Plato on Evil-Doing, Eudaimonia, and the Elenchus: Reconsidering Socrates’ Encounter with Polus in the Gorgias

Abstract

In this paper, I attempt to shed new light on the much-debated exchange between Socrates and Polus in Plato’s Gorgias, particularly focusing on three major concepts that run throughout it: evil-doing, eudaimonia, and the elenchus. Upon close examination of the “Polus episode”, it turns out that such concepts as virtue, benefit, and eudaimonia are literally treated as defined-by-their-opposites concepts whose main significance derives from their serving to signal either abstinence or relief from the greatest evil. There are many cases where things are beyond human control, and even the person preserving the virtue of his soul is forced to suffer either injustice or some accident, thus becoming deprived of his knowledge and affected in respect to his soul’s health. Yet, as far as human control is concerned, one can attain a state of nonor less wretchedness by directing all his efforts towards (a) guarding against being wronged, (b) keeping on refraining from injustice and vice of soul as a whole, and (c) propagating the significance of both being refuted and refuting others, with the ultimate aim of disseminating the truth-knowledge of good and evil.