ΦΙΛΗΒΟΣ
Benjamin Jowett
Plato · Benjamin Jowett
Scene: no indication
The Philebus asks whether the good for human beings is pleasure or intelligence. Plato's answer is neither alone: the good life is a mixture, but one in which reason, measure, and proportion hold first place, and pleasure only a subordinate one.
To analyze this, the dialogue lays out a subtle metaphysics of limit and the unlimited — all good things arising when measure is imposed on the indefinite — a scheme that the later Platonists prized as a key to the structure of reality itself.
Cast as a debate over whether pleasure or wisdom is the good, the Platonic dialogue answers that neither alone suffices: the best life is a mixture, ordered by measure. Along the way Socrates introduces the fourfold division of all things into the unlimited, the limit, their mixture, and the cause of the mixture.
This pairing of limit (peras) and the unlimited (apeiron) — the imposing of measure upon the indefinite — became one of the most fertile themes the later tradition drew from Plato, shaping the Neoplatonic account of how the many proceed from the One.
From the Plato Scroll Encyclopedia · open this entry in the reader
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.
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
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