Plato, Gorgias VIII

Justice as medicine for the soul

Socrates has just asserted that the one who lives as tyrant is more wretched than the one who paid the just penalty and that the neither of them would be happy. This causes Polus to begin laughing, why?

Socrates will try to prove this in the following manner: he asks which is worse, suffering injustice or doing injustice, to which the reply is suffering and justice; he then asks which is more shameful, suffering injustice or doing justice, to which the reply is doing injustice. Socrates then distinguishes the fine and the good and the bad and shameful. He provides an understanding of beauty (or fineness) that connects it to pleasure and/or benefit, which Polus transforms into pleasure and goodness, which in turn then defines the shameful, which is the opposite of the beautiful (the word in Greek is kalos, and it also means noble), as pain and badness.