ABSTRACT
Arguments to the effect that all desire is for good are common in the dialogues. That is to say, arguments that meet that rough description are, though they take slightly differing forms and it is not always easy to determine quite how to interpret the conclusion. In the Gorgias (466 seq.) Socrates claims that politicians often do not do what they want, although they do what they think best. He argues that people take drugs for the sake of their health, run the risks of a sea-crossing for the sake of profit, and that in general, as in these cases, what the man wants is not what he does (take medicine, sail) but the purpose of these activities. Some things, such as health and wealth are goods, their opposites evils, but a great many things are neither, but take on the character of good or bad or neither according as they are conducive to the first, the second or neither. These neutral things are pursued only for the sake of some good. This is summed up by saying that they are done always ‘in pursuit of the good’. A man may, however, be wrong about how to achieve the good, so that while he does what he thinks best he is unable, because of his intellectual failure, to do what in fact he wants to do.
