Dialogues

regarded by Plato (to which modern science has returned in Mill and Bacon), and the cumbrous fourfold division of causes in the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle, for which it has puzzled the world to find a use in so many centuries. When we consider the backwardness of knowledge in the age of Plato, the boldness with which he looks forward into the distance, the many questions of modern philosophy which are anticipated in his writings, may we not truly describe him in his own words as a “spectator of all time and of all existence”?

Philebus

Persons of the dialogue:

• Socrates

• Protarchus

• Philebus

Socrates	Observe, Protarchus, the nature of the position which you are now going to take from Philebus, and what the other position is which I maintain, and which, if you do not approve of it, is to be controverted by you. Shall you and I sum up the two sides?
Protarchus	By all means.
Socrates	Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure for all who are able to partake of them, and that to all such who are or ever will be they are the most advantageous of all things. Have I not given, Philebus, a fair statement of the two sides of the argument?
Philebus	Nothing could be fairer, Socrates.
Socrates	And do you, Protarchus, accept the position which is assigned to you?
Protarchus	I cannot do otherwise, since our excellent Philebus has left the field.
Socrates	Surely the truth about these matters ought, by all means, to be ascertained.
Protarchus	Certainly.
Socrates	Shall we further agree⁠—
Protarchus	To what?
Socrates	That you and I must now try to indicate some state and disposition of the soul, which has the property of making all men happy.
Protarchus	Yes, by all means.
Socrates	And you say that pleasure, and I say that wisdom, is such a state?
Protarchus	True.
Socrates	And what if there be a third state, which is better than either? Then both of us are vanquished⁠—are we not? But if this life, which really has the power of making men happy, turn out to be more akin to pleasure than to wisdom, the life of pleasure may still have the advantage over the life of wisdom.
Protarchus	True.
Socrates	Or suppose that the better life is more nearly allied to wisdom, then wisdom conquers, and pleasure is defeated;⁠—do you agree?
Protarchus	Certainly.
Socrates	And what do you say, Philebus?
Philebus	I say, and shall always say, that pleasure is easily the conqueror; but you must decide for yourself, Protarchus.
Protarchus	You, Philebus, have handed over the argument to me, and have no longer a voice in the matter?
Philebus	True enough. Nevertheless I would clear myself and deliver my soul of you; and I call the goddess herself to witness that I now do so.
Protarchus	You may appeal to us; we too will be the witnesses of your words. And now, Socrates, whether Philebus is pleased or displeased, we will proceed with the argument.
Socrates	Then let us begin with the goddess herself, of whom Philebus says that she is called Aphrodite, but that her real name is Pleasure.
Protarchus	Very good.
Socrates	The awe which I always feel, Protarchus, about the names of the gods is more than human⁠—it exceeds all other fears. And now I would not sin against Aphrodite by naming her amiss; let her be called what she pleases. But Pleasure I know to be manifold, and with her, as I was just now saying, we must begin, and consider what her nature is. She has one name, and therefore you would imagine that she is one; and yet surely she takes the most varied and even unlike forms. For do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance⁠—that the fool is pleased when he is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom? and how foolish would anyone be who affirmed that all these opposite pleasures are severally alike!
Protarchus	Why, Socrates, they are opposed in so far as they spring from opposite sources, but they are not in themselves opposite. For must not pleasure be of all things most absolutely like pleasure⁠—that is, like itself?
Socrates	Yes, my good friend, just as colour is like colour;⁠—in so far as colours are colours, there is no difference between them; and yet we all know that black is not only unlike, but even absolutely opposed to white: or again, as figure is like figure, for all figures are comprehended under one class; and yet particular figures may be absolutely opposed to one another, and there is an infinite diversity of them. And we might find similar examples in many other things; therefore do not rely upon this argument, which would go to prove the unity of the most extreme opposites. And I suspect that we shall find a similar opposition among pleasures.
Protarchus	Very likely; but how will this invalidate the argument?
Socrates	Why, I shall reply, that dissimilar as they are, you apply to them a new predicate, for you say that all pleasant things are good; now although no one can argue that pleasure is not pleasure, he may argue, as we are doing, that pleasures are oftener bad than good; but you call them all good, and at the same time are compelled, if you are pressed, to acknowledge that they are unlike. And so you must tell us what is the identical quality existing alike in good and bad pleasures, which makes you designate all of them as good.
Protarchus	What do you mean, Socrates? Do you think that anyone who asserts pleasure to be the good, will tolerate the notion that some pleasures are good and others bad?
Socrates	And yet you will acknowledge that they are different from