{"id":1445,"date":"2020-09-09T00:55:55","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T00:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/livingagoodlife.com\/spring2025\/?page_id=1445"},"modified":"2025-02-01T15:41:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T15:41:37","slug":"essay-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/livingagoodlife.com\/spring2025\/essay-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Essay 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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First Essay:<\/b>
Argument Analysis Assignment<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Please write a 1000-word essay on the topic below. Your essay should be double-spaced with 1″ margins.<\/span><\/p>

Due Saturday, February 8<\/u>\u00a0(any time): please submit as a Google Docs document and upload here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>

Formatting Instructions<\/b><\/span><\/p>

Please include your full name in the title for your file, together with your section number \u2013 e.g., \u201cPat Smith Section 1\u201d.<\/span><\/p>

Quotations or other references to the text can be cited by putting the Stephanus number in parentheses into your text, like this:\u00a0<\/span>\u201c<\/span>Callicles claims that a person who lives without experiencing pleasure or pain is\u00a0<\/span>\u2018<\/span>living like a stone<\/span>\u2019\u00a0(494b).<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/div>

Topic<\/b><\/span><\/p>

Plato devotes much of the Gorgias<\/i> to exploring the role of pleasure in living well. Callicles in the dialogue takes an extreme hedonist view<\/u> in identifying the happy life as a life of maximal pleasure. He makes this clear to Socrates at 491e\u2013492c:<\/span><\/p>

How could a man prove to be happy if he\u2019s enslaved to anyone at all? Rather, this is what\u2019s admirable and just by nature \u2014 and I\u2019ll say it to you now with all frankness \u2014 that the man who\u2019ll live correctly ought to allow his own appetites to get as large as possible and not restrain them. And when they are as large as possible, he ought to be competent to devote himself to them through his bravery and intelligence, and to fill them with whatever he may have an appetite for at the time. [\u2026] [T]he truth of it, Socrates \u2014 the thing you claim to pursue \u2014 is like this: wantonness, lack of discipline, and freedom, if available in good supply, are excellence (aret\u0113<\/i>; or \u201cvirtue\u201d) and happiness (eudaimonia<\/i>).<\/span><\/p>

What follows in the Gorgias<\/i> is an extended debate between Socrates and Callicles about the nature of the human good. At the core of this debate is a question about the \u201cfinal end\u201d (or ultimate goal) of a human life.<\/span><\/p>

Socrates and Callicles agree that the final end of a human life \u2014 the human good \u2014 is happiness, but they disagree on how to define happiness. In the quote above, Callicles claims that happiness (and thus our final end) lies in a life of pleasure: the satisfaction of our most intense desires. Socrates for his part never really puts forward his own conception of happiness or the human good in the Gorgias<\/i>; he just denies that the good is pleasure.
<\/span><\/p>

There are a number of ways in which Socrates attempts to refute Callicles\u2019 hedonism at 492d\u2013499b. Here are the highlights:
<\/span><\/p>

  1. The leaky jar analogy (492e\u2013494a)<\/a>: Socrates claims that a life devoted to the constant pursuit of pleasure is a life spent in the endless satisfaction and spending of desires, and that such a person really \u201csuffers extreme pain\u201d;<\/span><\/li>
  2. The itch-scratcher and catamite objections (494b\u2013495a)<\/a>: Socrates asks Callicles whether he believes the life of a person who gets maximal pleasure from scratching an itch or the life of a catamite (a passive sexual partner in a Greek homoerotic relationship) lives well;
    <\/span><\/li>
  3. The opposites argument (495e\u2013497d)<\/a>: Socrates points out to Callicles that, whereas good and bad are opposites, pleasure and pain are not opposites; hence what\u2019s good and what\u2019s pleasant cannot be the same thing;
    <\/span><\/li>
  4. The virtues argument (497e\u2013499b)<\/a>: Socrates points out that, if Callicles is right, the life of a foolish or cowardly person is no less pleasant \u2014 and so, according to Callicles\u2019 view, good \u2014 than the life of an intelligent and brave person.
    <\/span><\/li><\/ol>

    Your task for this paper is to provide an analysis of one<\/u> of the above arguments (1-4). For whichever argument you choose, you\u2019ll need to do two things: (i) explain the reasoning of the passage and how Socrates tries to refute Callicles on the basis of this reasoning; and (ii) evaluate whether you find the argument a good one.<\/span><\/p>

    Further Instructions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>