The Structure and Appearance of Vice
An outline of the philosophical exigence for an original film, followed by a character study of two Plato interlocutors, Thrasymachus and Callicles, as preliminary research for the character design of the project.
Spencer Harrington, 2025
In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the philosopher seems to contradict himself on his account of the vicious/evil person and their psychic unity, showing us one who is united around his vicious thought/reason/action, and one who’s guilt leads to his own destruction. Despite this contradiction, both accounts seem to be evident in human life. As research for a film I am currently writing, I wish to briefly reconcile this contradiction through a former paper of mine, “Vice and What Holds it Together,” as an outline of the exigence of my film and its philosophical goal, and then move on to a character study of two Plato interlocutors (Thrasymachus in Republic and Callicles in Gorgias) who represent two distinct faces of viciousness and can serve as philosophical archetypes for characters in the film.
Section I: The Film’s Philosophy (Vice and Happiness)
According to Aristotle, virtuous people are said to have psychic unity due to their alignment of right desires, reasons and actions (Aristotle, 1145a). This picture of what builds psychic unity accidentally allows for an interpretation that the vicious person must be unified in the same way, as their wrong desires, reasons, and actions are aligned toward the bad. Aristotle’s further comments support this interpretation as he distinguishes the vicious person from the akratic (weak-willed) on grounds that the vicious person is not consumed by regret in the same way, he writes:
An intemperate person, as we said, is not the sort to have regrets, since he stands by his deliberate choice, whereas anyone who lacks self-control is the sort of person who invariably has regrets… In fact, lack of self-control and vice are wholly different in kind, since vice escapes its possessor’s notice, whereas lack of self-control does not escape it.
(Aristotle, 1151a)
Unlike the weak-willed person, the vicious person’s actions escape them as something he should not be doing. He believes he is doing the natural and beneficial thing for himself, a characteristic we will see in the character studies in Section II. While Aristotle seemingly sets up a picture that shows the vicious person as happy, the goal of the larger work is to posit Eudaimonia as a rare, merit-based kind of higher happiness; distinct from pleasure, that can only be achieved through his conception of virtue (a highly moralistic, all-encompassing metric of human life well lived). To abet this picture, Aristotle ungroundedly claims that the vicious person is plagued by his regrets, he writes:
Those who have done many terrible actions because of their depravity hate and even flee from living, and ruin themselves.
(Aristotle, 1167a)
While intuitively we can see that Aristotle is going to want to take this approach or prove something like this, the claim is not made in any way that brings light to its inherently contradictory place regarding his earlier claims about virtue and vice. While many contemporary philosophers try to argue for one or the other being the correct interpretation of Aristotle (often explaining other criteria for Eudaimonia than psychic unity), I find it relevant to our understanding that both conceptions of evil people seem to exist in real life.
It is true that the problem of other minds will keep us from knowing anything real about the thoughts and happiness of evil people (even those who claim staunchly to be happy and acquire the things they desire “consequence” free). Regardless of this, it seems though that there must be an incentive for evil if so many people are willing to risk their virtue for it; enough so to claim that even momentarily evil people can be content (or too distracted by pleasure to believe they are anything but content). Aristotle’s picture of evil and Plato’s picture of the tyrannical soul both involve in some way the idea that evil is compromised in getting what you desire to the detriment of your morality. What this means is, vicious people get what they want; it is the reason they do the which undoable to us – it would be naïve to claim that viciousness cannot lead to in the minimum pleasure, if not something like contentment. In the same breath, it is easy for us to see how a moral agent (meaning someone in the game of morality, i.e., excluding psycho/sociopaths) would never be as happy in vice as they would in virtue, and how guilt and a life poorly lived would inherently have a negative effect within their lifetime. Both conceptions of evil seem to exist in the real world and it seems that a single vicious person may fall into either of these pictures at varying points within their life.
In 2022, I wrote a paper titled “Vice and What Holds it Together” in which I attempted to reconcile these contradicting accounts by seeking to explain what distinguishes the two kinds of people. My findings were that the level of functioning of a vicious person (low-functioning viciousness being the guilt-ridden account and high-functioning being the guilt-free account) comes down to the coupling of two external factors that can distract the moral agent from relevant reflection that would cause them to shift into low-functioning (Harrington, 2). These two factors are active viciousness – the agent’s temporal relation to the height and profits of their vicious activity (Harrington, 2-3), as well as sociality – the existence/nonexistence of a social culture that condones similar vicious actions among similarly vicious people (Harrington, 4). Aristotle writes briefly about these factors and their effect directly:
Besides, depraved people seek others with whom to spend their days but flee from themselves, since when they are by themselves they remember many repellant things and expect others like them in the future, whereas when they are with others they forget these. (Aristotle, 1167a)
When the vicious person finds himself alone and removed from his vicious action, he has time to reflect. This is precisely what leads to the undoing of the vicious person, leading him into low-functioning where he is characterized by a guilt; one that leads him to “… flee from living, and ruin themselves” (Aristotle, 1167a).
I explain this reconciliation as it is what I wish to explore in my film. My narrative is about a character who shifts from high to low functioning viciousness due to their recent removal from their social culture, vicious actions, and the profits that come with. In searching how this conception of viciousness manifests within a personality as preliminary research for the narrative construction of my film and its characters, I will conduct a brief study of the Plato interlocutors Thrasymachus and Callicles, squaring how they represent evil through their tyrannical thoughts and how they may differ.
Section II: Character Study
In Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus interrupts a discussion between Socrates and Polemarchus on the nature of justice, showing disdain for Socrates’s process of nearing the truth through the elenchus (Republic, 336b-c). Socrates explains that he cannot give an answer about something he doesn’t claim to know (Republic, 337e-338a), and in turn Thrasymachus must submit to giving his own answer and having Socrates refute it. He states his conception of justice plainly: “I say justice is nothing other than what is advantageous for the stronger” (Republic, 338b-c). He fleshes this claim out, positing (to Socrates’ agreement) that by the strongest he correctly means the ruling element of any one city (Republic, 338d). He claims that the ruling element of any society makes laws that are advantageous for themselves, thus deciding what is just and unjust (Republic, 338e-339a). His claim is that justice is subjective and legalistic; it is a political construct and has no real basis in morality or some cosmic objective truth of what is right.
In Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles enters the discussion at the bewilderment of Socrates claim that “…one who does what’s unjust is always more miserable than the one who suffers it, and the one who avoids paying what’s due always more miserable than the one who does pay it” (Gorgias, 479e). He believes Socrates must be joking, going on to deliver his conception of justice:
I believe that the people who institute our laws are the weak and the many. They do this, and they assign praise and blame with themselves and their own advantage in mind. They’re afraid of the more powerful among men, the ones who are capable of having a greater share, and so they say that getting more than one’s share is “shameful” and “unjust,” and that doing what’s unjust is trying to get more than one’s share. They do this so that those people won’t get a greater share than they. I think they like getting an equal share, since they are inferior.
(Gorgias, 483b-c)
Callicles’ conception of justice is that it is a concept constructed to shame one for rightfully using their power to take more than their share. It’s a claim that justice is both objective and artificial, and it further entails strong beliefs of the natural world – that those who have more than their share have rightfully exercised their power over the weak; the weak who couldn’t find a way to do the same, and who craft terms like justice to ensure they maintain at least their equal share.
These conceptions of justice differ largely. They are only similar in that both interlocutors believe justice to be a construct created by some party for their benefit or advantage. For Thrasymachus, it is merely a legal term, and seeks to describe those laws put in place by the strong (ruling class) for their own advantage. This is where Callicles’ conception starkly contrasts. For him, justice is a construct created by the weak rather than the strong. Justice is an arbitrary term crafted to go against what Callicles believes to be a natural order of the world; that humans are compromised of the strong, who take what they can, and the weak, who are taken from. In addition to their conceptions of justice, the manner in which they argue their beliefs differs greatly. Thrasymachus is prone to outburst (Republic, 343a) and eventually gives in to Socrates’ ‘game’ rather than defending his claim past the contradiction he is led to (Republic, 354a). On the other hand, Callicles is methodic about his conception of the world, better articulating himself and resisting Socrates’ claims even in moments of self-contradiction, holding staunchly that the good consists of unrestricted enjoyment (Gorgias, 495b).
If we hold both their words to reflect truly what they believe and how they act in the world predicated upon said beliefs, it seems right to say that they would qualify as vicious for Aristotle. It seems to me that Callicles is easier to understand directly as vicious, as his speech and beliefs about the strong and weak in nature reflect wrong reason as opposed to merely wrong desire and wrong action (this would be the akratic, a state that relevantly may come about from enough reflection of the low-functioning vicious person, given that their viciousness doesn’t lead to a ‘flee from living’). Thrasymachus’ speech leaves much to be asked about how much he understands the nature of his thoughts/actions. I also find Callicles to be a more compelling example of the vicious person as it relates to an archetype for my film; he is methodic and articulate about his evil. He has a framed conception of how the world works that holds up and supports his character as strong rather than evil, something that all high-functioning vicious people would seemingly have due to the stubborn and self-justified nature of such a belief. This is precisely the belief that would be called into question and shattered upon the removal of the vicious agent from both the profits of their vicious actions and the social culture that supports him. The idea of both the film and my earlier paper could be applied directly to the case of Callicles’ viciousness: If Callicles was removed from his circle of Sophists and practice of rhetoric, he’d be rid of his distractions – forcing him into a state of reflection that crumbles the moral security of his current belief that he is right to have lived a life of taking whatever he wanted.
Spencer Harrington
Bibliography
Aristotle, and C. D. C. Reeve. Nicomachean Ethics. Hackett Publishing Co., Inc, 2014.
Harrington, Spencer. “Vice and What Holds It Together.” University of Florida, 2022.
Plato, and C. D. C. Reeve. Republic. Hackett Pub. Co, 2004.
Plato, and Donald J. Zeyl. Gorgias. Hackett Pub. Co, 1987.
