On Morals

Bruce Bassi
March 1, 2004

Socrates analyzes and refutes Simonides’ claim on morality in the first chapter of Republic by Plato. Simonides argues that morality is doing the right thing and “giving people what you owe to them” (331e). Socrates reveals the flaws in Simonides’ definition of morality through an elenchus— a dialogue in which a contradiction is reached. The basis for contradiction in the elenchus is that morality is doing the right thing and nothing else. In fairness to the elenchus, Socrates offers counterexamples to Simonides which develop his definition of morality into being something bad. To prove flaws in Simonides’ argument, one should examine the truth of appearances versus reality, the focus of morality as an expertise and the advantages and trends of self-advancement. Simonides’ idea of morality as giving what one owes another is unspecific and could imply that morality is immoral and does harm to unintended people.

Morality is the return of a favor that has been lent. Involving two entirely moral and sane people there seems to be no harm in this statement; one good deed is returned for another (in the form of reciprocity, rather than debt). Socrates offers a counterexample to disprove this idea: morality should not merit an insane man who has lent a sword to receive a sword in return because he may not be able to make good moral judgments with it. Simonides acknowledges that there is no justice in returning a sword to an insane man, able to do harm because it would contradict morality as doing the right thing. Morality in this instance must be the return of good favors to good and moral friends, and conversely returning something bad to enemies.

‘Friend’ defined loosely means a person who one regards as good. Likewise, enemies are those one regards as bad. One’s regard is based entirely upon appearance of that friend so that friend may appear friendly but actually may not be. Defined strictly, friends are those who appear good and have good regard, but may in fact be good or bad. Since friends are made according to appearances and not facts, then it is possible that we make mistakes as to those we regard as friends and to those we regard as enemies. According to this reasoning, one can do good to true enemies who appear friendly, and do harm true friends who appear to be enemies. In either circumstance, a moral person could do harm to anybody, including other moral people. Imagine the consequences if moral people did harm to other moral people. If this was the case then friends would harm friends, which contradicts our definition that friends should not harm friends. Hypothetically, if we knew who is truly moral (the good people) and immoral (the bad people), then as moral beings we can and should do harm to those who are immoral, under this new definition of morality.

Friends should owe genuinely good people good deeds, and one should owe a true enemy something that is appropriately bad (assuming there are different levels of evil actions and evil people). Morality is comparable to expertise such that like all areas of expertise, morality provides us with something—alliances between individuals for associations, according to Simonides. Alliances are necessary when the tools of experts, such as weapons or money, have the potential to make the user immoral. A virologist who studies viruses may be good at secretly inducing a disease, which implies one who excels at protecting is also good at stealing. A moral protector must also be good at stealing and being immoral. Therefore moral people may be good at being moral and being immoral—contradicting the original definition that moral people can only do good deeds, not bad ones as well.

Moral people who “do the right thing” should neither steal nor be immoral (but they may be good at it if they tried) because it is the job of immoral people. An expert may be good at a function and its opposite, but the opposite function should be the expertise of a different entity—cooling could not be the function of heat. Moral people cannot make other people more immoral because this is the duty of an immoral person. By harming a horse, the perpetrator decreases its excellence; harming people decreases their morality. Only an immoral person can decrease another person’s morality, and therefore a moral person should never harm anybody. The contradiction is that if moral people can harm other people then they are not actually moral. But there are always imperfections because being an expert is a skill and sometimes the area of expertise may be perfect in theory, but the expert has flawed methods. Even though moral people are striving for complete morality, they are still doing just that— striving— and may commit some immoral actions.

The basic idea of an expert is that the expert is proficient at his own field, as opposed to claiming expertise at a field and being focused on something else, such as one’s self. One cannot fulfill self-interests and the interests of the profession at the same time, and as soon as one does so, one becomes less progressive at one’s work. Experts who do not do work in their field are no longer a performing expert, but a person with an expert’s title or appearance. Likewise, experts in morality cannot look out for their own self-interests or they would no longer be moral but rather immoral. Making a genus distinction of two extreme cases, immoral people are a species of people good at deception and appearing clever and good, that is because on the other extreme moral people cast away self-interests and work for the advancement of morality even if it means continuing self-degrading, self-humiliating and self-harming acts. Contrarily, immoral people have no regard for others and try to outdo both immoral and moral people to continue their advancement. Ignoramuses try to outdo everybody else because they try to show themselves better than others, to become more respected. Both ignoramuses and immoral people try to outdo everyone else. Therefore immoral people resemble ignoramuses and do not appear to be clever and good (moral) people—contradicting immoral people to originally have a clever and good appearance. Immoral people are only concerned with themselves and not actually concerned for advancement for the better.

Immoral people will have the have the appearance of having happiness and friendship but actually do not have any. When two friends are immoral, there is actually no friendship at all because neither friend will be concerned for the other. It is difficult to define morality as giving back what one owes because what we owe and to whom we owe it is never certain. Moral people who harm enemies by reciprocating a bad deed to a bad person will make that person immoral. Moral people cannot make others immoral; this is the function of their opposite—immoral people. Therefore moral people cannot harm bad people either (in addition to good people). This is contradictory and those who hold the idea that morality is bad will never have a consistently plausible argument.