 Today Having having already reviewed the dialogue and discussion between Socrates and Gorgias we move on to The dialogue between Socrates and Polis and on Friday We'll discuss the interaction with Calakles and then when Socrates is Frustrated and creates a dialogue with himself So first of all about Polis So notice that in this section we have an interruption of the discussion between play between Socrates and Gorgias so that conversation breaks down and Polis interrupts and This is an actual guy that we know something about Polis. He's from Sicily from Acrigus and And he's said to be younger than Socrates But he's old enough to have composed a treatise on rhetoric that Socrates says he's read and from other sources we know that that title may have been something like word sanctuaries of the muses or shrines of learned speech so very rhetorical title for a book on rhetoric and in another platonic Dialogue about rhetoric so Plato wrote several dialogues about rhetoric the Gorgias is one of them another one is called the feedriss and Socrates there describes Polis so we think that he's an actual person. He was a professional teacher of rhetoric and He was a student of Gorgias and probably other people as well now the Greek word polis literally means cult and Socrates as well as others who mention in antiquity make fun of his name as if he's somebody that has cultish impatience He's also represented as having inferior skills and manners than his teacher So he interrupts Gorgias and he falls back on such weak and fallacious arguments as appeal to popular opinion and appeal to fear now whether or not the actual polis was That much of an asshole or not we is not a question We can answer because we don't have any of his works and we don't have any descriptions of him except by his hostile critics like Plato But the way he's depicted in Plato as somebody that's concerned with Appearances and concerned how he appears to other people and concerned with conventional concepts of morality So he intervenes exactly at a point where Socrates has shown up an inconsistency or a Contradiction in Gorgias's argument and at the end of class last time We discussed what that contradiction is and it comes down to the fact that Gorgias claims both that if a student uses The rhetorical skill that Gorgias teaches Unjustly then the student as opposed to the teacher is Unjust and is to blame But on the other hand if a student doesn't know anything about justice then Gorgias will teach it to him And so the student will be just and so this creates a contradiction because Gorgias's students will both be just and Unjust and that's incoherent But according to polis Gorgias wasn't really being serious or sincere When he said if a student doesn't know about justice then I would make sure he does before giving him these powerful weapons of rhetoric Instead polis says it was only out of shame or embarrassment that Gorgias said that if a student doesn't know about justice Then Gorgias would teach it to him like if you asked me Do you make sure that those students you're teaching know something about justice before you give them those powerful Tools of writing and speaking I would say sure I make sure that they know justice because I wouldn't want to admit that I was teaching potentially unjust people now at 461b and following we can tell that polis at least as he's being depicted by Plato is very concerned about shame and appearances and becoming embarrassed and so forth and He believes that Gorgias said he would only teach justice because he was ashamed not to say that not because he actually Would do so Gorgias in polis's view isn't Guilty of a contradiction in fact he would teach just or unjust people how to use rhetoric He just doesn't want to admit that So polis says Who do you think would deny that he himself knows what's just and would teach it to others everyone? Would say that at least nobody would admit Oh, I don't I guess I don't know the difference between right and wrong or I guess I don't care if the students that I teach are just or unjust So polis is concerned with conforming to popular expectation and avoiding the shame and embarrassment of not doing so now the issue arises whether rhetoric is really an art or craft or skill in Greek a technique or whether it's just a knack or kind of routine in Emperia in Greek and Polis is apparently on the verge of giving a long rhetorical speech of the kind he's learned how to give from Gorgias and A speech that would apparently resolve the contradictions that come out in Gorgias's speech and explain how glorious and powerful rhetoric is without Getting into these contradictions that Socrates led Gorgias into but Socrates says I'm not going to listen to your long-winded speech about it rather. Let's do it this way. I'll ask you some questions and Examine whether you know what you're talking about and you give me the answers to those questions And we'll see if they can be refuted and this is Socrates preferred method Socrates prefers Examining students by midterm and final exams rather than using long writing assignments because with long writing assignments students can go on and bullshit things and not cite their sources and and You know appear kind of linguistically competent and then we have to give them partial credit and so forth But when we give exams we really find out who did the reading and who knows what they're Talking about so Socrates wants to give this kind of immediate examination of The student and that is his that is the Socratic method of Alencus meaning examining and refuting somebody's ideas Now earlier in the dialogue Polis already said two things that are pertinent to the examination that he's made to undergo the first was an assertion that Emperea meaning experience familiarity routine or knack breeds Art Techna while inexperience merely breeds chance lucky or unlucky outcomes But Socrates argues that he doesn't think rhetoric is an art or a skill or a craft He thinks it's merely a routine or familiarity or knack and specifically one that produces gratification and pleasure and Polis says oh, well, isn't that a good thing isn't having a knack or a routine for producing gratification and pleasure Isn't that an admirable thing? Aren't you then agreeing that rhetoric is a great thing since it gives us a routine or a or a method a kind of experience in how to produce gratification and pleasure Now Polis's claim that rhetoric is an admirable thing recalls The second thing that Gorgias had said earlier in the dialogue in response to the question What is your art? That is what is this thing called rhetoric? Polis had said Gorgias had said and now Polis repeats that oh My art is the most admirable of all the arts. So being admirable is a Crucial part of their conception of what they're doing Now as Socrates pointed out that's inadequate as an answer to the question What is this art because it merely gives a quality or specifies the value of the art while not giving any definition of what it actually does But Socrates has a conception of what this is and he says it's not actually an art It's not an art at all rhetoric is just a kind of knack or routine So let's distinguish between three sets of questions a question that says what is an art What is a technique and is rhetoric one of them a second set of questions? It says specifically what is the art of rhetoric and what does it do or what can it achieve and A third set of questions that asks how are we to evaluate the art of rhetoric and is it an admirable thing or a shameful thing? Now Polis in response to the question. What is rhetoric? Gives an answer to the third question at which point Socrates says before we can answer the third question We have to answer the second question. What is this art of rhetoric? What can it actually achieve? So when Polis goes on to answer that question then Socrates responds that actually we can't answer that until we answer the first question So we can't know what the art of rhetoric is or what it could do in achieve Unless we know whether it's an art and what an art actually is so Socrates is showing up how these masters of rhetoric and these masters of answering questions can't even keep straight The order of priority of questions that need to be answered Now it's very insulting I think to say that rhetoric is a Knack or a routine at least if you're someone who thinks that it's an art or a craft or a skill Or even worse if you're somebody who thinks it's a kind of science or a kind of knowledge or something like that To consider it or call it just a knack and not an art or a craft is to Say that it isn't really a skilled thing It's just a matter of routine like I could give you a set of step-by-step Instructions or a checklist that you could carry out and then you would be able to execute that task a Routine exactly as in a computer program or in a comedy routine or anything is just a set of repeatable actions that are performed in response to a given situation and It is attained by experience or familiarity with analogous or similar situations and actions And so a trained rhetorician at this point in time And this is the way that we think the training worked is that you would have Prepared or set speeches designed for different kinds of occasions Oh, if you're praising somebody you want a speech that essentially has these features If you want to blame someone something that has these features if you want to argue that they're guilty say this if you want to Argue they're innocent say say that if you want to encourage someone to do these actions To say these kind of things if you want to discourage them from doing actions Say these other kinds of things and you actually give them sort of model speeches of each one of those And then you say and when you when you find out who your actual audience is then adapt it to those You know fill in the kind of ad lib thing so that you you know replace these generic names with specific names of your Actual client or the person you actually want to praise but basically it's a set out thing that we can just We can just hand over to you now Socrates Criticizes rhetoric by characterizing it is that kind of thing a kind of thing where you just Learn how to do these things by mechanical rote and it doesn't require much Intelligence or creativity But he also further criticizes it by saying that it's specifically a routine or a knack for producing gratification and pleasure Right, so he characterized it as as essentially being a knack for selecting a good Speech and memorizing it that's already been designed to give to a given audience Again sort of like a comedy routine if the comedian is really good then it looks like it's very original But that's because they've done it thousands and thousands of times and so they're capable of making it look like it's really fresh and original But they've done it again and again and so they have a knack for entertaining people and giving them pleasure now this Definition gets replaced by an even more obscure one So Socrates begins to refer And offer a positive account of what rhetoric is by making a distinction He says it's actually a knack not just for producing gratification and pleasure But for producing flattery and he says there's a lot of different arts that produce Flattery that make us feel good or give this give the appearance of something good when it's not actually good So he uses this term that we translate something like catering although it can also be translated dessert making or baking or candy making or confectionery or something Which is a skill that allows one to produce the appearance of good food like food that really tastes good without it actually being Nutritious or it's something you really want to eat. It has a lot of different flavors or it's very attractive To eat, but it's not actually very good for you. There's an art form of doing this I mean most of the people that produce junk food or advertisements for Fast food do this make it look like oh, this is what you want to eat and make it look like it's good food without it Actually being so and he says rhetoric is kind of like that It creates the appearance of good speeches about topics like the just and unjust without Delivering the actual reality of it another Example of this Is cosmetics which he says doesn't actually make people beautiful It just gives them the appearance of beauty without the reality of it And he also throws in Sophistry which is the appearance of making good speeches about things like law And order or even just about natural science and other things Remember sophistry was one of the terms and the charges that came in To describe the kind of activities going on in the thinkery in Aristophanes that you have these people Appearing like they're wise men, but actually they're very foolish and Ridiculous people So if there's a general class of things That tend to flatter us or give us the appearance of things without giving us the reality of them And if rhetoric is one of them Then that tells us what kind of thing or what class of thing rhetoric belongs to But it doesn't yet tell us what makes it a distinctive thing of that kind So socrates further specifies that rhetoric is a quote Image of a part of politics That's at 463 d and that's a very obscure Expression and one that we have to unpack and the interlocutors are made to respond by saying What the hell do you mean by calling rhetoric an image of the of a part of politics? It's it's an obscure thing to say So in order to explain this we have to develop an elaborate analogy between Different kinds of skills. So consider various kinds of skills For caring for the body. So I'm just going to talk about this column here so gymnastics and medicine are two different kinds of skills that cater to caring for the body and Gymnastics is a kind of care for the body that preserves and enhances the body Makes it makes it fit by Taking the health that it already has and making it even stronger and better Whereas medicine is a corrective or restorative care of the body in case there's disease or illness Then medicine is a is a kind of art Skill or craft a technique that comes in in order to restore or correct. What's wrong in the body and Socrates compares that to an analogous Set of things that care for the soul not the body What cares for the soul by preserving and enhancing it is legislation So we pass laws in order to take the citizen body The the the body politic as it were and make it good make it Better preserve its good parts enhance the parts of it that are good And in case there's parts of the body politic Or rather of the soul of certain people That's actually bad or deficient in some way then we use justice the justice system in order to correct or restore the health of the soul and so This is actually meant to be a division of politics that Paula There's two dimensions to politics one is legislation That's the preservative and enhancing part that takes the souls of the citizens And and keeps what's good in them and makes it even better And justice is the part that restores or corrects the deficiencies And so justice is therefore analogous to medicine which does Deals with the the illnesses or deficiencies of the body and legislation is analogous to gymnastics Gymnastics since it preserves and enhances the body Okay, so keep in mind That analogy and now we expand The analogy considerably So again starting with this first column To repeat myself care of the body We have two kinds of arts skills or crafts associated with this gymnastics which preserves or enhances the body and medicine which corrects Or restores it in case of deficiencies or illnesses And socrates says there's two kinds of flattery Knacks that correspond to those so corresponding to gymnastics Is something that creates an image of preserving or enhancing the body And that's cosmetics or plastic surgery or something that Doesn't actually make anybody more beautiful, you know, like plastic surgery just makes people look like they have plastic surgery But you know cosmetics just Just make give the appearance that somebody's beautiful without the reality of it and this Catering or pastry making or baking or whatever Isn't like medicine which actually Regulates diets and so forth so as to improve health But it makes it seem like it's giving wholesome good food by making it taste good by making it appealing in other ways but cosmetics is to gymnastics as catering is to Medicine that is these are these are Images or fake versions of those So-called arts that imitate actual Arts like gymnastics and medicine now if we move over to this column And so we're talking about the soul and politics. We also have our legitimate skill and art of legislation Which again aims at preserving and enhancing the body Politics and justice which aims at correcting or restoring in case there's some injustice or deficiency there But corresponding to those there are also these fake Nacks these imitative things that merely give us an image of that and the name of the thing that Imitates legislation the fake version of it is called sophistry And now we arrive at our definition of rhetoric rhetoric is that knack or Routine which gives an image of being a corrective or restorative art corresponding to justice without actually being it and that is how Rhetoric is an image of a part of politics part of politics because politics divides into legislation and justice And an image of a part of it because it's an image or a fake replica of that part of politics that deals with justice So rhetoric is therefore the the scope of it is restricted here to talking about justice And the kind of things that happens in courts and rhetoric, you know training lawyers to be able to get clients off or Prosecute them with indifference to what the actual truth is that kind of skill Is Called an image of a part of politics for that reason And any questions about that That elaborate set of analogies and how he arrives at that definition Okay, good now Polis says well, you're calling it a kind of flattery That you seem to hold it in low regard socrates But I don't think that Rhetoric should be held in low regard because Rhetoricians have the greatest power in cities So they should be held in high regard High-powered attorneys really powerful people in society Right So socrates responds by denying that rhetoricians actually Have great power in cities if by power we mean something that's good for the one who has the power Now notice that polis accepts socrates linkage of power and self-interest He points out that rhetoricians Just like tyrants Can have people put to death confiscate property Banish or exile people from the city Don't these examples show that they have great power in cities You know if a high-powered attorney comes after you he can He can prosecute you with a death penalty and get you put to death or Make it so that all of your property is seized or that you're exiled and banished from the city Seems like great power, right? Socrates responds by attempting to prove that rhetoricians and tyrants May do what seems fit to them By banishing and confiscating and exiling and so forth But they still don't have power to do what they want to do And if he can show that Then they he would show that they in fact do not have great power So how does he show that? Well, I break the argument down for you into basically six parts First part is we make a distinction between three different classes of things First of all good things things that we could all agree are good things like wisdom beauty wealth and health They're always good. They always produce good Consequences for the person who has them and we can distinguish those from bad things This is a pretty elementary lesson in ethics, but Ignorance poverty sickness those are always bad and always produce bad consequences for the person that has them And we can distinguish these good things and bad things from neutral things or what we might call instrumental things Things like walking running sailing sticks stones and so forth Sometimes those are good. Sometimes they're bad. Sometimes it's good to walk. Sometimes it's bad to walk Sometimes you should sail sometimes you shouldn't Sometimes you use sticks in order to save someone who's drowning in a pool Sometimes they use it to bash an innocent person over the head. So it could be good could be bad So things in this class are utilized either for good or bad, but are not in themselves Good or bad they are neutral or instrumental Okay, the second part of the argument we observe that neutral things are always chosen for the sake of good things And not for bad things. We always want to bring about Good things that means things that are in our own interest So we choose things in the neutral category because we want to achieve good things or avoid bad things We don't choose them for the sake of doing neutral things themselves So people take medicine In order to get healthy not just so that they can take medicine And people work in order that they can make a living not just because they love working Or people show up to lectures in order That they can pass the class or get a degree not just because they love showing up at lectures So neutral things like showing up at lectures taking pills working All fit into this neutral category and aren't themselves good or bad Now the next three steps I can go through pretty quickly Activities like banishing people from the city Confiscating their property or putting them to death are neutral things hence. They're done for the sake of some Good thing those who do these things want to do them because they achieve something good again good for themselves So nobody banishes just for the sake of banishing or confiscates property just for confiscating property You confiscate property because you think it'll be good because I'll have more property then and wealth is a good Thing or if I banish this person then they won't challenge my power and my having power is a good thing Or I put them to death because they're a menace to society and I want to avoid that that Evil being a problem Now if a tyrant or an orator confiscates someone or puts them to death or banishes them because he thinks that a good Thing will result from that but in fact a bad thing results from it Then we'll say he does what he sees fit But not what he actually wants to do This is again because everybody that employs Neutral or instrumental things wants them for the sake of good things Not bad things But sometimes they end up actually producing bad things and if they do he's done what he sees fit But not what he actually wants to do also Throw in this premise and emphasize it that by having power I necessarily mean something good for the one who has power so holding This argument to the strict requirement that it show that these good things are good for the agents themselves I'm not talking about some generic abstract sense of good in the overall universe or good According to how philosophers talk about it. I mean very simply good in the agents own interest The final step is that if the rhetorician or tyrant achieves a bad thing by banishing or confiscating Or putting someone to death Then he's done something bad for himself And he's not done what he wanted to do but has done what he saw fit to do Therefore it's possible for rhetoricians and tyrants to do things that they see fit And yet not have real power which requires doing what they want to do So consequently polis has claimed that rhetoricians like tyrants wield great power in cities by virtue of the fact that they can do whatever they want Is refuted by socrates that doesn't mean they can do whatever they want It just means they can do what they see fit But you haven't shown that them being able to do what they see fit Is what they want to do or is in their own Interest that would take a further argument. Yeah I mean doing something that benefits them that's in their own interest. That's all I mean by doing good Okay, it would this would be a much weaker argument if all I had to show is that Is talking about good in an abstract sense, but This is these these people banishing exiling and so forth Socrates means to say are doing things that's not in their own self interest not just that it's bad because we condemn things like like Banishing innocent people are confiscating their property. There might be a sense in which that's just bad That we could argue that doing that is bad Morally, even if it's to the benefit of the person like they get rich from doing it or something like this But socrates argument is that it's bad for that person themselves Or at least that polis hasn't shown that it's good for that person themselves All he's all he has been able to do is show that they're able to do these things There's but there's there's an assumption that being able to do things is good But it's like these examples we keep coming up to that, you know Mere power is not in itself good nuclear power might be good if it allows us to Solve the energy crisis or to have a form of energy that doesn't admit as much carbon and so Can deal with climate, but it could be bad if it gets in the hands of people who use it as a weapon like the us did and so forth so Merely saying they have the ability to do a bunch of neutral activities does not show what the argument is intended to show And that that's socrates point Now how does polis respond he says that socrates Position that it's possible for one who has power in the city to do as he sees fit but not To do what he wants He replies that by saying that well socrates you would envy somebody that had the ability to execute or banish people or seize their property Wouldn't you envy somebody that had that power in the city and socrates says well, do you mean The day that I would have the power to do those things justly or unjustly And polis says doesn't matter Wouldn't you be envied either way? In fact, it seems even more enviable to polis if you can do it with indifference To justice or injustice that just shows you have more power If you only have power to do it justly that would be kind of a restriction on your power What's the point of being a tyrant is that you don't have to worry about stuff like that? You get to do it no matter what And socrates says no Whoever puts another to death unjustly is miserable and not powerful and it is to be pitied and not envied So how does he show that Well, first of all compare A ranking of four different things here is polis's ranking It'd be really bad to be put To death justly like you did something wrong You murdered some innocent people and so a court found you were guilty and they executed you really bad thing to happen One of the worst things that can happen to you, right? Maybe the worst thing Almost as bad is being put to death unjustly Presumably being put to death unjustly is better because at least you weren't unjust and didn't actually murder those people It's still bad because you're dead, but at least at least you you can hold on to the fact that You didn't do anything wrong Better than either of those because you live is putting other people to death justly I mean pretty much we can all agree that's a good thing if it's just now I don't happen to think that the death penalty is ever Just but that's we don't need to think about that issue We could replace putting to death with any form of punishment and the argument Would work out so suppose that there are some people that it's just to put to death. They're so monstrous They've they've done such horrendous crimes that death is actually justified then putting them to death unjustly would be Would be a good thing to do And polis thinks is the best thing is if you could put people to death unjustly If you had so much power that you could you could put people to death whether they Deserved it or not because you're a you're a super strong tyrant okay, and Socrates flips this ranking and he says that actually putting people to death unjustly is the worst thing you can do It is worse Even than being put to death Justly or being put to death unjustly So the rankings actually agree except for The elements that i've put in green and red they agree On which things are better and worse except for they flip Whether it's a great power to put somebody to death unjustly or whether that's actually the worst thing you can do Now polis says oh, okay, so you wouldn't want to be a tyrant then Right and socrates replies by giving him a thought experiment The thought experiment as he puts it is the crowded marketplace We could replace it with a school Shooter example, right you all have the power you could have just brought a gun in here and shot us all right You could have murdered us All and so put us all to death Every one of you has the power to do that There's almost nothing we could do To reply to it as so many instances show isn't that a great power you can put to death whoever you want And polis says well that that that would be good that would be nice but the problem is that And and their example is somebody brings a knife into a crowded marketplace Yes, you could start attacking random people with a knife and put them to death But it's not such a great thing because you're likely to get caught Caught or killed And so therefore it's not actually in your self-interest. That's not a great power Right again the action itself is neutral Stabbing people with knives shooting them with guns that could be good or could be bad But the power to do it itself Is not a great or a good power until we find out if its consequences are good or bad So since it's only when the outcome is good that the person who acts can be said to have real power Someone only has real power if they act justly not unjustly So no, you don't have a great power the fact that you could have brought a gun in here and killed us all That's not that isn't a great power. It doesn't benefit you. It's not a good Thing it's not a power and people that do that are weak and miserable unjust horrible human beings But polis actually rejects this and claims that ancient history has got ample Examples of people who acted unjustly and are a lot happier because they did so And his example is arc allows although you could replace it with practically any other politicians in history But the example is meant to show that a person who would have been a slave because of treachery and murder of innocent people Usurps the throne and becomes a tyrant and is able to torture and put other people to death and enslave them and so forth and polis says Isn't he better because he was unjust so that he became able to do that and polis says Everyone would agree that he's happier than if he had not been unjust almost everyone Everyone or almost everyone would agree And that leads to a digression which gets into The fallacy of appealing to what everyone or most people would say which cuts no ice whatsoever in a moral argument like this Although i won't bother going through The reasons for that So returning to the main line of argument the next stage that's crucial Is to point out how polis thinks it's possible to be Unjust and happy as long as one doesn't get punished and socrates denies this holding that quote This is 472 e A man who is unjust is thoroughly miserable The more so If he doesn't get his due punishment for the wrong doing he commits the less So if he pays and receives what is due at the hands of both gods and men Now polis supports his side by saying but punishments really painful and and he describes getting Tortured and banished and punished and having your property confiscated and he commits another fallacy of reasoning that we call Appeal to fear you must think this is a bad thing because it's painful So you must think punishments bad because it's painful and nobody wants to undergo pain but socrates offers A different rank ordering that challenges polis's assumptions So polis thinks that it's more miserable to be an unjust person who is punished than to be an unjust person who isn't punished But socrates argues it's exactly opposite is more More miserable to be an unjust person who's not punished than to be an unjust person who is punished Now the key to the entire rest of the episode with polis is the following concession that he makes He thinks that suffering injustice is worse than doing injustice But he concedes that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering it and remember this is a manifestation of his character He is the kind of person who is concerned about shame and embarrassment and conventional morality So while he thinks that the person who is unjust and is punished Is more miserable he'll agree that that's less shameful And while he thinks that an unjust person who isn't punished is less miserable because they didn't have the pain of being punished He agrees that it's more shameful And that of course fits with our Intuitions even if you're the kind of person who thinks that it'd be great to be a murderer or a robber If you could get away with it still it seems that you would agree It's more shameful to be a murderer or a robber than to be murdered or to be robbed And furthermore you think it's more shameful to be a robber who's not punished than it is to be a robber Who is punished? That's much less shameful so The shame and the good state come apart in in polis's account And this allows socrates to make a set of proofs of those paradoxes that I pointed out to you last time So he's able to show why committing injustice is actually worse than suffering injustice So he defines the admirable that predicate that polis is so concerned with Socrates says that the admirable means That it either produces more pleasure or more benefit and the shameful produces more pain or more harm So if something is more shameful, it's either more painful or more harmful or both But if committing injustice is more shameful Then committing injustice is either more painful more harmful or both now committing Committing injustice is not painful That's what we've just been through and why the appeal to fear doesn't work on that side of the argument But since committing injustice is not painful by a process of elimination It must be that it's either more that it's more harmful than suffering injustice Thus it is less bad and less harmful to suffer injustice than to commit injustice And again being punished is better or more good than not being punished by a similar argument Just punishment involves paying what is due if you're justly punished, then you pay what's due And there's a theory presented that you're acted upon by being punished And if something acts upon another thing then the thing that's acted upon Assumes the quality of the thing acting upon it So if you've been punished justly Then you justly pay what's due and so you do adjust an admirable thing And so you are just the person who is punished and does his time or subjects himself to that punishment Is for that very reason A just person Now polis conceded that justice is more admirable than injustice But if it's more admirable then it's either more pleasant or more beneficial or both Now clearly being punished is not more pleasurable than not being punished So by a process of elimination it must be that being punished is more beneficial Thus whoever is punished is benefited by being punished and it is better to be punished than not to be punished Assuming you've done something wrong And finally we can use this argument to show why injustice is actually the worst thing of all by introducing A couple more principles here So socrates tries to make his claim that being punished is better than not being punished more plausible by Developing a theory of punishment that we call Rehabilitative theory or rehabilitation and a rehabilitative theory of punishment basically says That a person is improved by being punished the point of punishing them is to make them actually better One who pays what's due Gets rid of something bad in his soul And of bad things those in the soul are the worst And I can prove that easily by distinguishing between three kinds of bad things Bad things with respect to external things like wealth The bad thing would be poverty with respect to the body It would be something like illness or disease With respect to the soul its corruption or justice Now which of these is most shameful Being poor is not more shameful than being corrupt or unjust and being sick Or having a disease is not more shameful than being corrupt or unjust thus Injustice and corruption of the soul is the most shameful And it follows from that since it's most shameful that it's either most harmful most painful or bull Now injustice is not more painful than poverty or sickness of course So by a process of elimination injustice must be more harmful Being the most harmful injustice then is the worst thing that there is Socrates argues Now here's why committing injustice and not being Punished is the worst thing of all Various kinds of bad things Socrates says are remedied by certain crafts So you go to a banker or a financier to remedy the badness of poverty And you go to a doctor or a medical practitioner in order To remedy the bad things of the body like disease or illness That's why we go to bankers and doctors Who do we go to in order to solve corruption and disease? We go to judges Socrates asks polis directly which of these crafts do you think is more admirable banking medicine or law? And of course he says law because he's a law student Who's just finished law school and learning how to argue in law courts So he says that must be the most admirable one It follows that it must be the most pleasurable or the most beneficial or both Now consider the case of people going to doctors in order to cure disease Often the treatment is painful, but the long-term result is less pain and other benefits like longevity or vitality Or going to the dentist sometimes it's painful But it's a lot less painful than having all of your teeth wrought out So it is with going to judges sometimes the treatment or the punishment is painful But they're being treated by the most admirable Agents in the most admirable way with respect to the most important things A person who doesn't undergo such treatment on the other hand keeps the shameful thing and the horrible evils With respect to the most important thing his soul and in the most disgraceful way So the person who tries to escape punishment because they're focused on the pain of it and not the benefit Is like a patient who focuses on the pain of dental surgery Or of injections instead of the benefit of the surgery or the drugs And thus since these tyrants like arcalaus are most unjust and they're have such power that they're able to avoid all Punishment they're in the worst possible state. So they're the most miserable and the most harmful human beings of all So the conclusion that socrates draws from this it's really incredible But he draws the conclusion that rhetoric is completely useless unless you're a bad person so He applies these foregoing arguments to the value of rhetoric. He says in courts Rhetoric can help you get off if you've committed an injustice That's the source of the tyrannical power that polis considers so impressive But this result only helps you in being harmed and becoming more miserable Helping you avoid punishment makes you worse if you've really done something wrong The only good use of rhetoric socrates says would be if you used it to accuse and convict yourself if you did anything unjust Or if one of your friends or family did something wrong Then you could use rhetoric in order to convince judges and juries that they ought to punish you Or your friends or your family to make sure that they get that healthy and wholesome punishment that improves our souls On the other hand if you have an enemy in court someone that you hate And they're about to be found guilty and punished then rhetoric would be useful to help them get off and escape Punishment and this way you could make your enemies Miserable and shameful people and hurt them by unjustly getting them off in court and using your rhetorical abilities to to Make it so that they aren't found guilty That would be a kind of usefulness of rhetoric So rhetoric is useful Just in case either you committed some injustice And so you need to ensure that you yourself get punished or your friends or family Or it would be useful if your enemy committed injustice But you want to help him avoid punishment so that he doesn't become a better person The conclusion then is that for the person who doesn't have any intention of committing injustice Rhetoric doesn't have any use whatsoever