Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS. (continued 2)

Sokrates in this dialogue differs little from these Pleasure-haters.

How little the Sokrates of this dialogue differs, at the bottom, from the fastidious pleasure-haters, may be seen by the passage in which he proclaims that the life of intelligence alone, without the smallest intermixture of pleasure or pain, is the really perfect life: that the Gods and the divine Kosmos have no enjoyment and no suffering.138 The emotional department of human nature is here regarded as a degenerate and obstructive appendage: so that it was an inauspicious act of the sons of the Demiurgus (in the Timæus139) when they attached the spherical head (the miniature parallel of the Kosmos, with the rotatory movements of the immortal soul in the brain within) at the summit of a bodily trunk and limbs, containing the thoracic and abdominal cavities: the thoracic cavity embodying a second and inferior soul with the energetic emotions and passions — the abdominal region serving as lodgment to a third yet baser soul with the appetites. From this conjunction sprang the corrupting influence of emotional impulse, depriving man of his close parallelism with the Kosmos, and poisoning the life of pure exclusive Intelligence — regular, unfeeling, undisturbed. The Pleasure-haters, together with Speusippus and others, declared that pleasure and pain were both alike enemies to be repelled, and that neutrality was the condition to be aimed at.140 And such appears to me to be the drift of Plato’s reasonings in the Philêbus: though he relaxes somewhat the severity of his requirements in favour of a few pleasures, towards which he feels the same indulgence as towards Homer in the Republic.141 When Ethics are discussed, not upon principles of their own (οἰκεῖαι ἀρχαὶ), but upon principles of Kosmology or Ontology, no emotion of any kind can find consistent place.

Forced conjunction of Kosmology and Ethics — defect of the Philêbus.

In my judgment, this is one main defect pervading the Platonic Philêbus — the forced conjunction between Kosmology and Ethics — the violent pressure employed to force Pleasures and Pains into the same classifying framework as cognitive Beliefs — the true and the false. In respect to the various pleasures, the dialogue contains many excellent remarks, the value of which is diminished by the purpose to which they are turned.142 One of Plato’s main batteries is directed against the intense, extatic, momentary enjoyments, which he sets in contrast against the gentle, serene, often renewable.143 That the former are often purchasable only at the cost of a distempered condition of body and mind, which ought to render them objects shunned rather than desired by a reasonable man — this is a doctrine important to inculcate: but nothing is gained by applying the metaphorical predicate false, either to them, or to the other classes of mixed pleasures, &c., which Plato discountenances under the same epithet. By thus condemning pleasures in wholesale and in large groups, we not only set aside the innocuous as well as others, but we also leave unapplied, or only half applied, that principle of Measure or Calculation which Plato so often extols as the main item in Summum Bonum.

Directive sovereignty of Measure — how explained and applied in the Protagoras.

In this dialogue as well as others, Measure is thus exalted, and exalted with emphasis, at the final conclusion: but it is far less clearly and systematically applied, as far as human beings are concerned, than in the Protagoras. The Sokrates of the Protagoras does not recognise any pleasures as false — nor any class of pleasures as absolutely unmixed with pain: he does not set pleasure in pointed opposition to the avoidance of pain, nor the intense momentary pleasures to the gentle and more durable. He considers that the whole course of life is a perpetual intermixture of pleasures and pains, in proportions variable and to a certain extent modifiable: that each item in both lists has its proper value, commensurable with the others; that the purpose of a well-ordered life consists, in rendering the total sum of pleasure as great, and the total sum of pain as small, as each man’s case admits: that avoidance of pain and attainment of pleasure are co-ordinate branches of this one comprehensive End. He farther declares that men are constantly liable to err by false remembrances, estimates, and comparisons, of pleasures and pains past — by false expectations of pleasures and pains to come: that the whole security of life lies in keeping clear of such error — in right comparison of these items and right choice between them: that therefore the full sovereign controul of each man’s life must be vested in the Measuring Science or Calculating Intelligence.144 Not only all comprehensive sovereignty, but also ever-active guidance, is postulated for this Measuring Science: while at the same time its special function, and the items to which it applies, are more clearly defined than in any other Platonic dialogue. If a man be so absorbed by the idea of an intense momentary pleasure or pain, as to forget or disregard accompaniments or consequences of an opposite nature, greatly overbalancing it — this is an error committed from default of the Measuring Science: but it is only one among many errors arising from the like deficiency. Nothing is required but the Measuring Science or Intelligence, to enable a man to make the best of those circumstances in which he may be placed: this is true of all men, under every variety of place and circumstances. Measure is not the Good, but the one condition which is constant as well as indispensable to any tolerable approach towards Good.

How explained in Philêbus — no statement to what items it is applied.

In the Philêbus, too, Measure — The Exact Quantum — The Exact Moment — are proclaimed as the chief item in the complex called — The Good.145 But to what Items does Sokrates intend the measure to be applied? Not certainly to pleasures: the comparison of quantity between one pleasure and another is discarded as useless or misleading, and the comparison of quality alone is admitted — i. e., true and false: the large majority of human pleasures being repudiated in the lump as false, and a small remnant only being tolerated, on the allegation that they are true. Nor, again, is the measure applied to pains: for though Plato affirms that a life altogether without pains (as without pleasures) would be the truly divine Ideal, yet he never tells us that the Measuring Intelligence is to be made available in the comparison and choice of pains, and in avoidance of the greater by submitting to the less. Lastly, when we look at the concession made in this dialogue to Gorgias and his art, we find that Plato no longer claims for his Good or Measure any directive function, or any paramount influence, as to utility, profit, reputation, or the greater ends which men usually pursue in life:146 he claims for it only the privilege of satisfying the aspiration for truth, in minds wherein such aspiration is preponderant over all others.

Comparing the Philêbus with the Protagoras, therefore, we see that though, in both, Measuring Science or Intelligence is proclaimed as supreme, the province assigned to it in the Philêbus is comparatively narrow. Moreover the practical side or activities of life (which are prominent in the Protagoras) appear in the Philêbus thrust into a corner; where scanty room is found for them on ground nearly covered by the speculative, or theorising, truth-seeking, pursuits. Practical reason is forced into the same categories as theoretical.

The classification of true and false is (as I have already remarked) unsuitable for pleasures and pains. We have now to see how Plato applies it to cognitions, to which it really belongs.

Classification of true and false — how Plato applies it to Cognitions.

The highest of these Cognitions is set apart as Dialectic or Ontology: the Object of which is, Ens or Entia, eternal, ever the same and unchangeable, ever unmixed with each other: while the corresponding Subject is, Reason, Intelligence, Wisdom, by which it is apprehended and felt. In this Science alone reside perfect Truth and Purity. Where the Objects are shifting, variable, mixed or confounded together, there Reason cannot apply herself; no pure or exact truth can be attained.147 These unchangeable Entities are what in other dialogues Plato terms Ideas or Forms — a term scarcely used in the Philêbus.

Though pure truth belongs exclusively to Dialectic and to the Objects thereof, there are other Sciences which, having more or less of affinity to Dialectic, may thus be classified according to the degree of such affinity. Mathematics approach most nearly to Dialectic. Under Mathematics are included the Sciences or Arts of numbering, measuring, weighing — Arithmetic, Metrêtic, Static — which are applied to various subordinate arts, and impart to these latter all the scientific guidance and certainty which is found in them. Without Arithmetic, the subordinate arts would be little better than vague guesswork or knack. But Plato distinguishes two varieties of Arithmetic and Metrêtic: one purely theoretical, prosecuted by philosophers, and adapted to satisfy the love of abstract truth — the other applied to some department of practice, and employed by the artist as a guide to the execution of his work. Theoretical Arithmetic is characterised by this feature, that it assumes each unit to be equal, like, and interchangeable with every other unit: while practical Arithmetic adds together concrete realities, whether like and equal to each other or not.148

It is thus that the theoretical geometer and arithmetician, though not coming up to the full and pure truth of Dialectic, is nevertheless nearer to it than the carpenter or the ship-builder, who apply the measure to material objects. But the carpenter, ship-builder, architect, &c., do really apply measure, line, rule, &c.: they are therefore nearer to truth than other artists, who apply no measure at all. To this last category belong the musical composer, the physician, the husbandman, the pilot, the military commander, neither of whom can apply to their processes either numeration or measurement: all of them are forced to be contented with vague estimate, conjecture, a practised eye and ear.149

Valuable principles of this classification — difference with other dialogues.

The foregoing classification of Sciences and Arts is among the most interesting points in the Philêbus. It coincides to a great degree with that which we read in the sixth and seventh books of the Republic, though it is also partially different: it differs too in some respects from doctrines advanced in other dialogues. Thus we find here (in the Philêbus) that the science or art of the physician, the pilot, the general, &c., is treated as destitute of measure and as an aggregate of unscientific guesses: whereas in the Gorgias150 and elsewhere, these are extolled as genuine arts, and are employed to discredit Rhetoric by contrast. Again, all these arts are here placed lower in the scientific scale than the occupations of the carpenter or the ship-builder, who possess and use some material measures. But these latter, in the Republic,151 are dismissed with the disparaging epithet of snobbish (βάναυσοι) and deemed unworthy of consideration.

Dialectic appears here exalted to the same pre-eminence which is assigned to it in the Republic — as the energy of the pure Intellect, dealing with those permanent real Essences which are the objects of Intellect alone, intelligible only and not visible. The distinction here drawn by Plato between the theoretical and practical arithmetic and geometry, compared with numeration or mensuration of actual objects of sense — is also remarkable in two ways: first, as it marks his departure from the historical Sokrates, who recognised the difference between the two, but discountenanced the theoretical as worthless:152 next as it brings clearly to view, the fundamental assumption or hypothesis upon which abstract arithmetic proceeds — the concept of units all perfectly like and equal. That this is an assumption (always departing more or less from the facts of sense) — and that upon its being conceded depends the peculiar certainty and accuracy of arithmetical calculation — was an observation probably then made for the first time; and not unnecessary to be made even now, since it is apt to escape attention. It is enunciated clearly both here and in the Republic.153

The long preliminary discussion of the Philêbus thus brings us to the conclusion — That a descending scale of value, relatively to truth and falsehood, must be recognised in cognitions as well as in pleasures: many cognitions are not entirely true, but tainted in different degrees by error and falsehood: most pleasures also, instead of being true and pure, are alloyed by concomitant pains or delusions or both: moreover, all the intense pleasures are incompatible with Measure, or a fixed standard,154 and must therefore be excluded from the category of Good.

Close of the Philêbus — Graduated elements of Good.

In arranging the quintuple scale of elements or conditions of the Good, Plato adopts the following descending order: I report them as well as I can, for I confess that I understand them very imperfectly.

1. Measure; that which conforms to Measure and to proper season: with everything else analogous, which we can believe to be of eternal nature. — These seem to be unchangeable Forms or Ideas, which are here considered objectively, apart from any percipient Subject affected by them.155

2. The Symmetrical, Beautiful, Perfect, Sufficient, &c. — These words seem to denote the successive manifestations of the same afore-mentioned attributes; but considered both objectively and subjectively, as affecting and appreciated by some percipient.

3. Intelligent or Rational Mind — Here the Subject is brought in by itself.

4. Sciences, Cognitions, Arts, Right Opinions, &c. — Here we have the intellectual manifestations of the Subject, but of a character inferior to No. 3, descending in the scale of value relatively to truth.

5. Lastly come the small list of true and painless pleasures. — These, being not intellectual at all, but merely emotional (some as accompaniments of intellectual, others of sensible, processes), are farther removed from Good and Measure than even No. 4 — the opining or uncertain phases of the intellect.156

The four first elements belong to the Kosmos as well as to man: for the Kosmos has an intelligent soul. The fifth marks the emotional nature of man.

I see no sufficient ground for the hypothesis of Stallbaum and some other critics, who, considering the last result abrupt and unsatisfactory, suspect that Plato either intended to add more, or did add more which has not come down to us.157 Certainly the result (as in many other Platonic dialogues) is inconsiderable, and the instruction derivable from the dialogue must be picked out by the reader himself from the long train of antecedent reasoning. The special point emphatically brought out at the end is the discredit thrown upon the intense pleasures, and the exclusion of them from the list of constituents of Good. If among Plato’s contemporaries who advocated the Hedonistic doctrine, there were any who laid their main stress upon these intense pleasures, he may be considered to have replied to them under the name of Philêbus. But certainly this result might have been attained with a smaller array of preliminaries.

Contrast between the Philêbus and the Phædrus, and Symposion, in respect to Pulchrum, and intense Emotions generally.

Moreover, in regard to these same intense emotions we have to remark that Plato in other dialogues holds a very different opinion respecting them — or at least respecting some of them. We have seen that at the close of the Philêbus he connects Bonum and Pulchrum principally, and almost exclusively, with the Reason; but we find him, in the Phædrus and Symposion, taking a different, indeed an opposite, view of the matter; and presenting Bonum and Pulchrum as objects, not of the unimpassioned and calculating Reason, but of ardent aspiration and even of extatic love. Reason is pronounced to be insufficient for attaining them, and a peculiar vein of inspiration a species of madness, eo nomine — is postulated in its place. The life of the philosophical aspirant is compared to that of the passionate lover, beginning at first with attachment to some beautiful youth, and rising by a gradual process of association, so as to transfer the same fervent attachment to his mental companionship, as a stimulus for generating intellectual sympathies and recollections of the world of Ideas. He is represented as experiencing in the fullest measure those intense excitements and disturbances which Eros alone can provoke.158 It is true that Plato here repudiates sensual excitements. In this respect the Phædrus and Symposion agree with the Philêbus. But as between Reason and Emotion, they disagree with it altogether: for they dwell upon ideal excitements of the most vehement character. They describe the highest perfection of human nature as growing out of the better variety of madness — out of the glowing inspirations of Eros: a state replete with the most intense alternating emotions of pain and pleasure. How opposite is the tone of Sokrates in the Philêbus, where he denounces all the intense pleasures as belonging to a distempered condition — as adulterated with pain, and as impeding the tranquil process of Reason — and where he tolerates only such gentle pleasures as are at once unmixed with pain and easily controuled by Reason! In the Phædrus and Symposion, we are told that Bonum and Pulchrum are attainable only under the stimulus of Eros, through a process of emotion, feverish and extatic, with mingled pleasure and pain: and that they crown such aspirations, if successfully prosecuted, with an emotional recompense, or with pleasure so intense as to surpass all other pleasures. In the Philêbus, Bonum and Pulchrum come before us as measure, proportion, seasonableness: as approachable only through tranquil Reason — addressing their ultimate recompense to Reason alone — excluding both vehement agitations and intense pleasures — and leaving only a corner of the mind for gentle and unmixed pleasures.159

The comparison, here made, of the Philêbus with the Phædrus and Symposion, is one among many proofs of the different points of view with which Plato, in his different dialogues,160 handled the same topics of ethical and psychological discussion. And upon this point of dissent, Eudoxus and Epikurus, would have agreed with the Sokrates of the Philêbus, in deprecating that extatic vein of emotion which is so greatly extolled in the Phædrus and Symposion.