and universal validity of his conclusions
from what appear to be strictly ad hominem arguments. It is not whether Socrates really
thinks that he and each of his interlocutors have discovered a common moral truth
between them.

I am not suggesting that the Socratic elenchus is not designed to search for moral
truth, but, rather that part of what the Gorgias might be displaying is the limitations of
this method when the ideal conditions for discussion are not fulfilled (e.g. when Socrates
speaks with less than ideal interlocutors). In other words, I believe that the Gorgias
explores the complex ways in which recognition by another, in the phenomenon of
shame, can lead either to the discovery of a new moral truth or the attempt to evade and
hide from such a truth. It also illustrates that the person's reaction to shame plays a
crucial role in whether this tool will have a positive or a negative effect. As Bernard
Williams points out, one's reaction to shame can be to hide or cover oneself or more
positively, to try to reconstruct or improve oneself.19 There are thus two moments in a
shame refutation: the moment of recognition and the moment of reaction. As I shall
argue below, in the Gorgias, shame sometimes works as the necessary emotional support
to the logicality of Socrates' arguments. It does this by enabling the truth of his
conclusions to be incorporated into the person's life as an internal principle of action.

18
Richard McKim, "Shame and Truth in Plato's Gorgias", Charles Kahn, "Drama and Dialectic in Plato's
Gorgias".

16
However, in other instances, it actually works as the barrier to such incorporation. This
occurs, as will be seen in the case of Callicles, when an interlocutor tries to hide from or
evade the consequences of the argument's conclusions. In order to illustrate these things,
I will examine the refutations of Gorgias and Callicles to show where and how shame
enters the elenchus, and how the interlocutors react to this shaming.

The Role of Shame in Socratic Elenchus:

The Refutation of Gorgias:

The first refutation of the dialogue is directed at the rhetorician, Gorgias. The
assertion of Gorgias that Socrates targets for refutation is his argument for the moral
neutrality of rhetoric. Because his rhetoric is morally neutral, Gorgias claims he is not
responsible for the behavior of his students whenever they use rhetoric unjustly (457b-
457c). He begins his description of rhetoric by asserting that its subject matter is justice
and injustice as these things are debated in law courts and other assemblies (454b). But,
Socrates then asks him a crucial question:
"…is it necessary to know, and must the one who is going to learn
rhetoric know these things [the just and the unjust] before coming to you?
And if not, will you, the teacher of rhetoric, teach him who comes nothing
of these things -- for it is not your work -- and will you make him who
doesn't know such things seem among the many to know, and seem to be
good although he isn't? Or will you be wholly unable to teach him
rhetoric, unless he knows the truth about these things beforehand? (459e-
460a)

In response to this question, Gorgias concedes that he will teach his students justice. This
concession, in conjunction with his acceptance of Socrates' 'knowledge is virtue' thesis,
leads to a contradiction with his earlier thesis, because it leads to the conclusion that the
student of Gorgias will never be unjust (460b-461a). The formal structure of the
argument is as follows:
(1) p - Gorgianic rhetoric is a morally neutral art which (when taught) has no
19
Williams, Bernard, p. 90.

17
 effect on whether its students make a just or unjust use of it. (456d-457c)
(2) q - Gorgianic rhetoric is concerned with justice and injustice. (454)
r - If a student comes to Gorgias not knowing what justice is, Gorgias will teach
him.
s - If the student learns about justice, he will be a just man. ( 460b)
t - The just man acts justly. (460b)
(3) q-t - The student who learns about justice from his study of Gorgianic rhetoric,
entail will never make an unjust use of it.
not-p

Where does the phenomenon of shame enter in this particular elenctic argument?
It is not that Gorgias is ashamed at being caught in a logical contradiction (whether this is
so is left unclear by the dramatic fact that Polus leaps in before we are allowed to see
Gorgias' reaction to the argument (461b)). Rather Gorgias is shamed into accepting a
premise - that the rhetorician will teach his students to be just - that then leads to a
contradiction with his earlier thesis about the moral neutrality of rhetoric. In his article,
"Drama and Dialectic in Plato's Gorgias", Charles Kahn nicely elucidates the mechanism
of this particular argument.20 When Socrates asks Gorgias whether or not he will teach
his students justice, Socrates knows that as a foreign teacher of rhetoric, Gorgias must
take into account the fact that the Athenian public does not want its youth or potential
leaders to be corrupted. Although Gorgias believes that rhetoric is morally neutral21 and
that the rhetorician cannot make his students just, he asserts that he will teach them
justice, so that he, himself, will avoid the wrath of Athens. Thus, as Kahn points out,
Socrates skillfully manipulates Gorgias' sense of shame, that is, his sense of how the
Athenian community will view his remarks, in order to get him to utter an insincere
belief.22 Moreover, as Kahn also points out, the argument works in an ad hominem
fashion: it is because of his profession as a foreign teacher of rhetoric that he feels the
23
intense pressure to assert that he will make his students just. The fact that neither

20
Kahn, Charles, "Drama and Dialectic in Plato's Gorgias" in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy I
(1983), p. 115.
21
The evidence for this fact is provided both by what Gorgias says in the dialogue (452e), and by the
external evidence found in the historical Gorgias' writings. Unlike Protagoras, Gorgias did not claim to
make his students just. See Meno 95c, cf. Dodds, 212.
22
Kahn, p. 115.
23
Kahn, pp. 79-80.

18
Polus nor Callicles feel so constrained is evidenced by their willingness to admit the
cause of Gorgias' shame (461b, 482c-d), and to praise the life of tyranny.

Of course, Kahn's assertion of Gorgias' insincerity poses a potential problem for

the success of Socrates' elenchic argument by the very standards that Socrates himself
had initially set out for it. In other words, Gorgias' insincerity would seem to make him a
'false' witness to the truth of what Socrates is asserting. Thus, Socrates seems unable to
ensure even that one witness - 'the man to whom the argument is directed' - that he
claimed was necessary for the success of his dialectical argument. (See No. 5 in table on
page 11.) In addition, Socrates himself seems to have called in 'false witnesses of good
repute', i.e. the Athenian public, to get Gorgias to agree to the crucial premise in the first
place. At this point, his style of refutation seems similar to the Gorgianic rhetoric
espoused by Gorgias and Polus. The only difference seems to be that Socrates is more
adept than either Gorgias or Polus at using the tool of shame to get his opponents to agree
to things they do not really believe. As will be seen below, Socrates makes a number of
similar moves in his refutation of Callicles. But before turning to this refutation, I want
to suggest a number of reasons why the refutation of Callicles should not be regarded
either as conclusive evidence in support of Socrates' conclusion, or as an imposition of
conventional views upon an unwilling and insincere 'witness' or audience.

The first is that, contra Vlastos, Socrates does not assert that he has proven his
thesis be true and Gorgias' thesis to be false. At the end of the refutation, he states only
that the conclusion - the student of rhetoric will never be unjust - is what follows from the
premises which he and Gorgias have agreed upon (q through s)(461a). And he suggests
that further conversation is necessary in order to examine these things adequately (461a).
I think this assertion reveals that Socrates, himself, is aware of the provisional character
of this conclusion, and of the fact that it will require further testing and discussion with
Gorgias and the other interlocutors. It also reveals that Socrates has not been duped by
Gorgias' assent into thinking that he has adequately provided Gorgias as a witness to the
truth of his conclusion.

19
 But this does not mean that the conclusion is false, or that there is no worthwhile
point in getting Gorgias into such a position. Instead, it might mean that Gorgias is only
now open to learning something new. Indeed, the dialogue opens with Gorgias
complaining that he has not been asked anything new for many years (448a). As we shall
see below, Gorgias does not run away after his refutation, but stays around to witness
Socrates' arguments with Polus and Callicles, and jumps in at a number of crucial points
to further the discussion. I want to suggest that these interruptions illustrate the way in
which Gorgias moves from being a 'false' to a 'true' witness of Socrates' conclusions, in
the course of the dialogue. Moreover, they illustrate the fact that whether Socrates' use of
shame has a beneficial effect upon his interlocutors depends, in part, on how they react to
this phenomenon. As will been seen in what follows, the refutation of Callicles provides
ample evidence of the kind of negative reactions that can be elicited by the feeling of
shame.

The Refutation of Callicles:

The refutation of Callicles is considerably longer than the one directed at Gorgias
or Polus. In fact, it accounts for more than half of the dialogue. What is so interesting
about the Callicles refutation is the fact that Socrates presents a number of different
arguments to try to get Callicles to retract his hedonism thesis. I believe that these
arguments illustrate the way in which Socrates uses the elenchus to understand the nature
of his opponent, especially in terms of what the opponent considers honorable and
shameful.

The first argument consists of an extremely ascetic myth that likens human beings
to leaky vessels (493a-493d). Here, the hedonistic pursuit of maximum pleasure is
compared to having a very leaky vessel that continually needs to be replenished. Socrates
argues that the best life would be the life of minimal desires where the vessel has few or
no holes, and thus does not need continual replenishment. After making this argument,
he asks Gorgias, "Well, am I persuading you somewhat and do you change to the position
that the orderly are happier than the intemperate? Or even if I tell myths of many other

20
such things, will you nonetheless not change anything?" Callicles then asserts that he
will not change in response to such arguments (493d). As if to test this point, Socrates
proceeds to tell another similar myth and asks, "In saying these things, do I somewhat
persuade you to grant that the orderly life is better than the intemperate, or do I not
persuade you?" (494a) And Callicles once again utters, "You do not persuade me
Socrates. For that man who has filled his jars no longer has any pleasure…" (494a)

Socrates then drops this line of argument altogether and proceeds to his 'catamite'
argument. I want to suggest that he does this because he has discovered that the life of
the ascetic holds no appeal to Callicles. If Callicles does not honor ascetics, then he will
not feel ashamed to learn that his hedonistic thesis is inconsistent with such a life.
Instead, Socrates must appeal to the ideals of action that Callicles himself looks up to and
considers when constructing his praise of the life of hedonism and pleonexia. And he
knows what these consist of from the initial speech that Callicles makes when he bursts
onto the scene (481d-485d). Here Callicles praises the life of courageous warriors and
political leaders and condemns philosophers for being inexperienced in "human pleasures
and desires" (484d). Socrates' next line of argument thus tries to show how Callicles'
hedonism thesis is inconsistent with these ideals.

Accordingly, just before making this argument Socrates tells Callicles, "Now
continue just as you began, and do not hold back through shame. Nor, it would appear,
must I hold back through shame." (494c) The argument involves showing Callicles that
the hedonism, which he espouses, would lead to the conclusion that a life devoted to
itching and scratching and the life of catamites would be the best and happiest. This is
because such people are continually experiencing the desire to scratch and the pleasure of
satisfying this urge (494d-494e). Callicles then responds, "Are you not ashamed
Socrates, to lead the arguments into such things?" To which Socrates, responds that he is
just following Callicles' own argument - that the pleasant and the good are the same - to
its logical conclusion.

21
 Callicles' outburst reveals that it is he and not Socrates who feels shame when
investigating these things wherever they may lead. As Kenneth Dover and Charles Kahn
point out, the life of the catamite was considered to be a form of homosexual love
incompatible with the active life of an eminent statesman.24 And Socrates knows that it is
precisely this type of life that Callicles admires as the best and most honorable. Thus,
"What Callicles is being asked to count among the logically possible constituents of the
arete and happiness of superior men is the pleasure taken from an experience which is not
only regarded as unmanly and humiliating but as legally depriving the person in question
of his citizenship rights and his chance at a political career."25

It is also interesting to note that Socrates uses a sexual example to elicit this
feeling here. As Bernard Williams argues, aidos is "straightforwardly connected with
nakedness, particularly in sexual connections. The word aidoia, a derivative of aidos,
"shame" is a standard Greek word for the genitals…The reaction is to cover oneself or to
hide…"26 That Socrates is famous for not wearing shoes and for not being embarrassed
by sexual situations is worth noting27. As is illustrated in this passage, he is less
susceptible to the conventional standards regarding these things than someone like
Callicles, who claims that the best life is lived only according to the standards of nature.

Now, the way that Callicles subsequently responds to this 'shameful' example is
interesting because it reveals that there can be competing feelings of shame within the
same individual. In the next passage he says, "In order that the speech should not
contradict me, if I assert that they are different. I assert that they are the same." And
Socrates responds "You are corrupting the first speeches, Callicles, and you would no
longer be sufficiently examining with me the things that are, if you're going to speak
contrary to how things seem in your own opinion" (495a). At this point, Callicles is more
concerned with how the immediate witnesses to this debate will view his logical blunder,
than he is with how he himself views the life of a catamite. His shame is turned outwards

24
K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, (Harvard University Press, 1978 ), p. 103, Kahn, p. 106
25
Kahn, pp. 106-107.
26
Williams, Bernard, Shame and Necessity, p. 78
27
These things are attested to in the Charmides, Phaedrus and Symposium.

22
to how he will be seen if he loses a round to Socrates, rather than to his own view of
himself.

And Socrates' assertion shows that he suspects Callicles of no longer sincerely

engaging in the search for moral truth (about how one ought to live), but only of trying to
say things that will win this particular argument. Of course, there is still one other
possibility, and that is that Callicles, like Socrates, is truly devoted to the logic of the
argument and to seeing where it will lead. And I believe that Socrates' next line of
questioning is meant as a way of testing whether or not this is the case. Here Socrates
tries to show Callicles that his hedonism is not just shameful but logically impossible.
The argument consists of showing that pleasure and pain do not really work "like an
ordinary pair of conceptual opposites, since they do not logically exclude one another
over a given terrain".28 To use Charles Kahn's summary of the argument:

1. Good (fairing well, happiness) and its opposite are not found simultaneously in the
same subject, and do not cease together.
2. Pleasure and its opposite (pain) are found simultaneously in the same subject, and
cease together (e.g. the pleasure of drinking lasts only as long as the pain of thirst).
3. Therefore, pleasure is not the good.29

As both Kahn and McKim point out, Callicles does not respond to the conclusion of this
argument at all.30 In fact, he tries to squirm out of it in the middle by asserting, "I don't
know what sophisms you are making, Socrates" (497a) And, interestingly enough,
Gorgias - who has been a silent witness to the entire discussion since his refutation -
jumps in and says, "Don't Callicles; but answer for our sake too, so that the arguments
may be brought to an end." (497b) Callicles then complains that "Socrates is always like
this Gorgias. He asks small things, of little or no worth, and refutes them" (497b), To
which Gorgias responds, "But what difference does it make to you? It is not at all your
honor involved here, Callicles. Submit to Socrates' refuting however he wishes." (497b)

28
Kahn, p. 107.
29
Kahn, p. 107.
30
McKim, p. 42, Kahn, p. 107.

23
Callicles then reluctantly agrees to go on with the questioning, because "it seems good to
Gorgias" to do so. (497c)

Now Callicles' failures to respond to this line of questioning, and his utterances
that such questions are worth little or nothing, establish the fact that a life devoted to
logical investigation has little or no appeal to him. (The fact that Gorgias jumps into the
argument and urges Callicles to continue, suggests that Gorgias is interested in what
Socrates is trying to show him with his refutations of Callicles.) As Gorgias himself
explains, Callicles does not honor the philosophic type of life and thus does not feel any
shame at being shown that his thesis is logically incoherent. What Socrates does next
involves, once again, appealing to the type of life that Callicles honors most and showing
him that his hedonism is inconsistent with such a way of life.

As I mentioned above, Callicles' initial speech revealed that he honors the life of
the brave and courageous leader and warrior (483c-484c). Thus, Socrates' final line of
argument is meant to show Callicles that his hedonism is inconsistent with this way of
life. And he does this by getting Callicles to admit that cowards actually experience more
pleasure in fleeing from battle than the courageous men do who bravely face their death
(498c). This concession, in conjunction with Callicles' indiscriminate hedonism, leads to
the conclusion that cowards are actually happier and better individuals than courageous
men. And Callicles' sense of shame will not allow him to admit this, so instead he
retracts his hedonism with the statement, "As if you thought that I or any other human
being did not consider some pleasures better and others worse!" (499b) The formal
structure of the argument is as follows:

(1) p - The good things in life are pleasures and the bad things are pains.
Callicles' hedonism thesis. (491e) (i.e. The pleasant is the sole
standard of the good.)
(2) q - Good people are good because of the presence of good things. (497e)
r - Good people are courageous and intelligent not cowardly and foolish. (497e)
s - Cowards and fools experience more pleasures than courageous and
intelligent people. (498c)
(3) q-s - The good things cannot be simply pleasures and pains, but rather the
entail better types of pleasures and pains experienced by courageous and

24
 not - p intelligent people. (499b)
(4) not-p I, Callicles, and all other human beings assert that some pleasures
is true are better than others. (499b)
(The pleasant is not the sole standard of the good.)

Interestingly enough, it is Callicles and not Socrates who makes the assertion that all
human beings consider some pleasures worse than others. In other words, Socrates
finally gets his most recalcitrant 'witness' to agree to the thesis he has been trying to
establish.

Unfortunately, however, this agreement proves to be temporary. When Socrates

proceeds to elaborate the consequences that follow from this - that just punishment is
better for the soul than intemperance - Callicles pleads with Socrates to release him from
the argument:

I don't know what you are saying Socrates, so ask someone else …. How violent you are,
Socrates. But if you're persuaded by me, you'll bid this argument farewell, or else you'll
converse with someone else…. Couldn't you go through the argument yourself, either
speaking by yourself or answering yourself? (505c-505d)

In response to this, Socrates tells Callicles that the argument should be carried through to
its conclusion, but that "if you don't wish it, then let's bid it farewell and go away" (506a).
And before Callicles is allowed to scurry away, Gorgias jumps in once again, and says,
"But it doesn't seem to me, Socrates, that we should go away yet; rather you should finish
going through the argument"(506b). Callicles then agrees to proceed, but finishes the
dialogue as an extremely reluctant witness to the things that Socrates expounds. The
conclusion of the dialogue thus begins with the very different reactions of Socrates' two
remaining verbal witnesses, Gorgias and Callicles. I will return to the implications of
these responses below. But, before turning to this task, I want to offer a number of
remarks on the different aspects of shame evidenced by the Callicles refutation.

The Mechanisms of Shame:

The refutation of Callicles reveals a number of important things about the

mechanisms of shame, especially in terms of the different kinds of relationships between

25
the self and the other that are possible in such a phenomenon. The first is that the 'other'
involved in this feeling can, but need not be, the actual witnesses to the person's actions
or feelings. Instead, this other can be an internalized representation of personal or
societal expectations that the individual carries with him in his psychological makeup.
When Callicles is first ashamed at the image of the catamite, his feeling of shame is
directed inward, to how he himself views the kind of life to which his hedonism thesis
has led. In other words, one part of himself (the part that honors courageous men) is
looking down upon the other part that believes in hedonism, that is, in the view that all
pleasures are to be pursued. Here the experience of shame involves the experience of
being unmasked and thus being seen inappropriately by another, but this other is in fact,
himself, i.e. his own better judgement.

Then, when Callicles refuses to retract his catamite thesis, he does so because his
shame is momentarily directed outwards to the immediate audience that is witnessing his
discussion with Socrates. Once again the sense of shame involves being seen
inappropriately by another, but now this 'other' is the audience that is witnessing the fact
that Callicles is about to have his hedonism thesis refuted. And at this point, his regard
for this external audience temporarily overwhelms his inner-directed shame, or his sense
of self-respect, that had made him feel contempt for the life of a catamite. That this is
only temporary is evidenced by the fact that Socrates once again appeals to the inward-
directed shame in his final refutation of Callicles.

The twists and turns in the Callicles refutation point to other important facts about
the ambiguous nature of shame. The first is that sometimes a person will assert out of
shame what they believe to be true and sometimes they will assert out of shame what they
believe to be false. In other words, to be shamed into telling a lie and to be ashamed of
the truth are two different things. For this reason the accounts offered by Charles Kahn
and Richard McKim end up being too one-sided. Both of them offer fruitful insights into
the mechanisms of shame. But they focus either on the way in which shame causes the
interlocutor to utter insincere remarks (Kahn) or the way in which shame causes the
interlocutor to discover and/or utter the truth (McKim). What they both fail to see is that

26
recognition of the gaze of the other can compel someone in two very different directions.
It can either prompt them to insincerely mimic or flatter the viewpoint of this other, or to
sincerely assume the place of this other in order to get a different vantage point on their
own assertions and actions.

As I pointed out earlier, in the case of Gorgias, he is shamed into insincerely

professing to teach his students to be just, because he knows that the Athenian public
would condemn the moral neutrality of his art. Similarly, immediately after the catamite
argument, Callicles is momentarily shamed into holding on to his hedonism thesis,
because he does not want the audience to see him caught in a logical contradiction. In
both cases, the feeling of shame is prospective because it involves the threat of having
one's true thoughts inappropriately revealed to another. And in both cases, the
interlocutor utters an insincere reply as a way of concealing or hiding the truth.

In the other refutations of Callicles, however, the situation is somewhat reversed.

In the catamite and coward/fool arguments, Callicles' hedonism thesis is now revealed as
unacceptable or untrue for him. Thus he eventually retracts this thesis as being false and
replaces it with the thesis that some pleasures are better than others. And his remark that
he and all other human beings really do think that some pleasures are better than others is
not an insincere remark but rather a new insight into his own reasons for action that
Socrates has shown him (499b). The teaching about moderation - that certain pleasures
need to be restrained - with which Socrates ends the dialogues, is justified by the moral
truth that he and Callicles have agreed upon: i.e. that some pleasures are better than
others.

This final refutation reveals another interesting aspect of the phenomenon of

shame. This is that shame "need not be just a matter of being seen, but of being seen by
an observer with a certain view."31 In the refutation immediately preceding the last one,
Callicles does not feel ashamed when Socrates tries to show him that his hedonistic thesis
is logically problematic. This is because he himself feels contempt for philosophy and

31
Williams, Bernard, Shame and Necessity, p. 82.

27
the whole way of life devoted to such "small things and narrow things". As he tells
Socrates in his opening speech, he avoids those dark corners where the philosophers
whisper together with three or four other lads (485d). It is Socrates (and perhaps now
Gorgias as well) who feels compelled to wander into these corners and to investigate all
things to their logical conclusions. The 'other' that Callicles does look up to and has
internalized is the specific attitude embodied in the heroic ethos of the courageous
warrior and political leader. And it is this 'other' that Socrates calls in as a witness to get
Callicles to admit that his indiscriminate hedonism is too shameful even for him to admit.
At this point, Callicles retracts his thesis because it is felt to be inappropriate from the
perspective of that wise and courageous 'other' he has internalized, in the form of his
better judgement.

In other words, the 'other' that is absorbed or internalized into the person's psyche
has a substantive content and is thus not simply the idiosyncratic and egoistic voice of
that person's own psychology. It is linked to real social attitudes and expectations that
sanction some actions and condemn others. This fact explains why it is too simple to
dismiss a shame refutation as ad hominem, i.e. directed simply to the hopes and desires of
a particular individual. The hopes and desires of each individual are linked to the reasons
for action embodied in the ideals of the society into which that individual has been
socialized. In this way shame can be both a psychological weapon that gives one insights
into what motivates a particular individual, and can reveal the actual reasons for action
embodied in a particular culture. Shame is thus not simply an idiosyncratic emotional
response, but rather one of the mechanisms by which we come to internalize the external
norms of action.

Finally, I believe that the different responses of Gorgias and Callicles to their
shame-refutations, reveal the importance of the moment of reaction to this phenomenon.
The refutation of Callicles vividly illustrates the well-known fact that the primary
experience of shame is painful. But this does not mean that such a phenomenon is
necessarily harmful or pernicious. Indeed, the definition of the shameful, which Socrates
himself offers in the dialogue, is that it is the painful or the harmful or both (475b). As

28
Gerasimos Santas argues in his book, Socrates, this disjunctive definition of the shameful
is unique. This is because it is the only instance in the early Socratic dialogues where
Socrates himself, puts forth a definition that fails to meet one of the primary criteria he
uses for defining kinds, properties or characteristics.32 This is the criterion that the kind,
property or characteristic being defined be common to all instances of it. Socrates'
disjunctive definition of the shameful thus fails to meet this criterion. To be more
precise, the shameful sometimes fails to meet this criterion, even though Socrates does
add the proviso that in some instances the shameful will be both painful and harmful.

I want to suggest that the potentially disjunctive character of the shameful points
to the ambiguous nature of this phenomenon for Socrates. This is because shame is not a
virtue in the way that justice, piety, temperance and courage are. Instead it is one of the
mechanisms of socialization by which we come to learn the content of these virtues.
Children learn what it is to be just or temperate by the ways in which their behavior is
judged and censored by those around them. But whether or not it will become anything
more than the painful feeling of being seen inappropriately by another depends upon how
the person reacts to it. Just as it requires some action on the part of the patient to achieve
the benefit of health, so it requires some sort of action on the part of Socrates'
interlocutors to be benefited by his elenchic method.

In the case of someone like Callicles, the reaction to this feeling is the "wish to
hide or disappear",33 as evidenced by his repeated attempts to get out of Socrates’
embarrassing refutation. It is thus likely that this experience of shame will prove to be
both painful and harmful to him. As Socrates warns him, if he does not refute Socrates’
thesis, he will have to live with the contradictions between the hedonism he espouses and
the courage he admires.

32
According to Santas, Socrates believes that an adequate definition must answer the following four things:
What is the kind ( characteristic, property ) which (a) is the same (common) in all F things, and (b) is that
by reason of which all F things are F, and (c) is that by which F things do not differ and (d) is that which in
all F things one calls "the F"?, Gerasimos Santas, Socrates, p. 104.
33
Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, p. 90.

29
 However, in the case of Gorgias, the reaction to his initial shaming is to remain as
a silent but attentive witness to what Socrates is attempting to discover about his
subsequent interlocutors. His repeated interruptions reveal that he is interested in what
Socrates is doing with the other interlocutors, and that he might be learning something
new by witnessing this display. What Socrates might be showing him is the way in
which shame can be used to get someone like Callicles to retract his hedonism thesis.
Even though it is unlikely that Callicles will actually change his life in response to this
refutation, it is likely that he will want to avoid another embarrassing refutation of his
hedonism thesis before others. Accordingly, he may well think twice before espousing
the life of hedonism and injustice in public again. (This might well be the only kind of
medicine or just punishment that such an interlocutor can be given.)

Now, it was precisely the praise of injustice and tyranny on the part of his
students that had worried Gorgias so much at the beginning of the dialogue (457c). But
what he has just witnessed on the part of Socrates might well help him solve this
problem. If he can tame his students, the way Socrates succeeds in taming Callicles, then
he might well make his students more just than when they first come to him. In other
words, although he had originally been a ‘false’ or insincere witness to the thesis that the
rhetorician will teach his students justice, he can become a ‘true’ witness to this assertion.
He will do this if he absorbs what he has learned from Socrates’ refutations by making it
the internal principle of his own actions in the future. In this way his experience of
shame will prove to have been painful but not harmful to him.

30
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-------------------. “Comments on Gregory Vlastos’, The Socratic Elenchus” in Oxford

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-------------------, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968.

-------------------, Gorgias, trans. James Nichols Jr. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
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Santas, Gerasimos. Socrates. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.

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Scheff, Thomas J. “Shame in Social Theory” in The Widening Scope of Shame. Ed.
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