Contemplating Plato's Akrasia
Week Two: Gorgias
For the second week of our project, we wanted to look at Socratic rationalism more generally. What, according to Socrates, motivates agents to action?
In sections 458e - 461b of the Gorgias, Socrates fleshes out his Socratic rationalism. There are a couple of components of Socratic rationalism, as presented in the Gorgias.
P1: An agent will always do what he wants most.
P2: An agent will want to do an action most if he thinks it the best decision.
C: The agent will do or choose to act on the decision that they think is the best.
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Socrates thinks that if orators are learned in matters of justice and injustice, then by Socratic rationalism, the orators will not want to commit injustice.
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Additionally, we wanted to touch upon a subject that we visited last week again: hedonism. In sections 491e - 495a of the Gorgias, Socrates seems to sing a different tune than he does in the Protagoras about hedonism.
Socrates maintains that pleasure and good are NOT the same. He proves this with his metaphor of the leaky bucket, where the person with the leaky bucket does not have the ability to control his short-term desires.