Shame, Pleasure And The Divided Soul Analysis

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Being a study of virtues in society, Plato’s Gorgias is a work in which he questions the nature of power, temperance, justice and good versus evil. Socrates converses with orators Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles whom have rejected the ancient Greek virtues of justice, temperance, courage and wisdom as a way to achievement but rather operate on the idea that the art of oratory will secure them power and access to what is attainable and pleasurable in life. They have also equated pleasure with the good as a way to achievement and a fulfillment of desires. This equation had potentially harmful implication on their moral code, which Socrates aims to show them. Dr. Jessica Moss, a professor in philosophy, argues in her article “Shame, Pleasure and the Divided Soul” that Socrates refutes their ideas by using shame as a persuasion tool. …show more content…
She believes that shame has the ability to separate a person’s judgments about pleasure from their judgments about what is good, and illustrate that virtue is better than vice (13). Hence, Moss argues that Socrates uses this strategy to change his interlocutress ideas of pleasure because “feelings of shame and desires for pleasure both act as non-rational… and quasi-perceptual bases for judgments of value” (13). Therefore, Socrates cannot appeal to reason for our own feelings of shame that ultimately illuminate our truth values are grounded in any rational base, but rather based on an emotional reaction. Socrates uses shame as a tool for persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias because it appeals to one’s own moral sense in a connection to one’s deep convictions and can unclog the implied moral beliefs of a person creating disdain for what is pleasant over what is

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