In the Gorgias, Socrates claims that painful bodily punishment like flogging can improve certain wrongdoers. I argue that we can take Socrates’ endorsement seriously, even on the standard interpretation of Socratic motivational intellectualism, according to which there are no non-rational desires. I propose that flogging can epistemically improve certain wrongdoers by communicating that wrongdoing is bad for oneself. In certain cases, this belief cannot be communicated effectively through philosophical dialogue.

This essay intends to argue for the affinity between the Gorgias and the Republic concerning issues of moral psychology. To this end I will divide my argument into two halves. The first half will show how the Calliclean moral psychology outlined at 491e-492a implies the possibility of conflict within the soul, especially regarding the relationship between epithumiai and shame. It will then argue that Socrates recognizes the appetitive element of the soul in his reply to Callicles but does not explore (...) its consequences in any depth. The second half will contend that thumos – in the form of shame – is represented dramatically, and to some extent theoretically by Plato as one source of human motivation independent from reason, and recognized as such by the Calliclean position. My ultimate goal is to show how Plato raises questions in the Gorgias that hint at the theory of the tripartite soul expounded in book IV of the Republic, even though the answers here remain insufficient. The Gorgias therefore invites its readers to reflect critically on so-called Socratic intellectualism pointing to a more complex conception of human motivation that will be developed in the Republic. (shrink)

Psychological eudaimonism is the view that we are constituted by a desire to avoid the harmful. This entails that coming to see a prospective or actual object of pursuit as harmful to us will unseat our positive evaluative belief about that object. There is more than one way that such an 'unseating' of desire may be caused on an intellectualist picture. This paper arbitrates between two readings of Socrates' 'attack on laziness' in the Meno, with the aim of constructing a (...) model of moral education based on PE's implied moral psychology. In particular, we argue against the view that when we come to see - through prudential reasoning - that our blatant evaluative beliefs and desires disserve eudaimonism, we will no longer perceive their intentional objects as choice-worthy. We suggest, instead, that it is by experiencing shame that we cease to see the intentional objects of our evaluative beliefs and desires as worthy of pursuit. This form of 'hydraulic education' bypasses reason-responsiveness altogether. As such, it only allows for practical norms to be derived from the nature of agency indirectly, namely by enabling the use of discursive practical reasoning. (shrink)