12.3.2009
I'm rehearsing some observations about the Philebus.[1]
The topic of this dialogue is pleasure, and its role in living a
good life. Right at the start, the discussion is staged as a competition:
pleasure and knowledge are the two candidates for what makes life worth
living. They aren't too clearly and too narrowly defined in the beginning:
'pleasure' is taken to include all sorts of enjoyment and delight, feeling
good and having fun; 'knowledge' covers intelligence and good reasoning,
correct belief and even memory (i.e. the activity of remembering, I take
it). The candidates have a spokesman each: Protarchus for pleasure, and
Socrates for knowledge. They are supposed to figure out what makes one
happy (they already agree that it is some condition of the psyche, 11d),
and whatever that is, the candidate which is closest to it wins the day.
(There's a third person present: Philebus. He's on the side of pleasure,
but he doesn't take part in the discussion (not much, at least; and not
in any way helpfully). Presumably that's because he feels that thinking
about these things is tedious work, i.e. it's not fun, so he avoids it.
This is a nice example for Plato's dramaturgical cleverness: Protarchus,
who is more inclined to engage in the serious business of thinking things
through, is in a sense a less ideal spokesman for pleasure, yet he accepts
to make the case; whereas Philebus, who is more radically hedonistic, doesn't
let himself to be drawn into the discussion precisely because that's what
is consistent with his character. So in a sense, although the dispute is
not really between him and Socrates, it is still very much
about Philebus — which is why the dialogue is very aptly named
after him.)
As soon as the terms of business are thus stated, Socrates
opens the discussion by suggesting that there are many different sorts
of pleasure, and that some of them are good and some are bad.
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"But as to pleasure, I know that it is complex [...] If one just goes by
the name it is one single thing, but in fact it comes in many forms that
are in some way even quite unlike each other. Think about it: we say
that a debauched person gets pleasure, as well as that a sober-minded
person takes pleasure in his very sobriety. Again, we say that a fool,
though full of foolish opinions and hopes, gets pleasure, but likewise
a wise man takes pleasure in his wisdom." (12c–d)
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Socrates makes several claims here. Let's unpack them: first, he says
that there are many kinds of pleasure — although they are all called
by the generic name 'pleasure', we can distinguish them as more specifically:
the pleasure of fantasizing about something, the pleasure of hoping for
something, the pleasure of wisely refraining from such phantasizing
or hoping, and so on. Secondly, Socrates says that pleasures are not
just varied, but can also be 'unlike' each other. So a pleasure can
be more opposed to some pleasures than it is opposed to others. Hoping for
something or having fantasies about something are relatively alike,
but if you get the pleasure from exactly not doing so (i.e. from
deliberately not letting yourself into hopes or phantasies), then the
latter pleasure comes from an attitude that is directly opposed to
the attitude in the other two cases. And thirdly, Socrates does not
just distinguish the kinds of pleasure, he also implicitly judges them.
In his example, he calls those who refrain from indulging in fantasies
'wise', thus ascribing an admirable quality of character. So there seems
to be a contrast also in moral worth and value between these sorts of
pleasure.
(As a side note: those pleasures that are judged with approving terms,
i.e. the pleasures of the temperate and the wise persons, happen to
be directed at something that these people do. They take pleasure
in their own behavior, not in something external, such as the taste of
drink, the state of being drunk, or dwelling in a dream world. I'm not
going into this further aspect here.)
Socrates has packed all this into his first move; perhaps Protarchus
does not see through all of the details, but he understands that Socrates'
suggestion implies more than he finds acceptable. He counters that the
pleasures in Socrates' example may be different, but that's because they
have different causes. Insofar as they are pleasures, they are not
different. So he accepts Socrates' first claim, and after some explication
also the second (that kinds of pleasure can be opposed to each other despite
both being kinds of pleasure, 13a). But he still resists the third claim,
forcing Socrates to explicitly state it, at which point he openly rejects it.
And that's not surprising at all. Remember that Protarchus is defending the
view that pleasure is what makes one's life a good life. This can only be
because pleasure is good, and one cannot believe that pleasure is good as
such, but at the same time that some sorts of pleasure are good and others
bad. ("Do you think anyone will agree to this who begins by laying it down
that pleasure is the good? Do you think he will accept it when you say that
some pleasures are good but others are bad?", 13b–c)
Was Socrates perhaps too quick here? Should he have restricted attention
to how pleasures can be divided up and analyzed, and should he better have
left the moral dimension for a later stage? Well, actually that is exactly
what Socrates does in the following passages. It's notorious, though, that
this is some really dry and complicated stuff (a 'dialectico-metaphysical
purgatory', as Dorothea Frede calls it the introductory essay in her
translation, xiii, xv). So before Socrates gets down to it, it's nice that
Plato gives us an idea what the general direction is; it is also probably a
dramaturgical necessity: Protarchus needs some motivating in order to be
willing to play along. Otherwise, he'd have opted out as quickly as Philebus
himself.
I think what the opening passage of the dialogue clearly shows is how
difficult it is to get a serious debate on the merit of pleasure going.
The defender of pleasure may be (consistently with his view) just
uninterested in thinking it through at all, as Philebus is. If he is
willing to take part in the investigation, that's a compromise
already. Protarchus embodies this more moderate stance.
But compromise is required also on Socrates' part. To get the discussion
under way, it's not the best plan to just launch into the analysis. That's
what he tries, though, and so he risks losing his partner's cooperation. So
Socrates must fall back again to playing it as a game and appealing to
Protarchus' sense of 'fairness' within the game. Whenever pleasure is
dissected and criticized, knowledge (the other candidate) must be subjected
to the same treatment. Later on, this compromise on both sides is mirrored
by the admission that a good life can be neither one purely of pleasure nor
one purely of knowledge; it will have to be characterized by some sort of
mixture of them both (20e–22c; but note that this is not yet the end
result: pleasure is going to be thoroughly criticized still).
So, these concessions made, the game can begin in earnest.
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[1] Plato, Philebus. Translated, with introduction and
notes, by Dorothea Frede. Indianapolis: Hackett 1993. All quotes are from
this edition.
