Thick Concepts and Moral Revisionism in Plato’s Gorgias: Arguing About Something There Can Be No Argument About

Phronesis 65 (2):153-178 (2019)
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Abstract

David Furley has suggested that we think of Callicles’ immoralism as attacking a thick concept. I take up this suggestion and apply it to the argument of Plato’s Gorgias more generally. I show that the discussion between Socrates, Gorgias and Polus, which prepares the ground for Callicles, is precisely addressing the thickness of the concept of justice: it reveals that this concept is both descriptive and evaluative and that formulating a revisionist position about justice is therefore extremely difficult. Callicles’ strategy is best read as a response to this difficulty, which sets the stage for Socrates’ revisionist account of justice.

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References found in this work

Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.Bernard Williams - 1986 - Cambridge, Mass.: Routledge.
Modern Moral Philosophy.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1958 - Philosophy 33 (124):1 - 19.
Choosing Normative Concepts.Matti Eklund - 2017 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.Bernard Williams - 1987 - Behaviorism 15 (2):179-181.

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