ΦΙΛΗΒΟΣ
Floyer Sydenham, ed. Thomas Taylor (1804)
Plato · Floyer Sydenham, ed. Thomas Taylor (1804)
Scene: The Lyceum
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: Consider now, Protarchus, what the doctrine of Philebus is, which you are taking upon yourself to second and support; and what things said by me you are going to controvert, if they should be found such as are not agreeable to your mind. Will you permit me to state, in a summary way, the difference between my positions and those of Philebus?
Protarchus: By all means.
Socrates: Philebus then says, that the good of all animals is joy, and pleasure, and delight, and whatever else is congenial to them, and harmonizes with all other things of the same kind. And what I contend for is, that those things are not the best; but that to be wise, and to understand, and remember, and whatever is of kin to them, right opinions, and true reason- ings, are better things than pleasure, and more eligible to all beings universally, that is, to such as are capable of receiving the participation of them; and that to all beings which have that capacity, the actual partaking of them is of all things the most advantageous, not only to those beings which are, but to those also which are to come. Do we not, O Philebus, you and I, severally lay down some such hypotheses as these?
Philebus: Exactly such, O Socrates!
Socrates: And will you, Protarchus, take up the controversy, as I have just now stated it?
Protarchus: Of necessity I must. For Philebus, the champion of our side, is tired and gives out.
Socrates: Now it is right and proper for us to discover, by all means possible, the full force and meaning of both those hypotheses; and not to give over till we have determined the controversy between them.
Protarchus: I agree with you, it is.
Socrates: Let us agree in this too, besides.
Protarchus: In what?
Socrates: That we should, each of us, endeavour to set forth what state and what affection of the soul is able, according to our different hypotheses, to procure for every man a happy life. Is it not our business so to do?
Protarchus: Certainly it is.
Socrates: Well then: You say that it is that of rejoicing; we, that it is that of understanding and thinking rightly.
Protarchus: True.
Socrates: But what if there should appear some other, preferable to both of these, but more nearly of kin to pleasure? should we not in this case be both of us confuted, and obliged to yield the preference to a life which gives the stable possession of those very things wherein you place human happiness? However, at the same time it must be agreed, that a life of pleasure would be found more eligible than a life of knowledge or intellection.
Protarchus: Without doubt.
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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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