 So we're going to be discussing Socrates' interaction with Calakles, and then the point at which his conversation with Calakles breaks down and Socrates just starts talking to himself, basically. Now, remember how class ended last time? Somebody remind me what Socrates said, Rhetoric, is the only thing that Rhetoric would be useful for. Rhetoric would be useful according to Socrates for what purpose? Yeah, and the opposite of that. Yes, so you could use Rhetoric to convict yourself if you'd done anything wrong and convince a judge in a jury that you ought to be punished. That would be one useful thing about Rhetoric. And the other useful thing would be if you hated somebody and they were your enemy then you could defend them in court and argue and convince and persuade a judge that they should be let off and not have to be punished. Because then that would be ruinous for them and it would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to them because they wouldn't get all of that wonderful benefit from the punishment. Right? So that's what Socrates said Rhetoric would be useful for and that's where the conversation with Polis broke down. And so Calakles comes in and says, well look if what you're saying is true Socrates doesn't that just turn the world upside down? That the only purpose in having an attorney is you go hire an attorney so that they can make sure that you are found guilty and get punished or so that you can get your your adversary to win a court case against you. Wouldn't that, won't this human life of ours be turned upside down and won't everything we do evidently be the opposite of what we should do. And Socrates says well if you don't think that's how things are first of all yes, maybe there is a revolution here. Maybe maybe we do need to turn things upside down. But at any rate you need to refute the position that I so carefully laid out and defended that doing what is unjust without paying the penalty is the ultimate of all bad things. And so rhetoric is worthless for anybody who is not intending to be unjust. Now Calakles diagnoses what the original contradiction of Gorgias was and if you remember back all the way to Monday, which seems like months ago Gorgias argued that if students of rhetoric are not just then their teachers aren't responsible for it But then out of shame he said that if a student came to me who didn't know about justice I would teach it to him before teaching him rhetoric and that resulted in a kind of contradiction. And that's when Polis took over in order to save his teacher from this embarrassing contradiction and Polis actually pointed out that Gorgias only said he would teach a student justice if that student didn't already know it. He had only said that out of shame. But Calakles says Polis fell into a similar trap. Polis' mistake was in conceding that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering it. Remember Polis said doing injustice is better than suffering it. He'd rather commit crimes than have crimes committed against him But he admitted that it's more shameful to commit crimes than to have crimes committed against you And I think this accords with our intuitions It's more shameful to be a murderer than to be someone who's murdered or to be somebody who attacks innocent people than to be an innocent person who's attacked. Of course, that's more shameful. But then Socrates demonstrated that if it is conceded that it's more shameful than it must be more painful or more harmful or both Everybody agreed it's not more painful. So it must be more harmful. Being more harmful. It's more bad. And therefore it's more bad. And so Polis made that concession that it is more shameful to commit crime or do injustice than it is to suffer crime or have an injustice done to you. Why did he concede that? Because, Calacly says, he's also afraid and ashamed would be ashamed to admit the opposite. And we saw that. Remember Polis is a person who's who believes in conventional morality and he's motivated by shame. He cares more about what other people think of him than what he really is. And so that's consistent with his character as Plato depicts him. But Calacly's is a totally different type of person. He doesn't suffer the shame that led Gorgias and then Polis to make those concessions that led them into contradictions and led them into being refuted by Socrates. He doesn't care about conventional morality. He doesn't care about morality at all. He's an immoralist. He's not embarrassed to promote an art that can be abused for unjust purposes. He thinks that's just fine. That's a wonderful thing to do. And so Socrates is going to have a harder time dealing with him because he is a clear-eyed believer in learning how to do unjust things. And so what is Socrates going to say in order to refute him? So here's Calacly's basic position depends on making a distinction between what is good according to law and what is good according to nature. So he argues that doing injustice, committing crimes, is not more shameful than suffering it. Suffering injustice. Having crimes committed against you is much worse than doing injustice in his view and he defends that by making the following distinction. Doing injustice might be more shameful according to law or according to convention. Of course, that's how all of our laws and conventions or what in Greek is Nomoi. A law, a Nomo says that it's shameful to be a criminal and commit crimes and it's not shameful to be someone who suffers them to be a victim of crimes. But that's just according to law or according to convention. By nature, suffering injustice is more shameful. Quote, for by nature, everything is more ugly or shameful which is also more evil or worse and it is more evil to suffer wrong but by law doing wrong is considered more evil. So he appeals to the standard of nature and what happens in reality not in the conventions and laws that we set up but how it really is before we start talking about laws. Now Calacly's uncontroversially defines injustice as getting a greater share, getting more than his fair share and he wants to be somebody who gets more than his fair share. He's greedy and unjust and he claims that it's natural for the people he calls better to get a greater share than everyone else and specifically then people that are worse. Quote, nature herself reveals that it is just for the better to have a greater share than the worse and it's right for the more powerful to have more than the weak. And this can be more of anything, more money, more power, more followers, etc. So Calacly's thinks that the superior people should get more money than the inferior people and that the superior people should have more power than the inferior people and that that's right according to nature. Whatever our laws happen to say that is what the law of nature says and he offers the following evidence. He says look at the other animals, right? Do the other animals say that oh let these weak ones survive and you know don't let the strong ones get more than their fair share. No just turn on you know the animal channel or watch some YouTube videos you know like do a search on lions and prey in YouTube. Watch a couple of these videos. You'll see that in nature the stronger and faster win out. They devour the weaker and there's no laws to prevent that from happening. And the same thing with human cultures, I mean just another form of animal really, but at war right? It's not that we don't we don't have some international law that says you know weak weak countries are allowed to prevail over strong countries. Strong countries that have bigger militaries just crush weaker ones. Take over their land and their property, right? And we saw this all through Homer and everything and it goes down to the present day, right? This is why this country spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined so that we can be superior and crush anyone that stands in our way and have our values prevail because supposedly we're superior to the rest of the world. We run the world. So that's what we get to do. And then he tells a homely myth about Hercules or Heracles and how he led away Geronies cattle. Why? Because he could because he was stronger and the stronger should take by force what they want from the weaker. And that's just how it goes in nature. And so he comes up with a paradoxical idea that this is actually a law of nature, right? He says that the other animals humans at war and this story about Heracles shows that they acted according to what is just by nature. And yes, he says it's a law of nature, not the law which we lay down and that are instituted by legislatures. But it's like a law of nature. It's a convention of nature that the stronger prevail. Now just digress for a second because we're so used to speaking of laws of nature and natural law that we don't realize how awkward this terminology actually is. Actually how contradictory this terminology is. Conceptually, nature and law are two totally different things than they're actually opposed. Nature is what already exists in the background of human existence whereas law is what humans institute to govern their own existence. So how can we combine the idea of law and nature into one? A law of nature or a natural law is a bit like saying a wise foolish person or a square circle. It's kind of a contradiction in terms. There's not really any such thing. But Calakles accuses Socrates as being the one to abuse this law versus nature distinction and says Socrates is using it as a debating tactic that if his opponent thinks that he's talking about nature then Socrates will suddenly start talking about law. And if the opponent is talking about law then Socrates will talk about what's good or bad according to nature. And according to Aristotle, a later a pupil of Aristotle so sorry a pupil of Plato. Plato is a pupil of Socrates and Aristotle is a pupil of Plato and Aristotle tells us about this argument. He says the widest range of commonplace argument for leading men into paradoxical statement is that which depends on the standards of nature and convention. Convention or law. Nomus. And it is thus that both Calakles is portrayed in the Gorgias and that all men of old suppose the result to come about. For nature they said and law are opposites and justice is a fine thing by a legal standard but not by that of nature. Accordingly the one whose statement agrees with the standard of nature you should meet if you're trying to defeat them in argument you should meet by the standard of law but the one who agrees with law you should meet by leading him to the facts of nature. For in both ways paradoxical statements will be made in their view the standard of nature was the truth while that of law was the mere opinion held by the majority. So this comes in a work where Aristotle is documenting all the different ways you can trick people in arguments and make them contradict themselves and make paradoxical statements and he refers to this very argument in the Gorgias but he says it's a very old method of argumentation. But Calakles doesn't oppose these ideas what he does is combine them is strangely brings them together apparently for the first time so this looks like the oldest text we have in which the expression like laws of nature or natural law ever occurs and what he means by it is the advantage of the stronger basically the view that might makes right might makes right that is whoever is stronger determines what is just and what is the good thing and the right thing to do that he says is the law of nature and his point is that the advantage of the stronger or might makes right is an absolute law so while you can while you can break other laws you can break the laws that we institute okay you can break that law that says you have to wait until the light turns green in order to cross the street or you can break the law that says you shouldn't attack innocent people or something but you can't break a law of nature or a natural law it's always going to prevail it's always going to be the case that the that the stronger went out in the weaker lose it's like you're never going to change the fact that fire makes things hot and ice makes things cold that's like a law of nature and that's what Calakles wants to represent this might makes right or advantage of the stronger as being on a par with you know the law of gravity you know the law of gravity it's a law it's not just a good idea and try to break it okay you'll hurt yourself it there is no breaking the law of gravity if it is a law and that's the kind of thing that Calakles is saying his view about might makes right is he argues that laws and conventions are instituted by the weak for their own advantage weak people afraid of the powerful who could get more than their fair share say make up these ideas like getting more than one's fair share is shameful and it's unjust and they produce a whole conventional moral and legal system in order to protect themselves since they're weak they know that those you know strong powerful superior people are gonna tear them apart like lions due to defenseless deer and so they get together and they and they set up a system that says let's call that bad and let's make people embarrassed to do that so it doesn't happen because otherwise otherwise we're gonna be destroyed but Calakles says that it requires tricks and charms to convince people from a very young age that they should conform to this conventional morality that encourages equality that we should treat ourselves not as being superior or inferior to each other but assume that we're somehow equal and that we deserve an equal share of power of money that sort of thing so what we have to do is convince people from a really young age that don't believe that raise them to think some people are losers and they're weak and other people are stronger and smarter and superior and you want to be one of those people and you want to compete with those other people and get more and more advantages for yourself so that you can get more of a share of what life has to offer money jobs offices positions power whatever it is we inculcate this to children as soon as they're born and throughout our entire system like our system of grading why do we give grades because we want to figure out who's superior in here and who's inferior we want to reward those people right well no we want to we we have an idea that we want to help everyone we want we think everybody's equal here we're slaves to this kind of conventional morality that says everybody deserves a chance and we should teach them all if at all possible but that's because we have we have this we've been tricked and charmed ourselves into this conventional view of morality that Calakles is talking about but Calakles says you know a superior man he practically says Superman could come along and liberate himself from the slavery of these conventional laws which again violate natural laws and could subdue or subjugate everyone else and then the true quote justice of nature would shine forth if you had a really superior individual running things and in in power and who didn't abide by any of this conventional morality stuff so here's how Socrates starts to undo his argument he says okay well let's start with the idea that by superior you mean stronger and he gets Calakles to explain that you know what do you mean by superior well I mean the stronger okay so Socrates summarizes Calakles position as follows quote what is just by nature is that one the superior or stronger should take by force what belongs to the inferior and two that the better should rule the worse and three that the more worthy should have a greater share than the less worthy but Socrates points out that the many this these masses this populace of weak people that all got together informed this idea about conventional morality are much stronger than any one individual including Superman and the many are the ones who institute this conventional law and this morality and that just and that make these claims about justice meaning that we should get equal shares and that no one should get a greater share so the majority rule or the rule of majority in the view that everyone should get an equal share turns out to be in accordance with nature not convention so to the extent that it actually does dominate and we are we and people do believe that it's shameful to get more than your fair share and so forth then it turns out to be the law of nature or convention of nature that the stronger should rule the weaker and the stronger are the masses of weak people who institute this conventional morality now Calakles can't accept that conclusion so he changes his definition of what he means by superior he withdraws the suggestion that it means merely stronger and now he uses a much more vague term worthier which he then allows to be glossed as more intelligent now in response to this Socrates devises a thought experiment suppose we suppose there was some kind of disaster some radiation disaster going on outside of this room so we couldn't all we couldn't leave here we wouldn't be able to leave here for the next week and so we have a certain amount of supply of food and drink for people that have their beverages some people have their lunch some people have some candy we can take that we can pull it all together now are we going to give everybody an equal share that we so that we could all survive or should we distinguish here and say look some of you are really beautiful and others are really ugly so let's give the beautiful people the food or some of you are really physically weak while others are strong so let's give the strong people the food instead of the physically weak people or let's give the smart people let's give the people who got higher grades on on essay assignment number one let's give them the food and people that got bees or seas on that assignment let's let them go hungry now does that make any sense so would anybody be willing to agree to that that makes it sound absurd so Calakles responds dismissively saying well I wasn't talking about food and drink is what one should get more than their fair share of oh okay so Socrates says do you mean clothes intelligent people should get more clothes or shoes the beautiful people should get better bigger shoes than other people suppose we're talking about farmers perhaps the most intelligent farmers should get the most seed fertilizer and land while the stupider farmers shouldn't get as much nobody thinks any of that's a good idea so Socrates reduces his argument to absurdity so he implies employs this strategy of reductio-odd absurdum and by the way I'm sure here you began to detect a bit of that reason why people find Socrates so annoying and why Aristophanes depicted him as being a very annoying person there seems to be some some accuracy to that representation he tends to have that effect on people very annoying takes your arguments takes your clarifications and then shows they don't make any sense either so Calakles is very frustrated and he again changes his account of what superior must mean he says that I'm not talking about cobblers and cooks or farmers but I'm talking about those who are good at the affairs of the city about the way that it's to be well managed not only the intelligent but also the brave being competent to accomplish whatever they have in mind without slacking off because of some softness of spirit and here Socrates points out that Calakles accuses Socrates of always saying the same thing and keep coming back to the same points about justice and Socrates says yeah but you keep changing what you're saying and you don't have a coherent consistent view to make but Calakles says look my bottom line position is that I admire most those people who have intense drives and desires and are competent to satisfy these desires using intelligence bravery or any other virtues you want to name they use those as a means towards getting what I consider to be the highest good which is essentially my own pleasure and what I can indulge in and so then Socrates replies to that with a story about how Calakles soul is sort of like a sieve or a leaky jar he wants a situation where you keep putting more stuff into it and and things just keep flowing out of it and Socrates says why is that worthwhile to have this kind of consumerist idea that whoever has whoever takes in the most stuff is the best and has the best life that's not actually how we think of it and so Socrates tries to show that enjoying pleasure is not the good and that whatever the good is it's different than pleasure and in fact the good and so the end of the actions that we undertake is more these things like bravery and virtue which Calakles represents is merely being means to getting more pleasure Socrates says those things are actually the goods themselves and we should be undertaking things in order to get those virtues and Socrates offers at least four separate arguments for thinking that pleasure is not the good and instead that these virtues are good just review some of these arguments first bravery and intelligence are things that one can have and if one has them you're said to be doing well even if you're feeling pleasure or pain so if you're a brave person who's nevertheless hungry or thirsty we still think you're good thus pleasure cannot be the good and pain cannot be the bad or second a related argument if you feel thirst and hunger and so you're in pain then you can eat or drink and then enjoy that and feel pleasure so it's possible to feel both pain and enjoyment at the same time but it's not possible to be good and bad at the same time thus desires and their satisfaction must not be the same as being good or doing well third argument compare the brave versus the the brave person or the courageous person and the cowardly person the cowardly person who is bad by the very fact that he's a coward he feels more pain at the coming of the enemy than the brave man does but he also feels more pleasure at the retreat retreat of the enemy so if the enemy is retreating and the coward who has an excessive amount of fear when confronting the enemy ends up feeling more pleasure then the coward has more pleasure than the virtuous courageous person but we don't think that he's better just because he's experiencing more pleasure so again pleasure must not be the good and then the fourth argument he makes takes us back to the main theme of the dialogue if we compare the various arts and their routines or naks that imitate them naks like dessert making or cosmetics produce pleasures but they don't produce goods true crafts like gymnastics and medicine produce goods but not necessarily pleasure so think of how doctors limit the gratified the gratification of ill patients when they're sick to help them recover for example might say eat eat less or don't drink as much this is what my doctor is constantly saying to me and so that is in order to improve my health which I think is a good thing but it deprives me of pleasure therefore pleasure cannot be good or pleasures and goods must be different and socrates says there are many naks that aim at giving pleasure that don't produce knowledge or the good and here he groups all musicians comedians and even tragedians in together and says these are all forms of rhetoric and they're all forms of flattery that aim at gratification not improvement of the public as do true arts like gymnastics or medicine or legislation and justice so that's the point at which the argument totally breaks down and Calakles is so angry he refuses to continue conversing with Socrates and he says Socrates why don't you just converse with yourself and Socrates says oh okay so I'll do that and then Socrates says okay Socrates do you think that the good and the pleasant are the same and then he says no Socrates I don't think that the good and the pleasant are the same and let me explain why and goes through the arguments by himself and he says by the way interrupt me if I'm saying anything you don't agree with because I'll be the first person to admit it if my argument isn't right and if you have something to say in response and here's where Calakles says look it would be shameful for you not to be able to defend yourself if you were accused in court and rhetoric is what gives us the power to preserve ourselves and protect ourselves against that kind of threat so I don't know why you aren't conceding that rhetoric is good so that you can use it to protect yourself and so he foreshadows what in fact did happen to Socrates Socrates was prosecuted by somebody with superior rhetorical skills and even though he was not guilty he was found guilty and even sentenced to death and Calakles says if that happens to you it would be most shameful and it would be a result of your not cultivating rhetoric and the reader knows that that's going to happen and next week we'll actually read some speeches that show that happening but Socrates responds by saying that it's much more important for him to protect himself from doing wrong than it is to protect himself from having wrong done to him and so he says look the best thing would be to have both to never commit any injustice yourself and also to protect yourself against ever having injustice committed against you now those two things don't come about just by wishing or hoping that that will occur but they it requires some cultivated art or technique to make sure that you don't commit injustice like you have to know about the law and you have to know about what your fair share is and you have to have an art that allows you to protect yourself rhetoric in the case of of being prosecuted in court and Calakles says look the best way to protect yourself would be to become a tyrant and you could use rhetoric to become a tyrant and then nobody can mess with you at all and Socrates responds to this by saying that's a terrible strategy because of what happens from the fact that tyrants have no friends friends are people who are in some relevant way like you and so if we if we happen to have a savage unjust or uneducated tyrant in power quite a stretch but imagine that you were in some mythical society where there was a savage unjust and uneducated ruler in power then that person would not trust anyone that's smarter or better than him because they're unlike him but for the same reason he also wouldn't trust anyone that's inferior to him so that leaves only the person or people who become most like him become tyrant savage unjust uneducated people in order to protect yourself from injustice in a tyranny you have to become as much like the tyrant as possible but if you become most like a tyrant then you might avoid having injustice done to you because you're so powerful but you will be unjust and so not avoid committing injustice yourself and further since you're a tyrant or a friend of a tyrant you'll be able to escape punishment and thus you'll suffer the worst evil of all so the next move is that Socrates compares rhetoric to other arts of preservation and says look arts that preserve or protect or allow us to survive really aren't as great as you're making them out to be in there certainly not the greatest art so preservation of life and survival is not an absolute value is not the most important thing survival is only valuable if you have something to live for like if you're a just and good person it might be valuable other arts of preservation and safety like engineering or being a pilot don't consider their own arts to be absolutely valuable they're modest about their results because a pilot who flies you from here to New York can't say whether he's done a good or a bad thing by safely transporting you there because he doesn't know if you're a good or bad if you're a criminal that he's transporting and who's going to New York in order to rob a bank or torture innocent people then he did a bad thing by bringing you there so pilots and engineers that build bridges they don't know if good or bad people go over them so they don't claim that they have the ultimate great art they say we just have this modest art that's capable of of being put to good or bad use and rhetoric is like that it gives might give it someone the ability to protect and preserve themselves but that's of limited value if your life isn't worth protecting and preserving so then Socrates sets up a criterion for what would make a go a life worth preserving and extends this into a political theory about what would make a good politician should we try to survive by becoming like the regime that we live under this would mean we'd all be becoming we should all be come like the Trump regime if we want to flourish in this in this Trump governed society right and that that would protect us that might that might help some of our interests but what if it makes us unjust and worse people and this is a problem with democracy because in a democracy in order to become powerful and preserve yourself you have to become most like those who are in power the public but if the public itself is bad and you don't improve them then your government will be bad and engaged in injustice and you could be overthrown by them whether justly or unjustly so if the governed are corrupt then the leader will have to be corrupt too in order to gain power but if the leader is corrupt then the power is illegitimate and destructive so a politician should aim always at making the citizenry and the body politic better people not just flattering them and catering to their whims so the example Socrates gives us if we're engaged in building projects we hire people who we think will improve the location and the facilities and we judge them on the basis of whether they've achieved any improvement are those buildings actually good buildings are not same thing with doctors not everybody who practices medicine is a good doctor but those who have results if there's a doctor who all of their patients end up dying we don't say yeah it was a good he's a good doctor it's just that his his patients don't tend to live after consulting with him no we say that's a bad that's a bad practitioner of that art so same thing with politicians before we let a politician take power since the purpose of politics is to improve the citizens we should say who is this politician made better what evidence can they show me that they've actually made the citizenry or the people they were governing better and it's madness to elect or put somebody into power that shows no evidence of having improved anyone or made them any better and so all of the historical examples that Calichlis gives of look at these powerful politicians who practice rhetoric and how great they were people like Pericles and Seamon and Miltiades and so forth weren't they great and famous people they built great monuments like the Parthenon but the problem is Pericles evidently failed because although at first he had this great reputation people ended up running him out of power and if they did this for good reasons then he must have been a bad leader and if they did it for bad reasons then he must have been a bad leader because he didn't improve them and make them any better and so on with all the others and Socrates goes through each example these are an example examples of good politicians from the standpoint of flattering people giving them what they think they desire but since they didn't improve the people or make them more just they were not in fact good politicians from the standpoint of what really matters so this idea of flattery comes back if by flattery the body is corrupted for example by smoking smoking feels good but it's bad for your body then flatterers ought to be blamed so we should blame cigarette manufacturers and advertisers if they led to that kind of corruption similarly if the body politic or citizens are corrupted by rhetoric and sophistry then the leaders like the president and Congress should be blamed and a society that measures its success by monuments buildings and public works great things that it's managed to build and wealth is corrupt the only measure of whether you have a good politician is the goodness of the citizens and this is also why it's wrong for politicians to blame voters and by extension of the argument why professors are wrong when they blame students for being bad when politicians claim that they're wrong by people who threw them out of power they don't have much of an argument since it was their responsibility to make them good so that they would treat them they would treat justly the good people and a similar thing goes for students of rhetoricians and they give a humorous example of a professor who student refused to pay the fee because he claimed that he didn't learn enough about persuasion and the professor sued the student over the fee and said look if I win this case then the student has to pay the fee but if I lose the case then it becomes clear that the student did learn enough about persuasion in which case the student still has to pay the fee and the student flips this argument around by saying well look if I win then I don't have to pay the fee but if I lose then it's obvious that I didn't learn enough about persuasion in which case I shouldn't have to pay the fee so it is illogical for a teacher to find fault with the student and say I've been unjustly treated by my students because the goal of teaching is to make the students better so it's my fault if they're not better at least if I'm somebody that claims to to track practice a true political art and to make them better so that brings us back to Socrates ultimate fate and Socrates makes an extraordinary claim at 521d I think that I am one of the few Athenians and I say few in order that I may not say only person but I am one of the few who undertakes to practice the true art of politics and that I alone among our contemporaries perform the statesman task statesman's task and he says look if I'm prosecuted by an unfair rhetorician I'll be in the situation I described earlier where a medical doctor is arguing with a candy maker in front of an audience of children about what they should eat and Socrates says yes I would be ashamed at not being able to defend myself against those false charges and it would be really lame if I had to die as a result of it but I would take the death lightly he says if the cause was my lack of engaging in rhetorical flattery and he says it's unreasonable and cowardly to fear dying itself what you should be worried about and fear is committing any injustice now at that point the even the pretense of dialogue and Socrates arguing with himself breaks down and Socrates tells a story tells a myth as he explains it and he relates it to to a Homeric myth he says since the time of Chronos there was a law that says the good and the just are rewarded and sent to the aisles of the blessed but the bad are sentenced to the prison of justice and punishment Tartarus which is beneath Hades and in the time of Chronos and earlier in Zeus's reign living men judged other living men to decide to which place they would be sent but at some point Pluto told Zeus that people are being sent to the aisles of the blessed contrary to dessert tyrants and unjust men were able to get through basically because they have good attorneys and nice suits and so they look good and look presentable in front of the judges and the judges get confused and don't realize that they're actually unjust so Zeus says I'm gonna reform this whole system in the following way first humans will now be judged naked not clothed and when they're dead not living death is defined as a separation of soul from body judging human souls without bodies will avoid those being judged from using other living humans to defend them with tricky rhetoric like lawyers and using clothing and cosmetics to disguise their ugliness and shamefulness and further more the judges will also be dead and naked Zeus appoints three of his own sons and two of them are from Asia and one is from Europe and so one will judge the Asians the other will judge Europeans and then there is a third one that will resolve appeals and here's some depictions of them but the depictions aren't all that good because they don't show them naked which is the crucial feature this one gets a little bit closer but they ought to be completely naked now the theory is that just as the body bears scars of its physical illnesses and injuries so the soul is scarred by mental illnesses and by corruption and the corruption of those who were tyrants in life will be obvious to the naked judges in the afterlife who judge unadorned and unaccompanied souls those corrupt tyrants will now be sent for punishment to the prison of Tartarus those who were just in life and here soccer he says and I mean basically the philosophers so keep that in mind when picking your major will be sent to the aisles of the blessed instead and soccer he says I'm convinced by this account and this is why I consider being just better than being unjust even if I could use rhetoric to get away from it now there's a big question about this myth because it's basically a breakdown of the philosophy and the and the argumentation we're going back now to a primitive form of talking about justice and injustice it's more similar to the archaic age of Homer than it is to the advanced political and legal age of Plato so why does Socrates resort to giving a myth at the end why does his interrogation and examination of these people not convince his interlocutors even when he expounds his own views without the pretense of the question and answer reputative method after the dialogue breaks down why was that not even persuasive why does he do what he constantly complains one should not do give a long speech and tell myths instead of making arguments doesn't this show the weakness and the impotence of philosophy