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Plato on Punishment Gorgias and Rehabilitation Noah Farley
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odern debates as to the proper nature of punishment typically devolve into two questions. First, ought we to punish for utilitarian or deontological reasons? Second, ought we to punish harshly (so as to deter) or less harshly (so as to rehabilitate)?1 In the Gorgias, Plato provides a helpful contribution to this debate. In his argument that punishment is beneficial, Socrates presents the idea that punishment “cures” a moral ill in the soul of the wrongdoer and is justified based on the good it does for the criminal. In this paper, I will argue that Plato’s theory can only function if a society successfully imports moral meaning into punishment. I will conclude that even though rehabilitative theories were not available conceptually to Plato, his conception of punishment-as-cure provides an effective moral foundation for such theories. Plato’s argument in the Gorgias is that punishment is a good for the soul of the punished. This is for the simple reason that immorality is an evil that afflicts the soul and is made better by punishment.2 Paying the penalty for your crimes is thus a way of remedying a disease in the soul.3 More than that, immorality is the worst disease. This means that being cured of it is not only a good but one of the best goods.4 Socrates’ conclusion is that if we want good done to our friends and evil to our enemies, then we ought to use rhetoric to cause our friends to suffer 1. See Mike C. Marteni, “Criminal Punishment and the Pursuit of Justice,” The British Journal of American Legal Studies 2, no. 2 (2013): 266. 2. Plato, Gorgias, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 477a. 3. Ibid., 474c-476a. 4. Ibid., 478d-e.
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