Today's class discussion covering conventional mores and nature reminded me of a scene from the movie "Conan the Barbarian," where a Mongol general asks Conan, sitting before the general as a slave, "What is best in life?". Anyway, here is the clip that I am referring to:
What I think the movie clip points out is the aggressive nature of the power desired by Callicles and Polus. And this desired power seems not to be just involved with custom and environment but also human nature.
Callicles believes that power seems to be a means by which a person's unlimited desire may be both satisfied and extended: "the man who will live correctly must let his own desires be as a great as possible and not chasten them, and he must be sufficient to serve them, when they are as great as possible, through courage and intelligence, and to fill them up with the things for which desire arises on each occasion" (492a). So, with convention and nature set aside, is Callicles' own concept of power, then, even a position or a philosophy? It seems--to me, at least--to be closer to a commentary on how pleasure is best attained and enjoyed than a conception of either the good or bad.
If Callicles' position were implemented, were allowed to be actually executed, how could it be applied to the whole state? If desire is boundless, it would seem that one person's desires alone would be enough to smother any attempt of striving toward the good or of building something substantial. That is, like Socrate's sieve, Callicles' own position in the quoted lines is nothing more than the relinquishing of human nature and the attainment of desire, with human nature being the escaping liquid (493c). If a man or a woman is always striving to satisfy his or her own desires through power, what is left of human nature for that man or woman? After all, if desire is always expanding and never diminishing, how can the possible good even be considered? Callicles' position does not allow for reflection or contemplation of the good--moreover, contemplation of anything substantial beyond the whimsical.
It is interesting that prior to the quoted line of Callicles Socrates states that maybe the just ruler is a ruler over himself, his own human nature: "...but just what the many mean: being moderate and in control of oneself, ruling the pleasure and desires that are in oneself" (491e). Socrates wants moderation and temperance; Callicles, neither. Socrates' emphasizing the individual ruling over his or her own interior is the primary emphasis here. It seems that maybe there is an order to the self that is above both external nature and social convention and that can be addressed by an inquiry that does not consume the individual with insatiable desire.
