Autor: Plato

Buch: Gorgias

Titel: Gorgias

Stichwort: Prinzip der Souveränität der Tugend

Kurzinhalt: the Principle of the Sovereignty of Virtue. This principle holds that virtue is by far the most valuable thing in life.

Textausschnitt: XIXb We need to spell out in more detail what happiness consists in, according to Socrates. It consists in being moral, but the precise relationship between virtue and happiness in the Socratic dialogues is hard to ascertain. Gorgias is crucial, however, for the attempt to understand the relationship. Throughout the Socratic dialogues, Plato has Socrates assume some essential connection between virtue and happiness, but Gorgias is the only early or earlyish dialogue in which the connection is argued for at all. (Fs)

XXa Socrates agrees with his interlocutors that it is the possession of things that are good for a person which makes that person happy; where they differ is over what things are good for a person. Callicles thinks that unlimited sensual pleasure is good; we have already considered Socrates' disagreement with this view. Polus thinks it is good for one to have power over others, even to the extent of acting unjustly towards them; Socrates argues, by contrast, that immorality and injustice are bad for the agent, and even that they are worse for the agent than suffering the same injustice is to the sufferer. (Fs) (notabene)

Now if we consider even briefly the enormous evils that one can suffer unjustly, we can see how extraordinary this proposition is: one can be unjustly deprived of one's property, one can be unjustly expelled from one's city, one can have oneself and one's family unjustly enslaved, and one can be tortured unjustly, and unjustly be put to death [...] Socrates is arguing that in all these cases the man who does the injustice does thereby more harm to himself than the harm done to the sufferers of the injustice. (Fs) (notabene)
(Santas, p. 231)

XXb This strand within Gorgias is of a piece with a Socratic principle, exemplified by a number of passages in other dialogues too, which has become known in the scholarly literature as the Principle of the Sovereignty of Virtue. This principle holds that virtue is by far the most valuable thing in life. (Fs)
Whenever we must choose between exclusive and exhaustive alternatives which we have come to perceive as, respectively, just and unjust or, more generally, as virtuous and vicious, this very perception of them should decide our choice. Further deliberation would be useless, for none of the non-moral goods we might hope to gain, taken singly or in combination, could compensate us for the loss of a moral good. Virtue being the sovereign good in our domain of value, its claim upon us is always final. (Fs)
(Vlastos, Socrates, pp. 210-11)

XXIa In modern colloquial English, talk of 'virtue' can sound rather stuffy and Victorian; it can smack of doing one's duty without flinching, without minding the inconvenience. We need to remind ourselves, then, that what determines the value of virtue is, according to Socrates, that it makes the agent happy. It is good for me to be moral; it is bad for me to be immoral. Like everyone else, I aim in all I do for my own happiness. Socrates is saying that virtue, properly understood, brings happiness in its train. (Fs) (notabene)

XXIb Virtue is intrinsically good, then; but is it the only good thing there is? There is some ambiguity in the evidence, but in the early dialogues Socrates usually counts other things as good as well as virtue. A rough list, in order of importance to Socrates, would include, after virtue, physical health, fitness and good looks, and adequate wealth and social standing. See, for instance, Gorgias 467e-468b, 477a ff., 499c-500a. However, as Vlastos has argued persuasively, the Principle of the Sovereignty of Virtue still remains in place. These things are good in the sense that, as long as they do not interfere with a moral life, they are on balance to be preferred over their opposites; but even so, their value compared with virtue is utterly insignificant. If I had virtue, I would still count as happy without them, although I would be slightly happier with them; and I would still count as miserable if I had these external goods in abundance, but was immoral. (Fs) (notabene)