不正が恥ずべきことであるのはいかにしてか？

──プラトン『ゴルギアス』474c4-475e6をめぐって――

抄録

In Plato's Gorgias 474c4-475e6, the issue of whether it is worse to do injustice or suffer it is considered. Socrates and Polus discuss this issue, regarding it as a problem in relation to their own choice of action and way of life. Polus thinks that suffering injustice is worse than doing it. He also thinks, on the other hand, that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering it. Socrates shows him that it is by exceeding in evil that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering it. As a result, Polus concedes that doing injustice is worse than suffering it.
Here, we can find a surface and a deeper significance in the judgment that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering it. At the surface level, (1) a ‘fine or shameful’ judgment has no effect on a judgment of good or bad, and (2) a ‘fine or shameful‘ judgment is not linked to one's choices of action and way of life. However, the judgment that doing injustice is more shameful indicates, deep down, a truer sense of good and bad which are not equated with pleasure and pain, i. e., the judgment reveals what is good and bad for the soul. In this discussion, Polus is, at first, only aware of the surface meaning of his own judgment that doing injustice is more shameful. Socrates shows him the deeper meaning.
We can find, here, a fundamental problem with rhetoric: rhetoric concerns persuasion about what is just and unjust, and, faced with public opinion, orators cannot deny that what is just is fine and what is unjust is shameful; but rhetoric cannot make clear the true meaning of the fineness of justice and the shamefulness of injustice, because it aims at pleasure without regard for the good for the soul. Rather, the fineness of justice and the shamefulness of injustice are based on taking care of the soul by political techne.