ΦΙΛΗΒΟΣ
H.N. Fowler (Loeb, 1925)
Plato · H.N. Fowler (Loeb, 1925)
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
Soc: Observe, then, Protarchus, what the doctrine is which you are now to accept from Philebus, and what our doctrine is, against which you are to argue, if you do not agree with it. Shall we make a brief statement of each of them?
Pro: By all means.
Soc: Very well: Philebus says that to all living beings enjoyment and pleasure and gaiety and whatever accords with that sort of thing are a good; whereas our contention is that not these, but wisdom and thought and memory and their kindred, right opinion and true reasonings, are better and more excellent than pleasure for all who are capable of taking part in them, and that for all those now existing or to come who can partake of them they are the most advantageous of all things. Those are pretty nearly the two doctrines we maintain, are they not, Philebus?
Phi: Yes, Socrates, exactly.
Soc: And do you, Protarchus, accept this doctrine which is now committed to you?
Pro: I must accept it; for our handsome Philebus has withdrawn.
Soc: And must the truth about these doctrines be attained by every possible means?
Pro: Yes, it must.
Soc: Then let us further agree to this:
Pro: To what?
Soc: That each of us will next try to prove clearly that it is a condition and disposition of the soul which can make life happy for all human beings. Is not that what we are going to do?
Pro: It is.
Soc: Then you will show that it is the condition of pleasure, and I that it is that of wisdom?
Pro: True.
Soc: What if some other life be found superior to these two? Then if that life is found to be more akin to pleasure, both of us are defeated, are we not, by the life which has firm possession of this superiority, but the life of pleasure is victor over the life of wisdom.
Pro: Yes.
Soc: But if it is more akin to wisdom, then wisdom is victorious and pleasure is vanquished? Do you agree to that? Or what do you say?
Pro: Yes, I at least am satisfied with that.
Soc: But how about you, Philebus? What do you say?
Phi: I think and always shall think that pleasure is the victor. But you, Protarchus, will make your own decision.
Pro: Since you entrusted the argument to me, Philebus, you can no longer dictate whether to make the agreement with Socrates or not.
Phi: True; and for that reason I wash my hands of it and now call upon the goddess herself to witness that I do so.
Pro: And we also will bear witness to these words of yours. But all the same, Socrates, Philebus may agree or do as he likes, let us try to finish our argument in due order.
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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.
Plato · H.N. Fowler (Loeb, 1925). Each edition has its page, the reader and a plain-text file:
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