Chapter XXII. Further Against Those Who Define the Good as Pleasure. From the Philebus of Plato

So much, from the writings of Aristocles.

[PLATO] [1] ‘Let us then judge each of the three separately in relation to Pleasure and to Mind: for we must see to which of these two we are to assign each of them as more akin.

‘You are speaking of Beauty, and Truth, and Moderation?

‘Yes: but take Truth first, Protarchus, and then look at three things, Mind, and Truth, and Pleasure, and after taking long time for deliberation make answer to yourself whether Pleasure or Mind is more akin to Truth.

‘But what need of time? For I think they differ widely. Pleasure is of all things most full of false pretensions; and in the pleasures of love, the greatest as they are thought, even perjury, as they say, is forgiven by the gods, its votaries being regarded, like children, as possessing not even the smallest share of Reason; while Reason is either the same thing as Truth, or of all things most like it and most true.

‘Will you not then next consider Moderation in the same way, whether Pleasure possesses more of it than Wisdom, or Wisdom more than Pleasure?

‘An easy question this again that you propose. For I think one would find nothing in the world of a more immoderate nature than Pleasure and delight, nor any single thing more full of moderation than Reason and Science.

‘You say well; yet go on to speak of the third point. Has Reason a larger share of Beauty than Pleasure has, so that Reason is more beautiful than Pleasure, or the contrary?

‘Is it not the fact, Socrates, that no one ever yet whether waking or dreaming either saw or imagined Wisdom and Reason to be unseemly in any way or in any case, either past, present, or to come?

‘Right.

‘But surely when we see any one indulging in Pleasures, and those too the greatest, the sight either of the ridicule or of the extreme disgrace that follows upon them makes us ashamed ourselves, and we put them out of sight and conceal them as much as possible, consigning all such things to night, as unfit for the light to look upon.

‘In every way then, Protarchus, you will assert, both by messengers to the absent and by word of mouth to those present, that Pleasure is not the first of possessions nor yet the second, but the first is concerned with Measure, and Moderation, and opportuneness, and whatever qualities of this kind must be regarded as having acquired the eternal nature.

‘So it appears from what you now say.

‘The second is concerned with Symmetry and Beauty and Perfection and Sufficiency, and all qualities which are of this family.

‘It seems so, certainly.

‘If then, as I foretell, you assume as the third class mind and wisdom, you will not go far astray from the truth.

‘Perhaps so.

‘Shall we not say then that the fourth class, in addition to these three, are what we assumed to belong to the soul itself, sciences, and arts, and right opinions as they were called, inasmuch as they are more akin to the good than to Pleasure?

‘Very likely.

‘In the fifth place then pleasures which we assumed in our definition to be unmixed with pain, and called them pure cognitions of the soul itself, but consequent on the sensations.

‘Perhaps.

‘And, as Orpheus says,

“In the sixth age still the sweet voice of song.” [2]

But our discourse also seems to have been brought to an end at the sixth trial. And nothing is left for us after this except to put the crown as it were upon what we have said.

‘Yes, that is proper.

‘Come then, as the third libation to Zeus Soter, let us with solemn asseveration go over the same argument.

‘What argument?

‘Philebus proposed to us that the good is pleasure universally and absolutely.

‘By the third libation, Socrates, it seems that you meant just now that we must take up again the argument from the beginning.

‘Yes. But let us listen to what follows. On my part when I perceived what I have now been stating, and was indignant at the argument employed by Philebus, and not by him only but often by thousands of others, I said that Mind was far nobler than Pleasure, and better for human life.

‘It was so.

‘Yes, but, suspecting that there were many other good things, I said that if any of these should be found better than both the former, I would fight it out for the second prize on the side of Mind against Pleasure, and Pleasure would be deprived even of the second prize.

‘You did indeed say so.

‘And presently it was most satisfactorily shown that neither of these was sufficient.

‘Most true.

‘So in this argument both Reason and Pleasure had been entirely set aside, as being neither of them the absolute good, since they lacked sufficiency, and the power of adequacy and perfection.

‘Quite right.

‘But something else having been found better than either of them, Mind has now again been shown to be ten thousand times closer and more akin than Pleasure to the nature of the conqueror.

‘Of course.

‘So then the power of Pleasure will be fifth in the award, as our argument has now declared.

‘It seems so.

‘But not first, no, not even if all oxen and horses and other beasts together should assert it by their pursuit of enjoyment, though the multitude believing them, as soothsayers believe birds, judge pleasures to be most powerful to give us a happy life, and think that the lusts of animals are more valid witnesses than the words of those who from time to time have prophesied by inspiration of the philosophic Muse.

‘Now at last, Socrates, we all say that you have spoken most truly.’

So writes Plato. But I am also going to set before you a few passages of Dionysius, a bishop who professed the Christian philosophy, from his work On Nature,in answer to Epicurus. And do thou take and read his own words, which are as follows: [3]