Much of this lecture is devoted to the third and final part of Plato’s Gorgias, which contains Socrates’s lengthy conversation with Callicles. However, we will begin with a summary of what we’ve learned thus far in Gorgias, and how its theme of justice develops and eventually becomes even more important than its initial theme of rhetoric. Then turning our attention to Callicles, we begin with a consideration of his quite sophisticated view of what is just by nature, according to which the strong dominate the weak naturally and therefore justly, we will also reflect on what might have led him to adopt this harsh view of the world. We will also examine Callicles’s quite harsh criticism of philosophy in general and of Socrates in particular, linking this criticism with his view of justice. The dialogue concludes with Socrates’s criticism of the principle that apparently guides Callicles’s life, that of hedonism, or the view that the greatest good for a human being is pleasure. For all of