success. There existed in Plato’s world the equivalent of unscrupulous Fortune 500 CEO’s. Plato used three characters in his dialogue Gorgias, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles, to exemplify the ultimate dangers of the slippery slope in relativistic thinking.
Gorgias, the eponymous character in the Gorgias, is asked in the opening of the dialogue what the art of rhetoric consists of. After much wrangling, the art is defined as “the power to convince by your words the judges in court, the senators in Council, the people in the Assembly, or in any other gathering of a citizen body” (452.e).7 Gorgias goes on to admit that rhetoric is based on belief and not knowledge and hence the rhetorician can speak on any subject and even more competently than the expert: “I have often, along with my brother and with other physicians visited one of their patients who refused to drink his medicine or submit to the surgeon’s knife or cautery, and when the doctor was unable to persuade them, I did so, with no other art but rhetoric.” (456.b) Socrates draws the out the negative implications of this admission about his art by pointing out that “when the rhetorician is more convincing than the doctor, the ignorant is more convincing among the ignorant than the expert.” (459.b) Gorgias’ reply to this criticism is indicative of the sophistic world view: “But is not this a great comfort, Socrates, to be able without learning any other arts but this one to prove in no way inferior to the specialists?” (459.c) While Gorgias may have been a kindly old man who would not misuse rhetoric in order to manipulate his audience and claimed that he would teach his pupils right from wrong if they did not know (456.a-457.c), the history of politics is full of people who have misused the power of persuasion in front of a gullible audience for their own advantage. In the sophistic worldview, however, knowledge and truth are not paramount, but power and the pursuit of pleasure.
Polus, the second sophist who appears in the dialogue and is a pupil of Gorgias, takes up the argument with Socrates from Gorgias. Polus and Socrates view the world differently and hence have numerous disagreements. The one which best exemplifies the slippery slope in relativistic thinking is the argument of whether a wicked person can be happy; Polus maintains that they can while Socrates maintains that they cannot. Polus’ view rests on a definition of power that is very common in our present day world: “to be at liberty to do as I please in the state – to kill, to exile, and to follow my own pleasure in every act.” (469.c) He believes that this is a shared assumption between himself and Socrates: “Just as if you, Socrates, would not like to be at liberty to do whatever seemed good to you in the state rather than not, and are not jealous when you see a man killing or imprisoning or depriving of property as seems good to him!” (468.e) Polus goes on to cite the case of Archelaus, son of Perdiccas, ruler of Macedonia, as a prime example of a wicked man who is happy. (470.d-472.d) Archelaus had been a slave of Alcestis, Perdiccas’ brother, but rose to power by murdering Alcestis and his son Alexander. He then added to his wickedness by murdering the rightful heir to the throne, his own 7 year old half-brother. While Polus admits that all these deeds are wicked (“Wicked? Of course he is!”), he still maintains that Archelaus is happy. Polus is eventually defeated in the argument after conceding that, although it is worse to suffer wrong, it is more shameful to do wrong. (474.c) This admission indicates that Polus is not completely dedicated to relativism as he still has concern for what people think of him and this ultimately leads him to have to contradict himself over whether one can be wicked and happy.
No one exemplifies the pursuit of the great triad of power, money, and pleasure more than the third sophist encountered in the dialogue, Callicles, who did not share Polus’ concern for what people thought of him.8 He argues instead that the powerful man is one who lives in accord with “nature” rather than by “convention”. (482.c-486.d) According to Callicles, convention demands behavior that promotes equality: “those who framed the laws are the weaker folk, the majority. … For they are satisfied, I suppose, if being inferior they enjoy equality of status. That is the reason why seeking an advantage over the many is by convention said to be wrong and shameful, and they call it injustice.” (483.a-c) For Callicles, this is an artificial system created by the weak to keep a check on the strong: “And accordingly they frame the laws for themselves and their own advantage, and so too with their approval and censure, and to prevent the strong who are able to overreach them from gaining the advantage over them, they frighten them by saying that to overreach others is shameful and evil, and injustice consists in seeking the advantage over others.” (483.b-c)
Callicles contrasts this system of equality with one based on nature wherein the strong rule and dominate the weak. When Callicles looked at the natural world he saw that “nature herself makes it plain that it is right for the better to have the advantage over the worse, and the more able over the less.” (483.c-d) He then applies this to human society and notes that Persia, as a strong empire, exercised control over Scythia and Greece, simply because it was more powerful and so could. He maintains that ultimately “the cattle and all other possessions of the weaker belong to the superior and the stronger.” (484.c) He further argues that the truly strong man in society was not hindered by conventional norms, mores, ethics, or religions, but instead wields his power without remorse:
But I imagine that these men act in accordance with the true nature of right, yes and, by heaven, according to nature’s own law, though not perhaps by the law we frame. We mold the best and strongest among ourselves, catching them young like lion cubs, and by spells and incantations we make slaves of them, saying that they must be content with equality and that this is what is right and fair. But if a man arises endowed with a nature sufficiently strong, he will, I believe, shake off all those controls, burst his fetters, and break loose. And trampling upon our scraps of paper, our spells and incantations, and all our unnatural conventions, he rises up and reveals himself our master who was once our slave, and there shines forth nature’s true justice. (483.e-484.b)
Callicles, unlike Polus, frankly puts forward his position and while it is one that many people today as well as in ancient Athens believe in, few will so openly profess it in such stark terms. While the political philosophy of “might makes right” is not normally acknowledged, it has been and is a common philosophy in world politics.
The ultimate goal, however, is not simply the power and wealth that on can amass if the conventions of society are ignored, but the pleasure which flows as a consequence of economic success. Callicles believes that “anyone who is to live alright should suffer his appetites to grow to the greatest extent and not check them, and through courage and intelligence should be competent to minister to them at their greatest and to satisfy every appetite with what it craves.” (491.e-492.a) While conventional society encouraged the virtues of temperance and justice, Callicles’ value structure opposses this. He asks “What in truth could be worse and more shameful than temperance and justice?” (492.b) Instead he proposed that “luxury and intemperance and license, when they have sufficient backing, are virtue and happiness, and all the rest is tinsel, unnatural catchwords of mankind, mere nonsense and of no account.” (492.c) Hence, the one standard that Callicles uses to judge the rightness or wrongness of an action is whether it leads to the increase of power, money, or pleasure for himself. Clearly, Callicles has slid to the end of the slippery slope that relativism allows. Callicles is using the philosophy to promote a worldview in which he is the center of the universe and is free from all moral constraint, personal pleasure being the only guide. This thinking was what led the Athenians into the disastrous Sicilian expedition in the final years of the Peloponnesian war as described by the historian Thucydides where Athens decided to attack Sicily simply to enslave the people and expropriate their wealth.
Plato, by utilizing these three characters, was clearly laying out the problems inherent in the worldview that relativism promotes. The remainder of the dialogue is an extended argument between Socrates and Callicles as to whether pleasure is “the good” or not. Callicles concedes nothing to Socrates and hence is left unvanquished in the dialogue. It is in the Republic that Plato attempts to rebut the excesses of the slippery slope of relativistic thinking found in the Gorgias. In Book 1, Thrasymachus introduces a relativistic definition of justice very reminiscent of Callicles: justice
