Note 119 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

Among the arguments employed by Sokrates in the Philêbus to disprove the identity between ἡδονὴ and ἀγαθόν, one is, that ἡδονὴ is a γένεσις, and is therefore essentially a process of imperfection or transition into some ulterior οὐσία, for the sake of which alone it existed (Philêbus, pp. 53-55); whereas Good is essentially an οὐσία — perfect, complete, all-sufficient — and must not be confounded with the process whereby it is brought about. He illustrates this by telling us that the species of γένεσις called ship-building exists only for the sake of the ship — the οὐσία in which it terminates; but that the fabricating process, and the result in which it ends, are not to be confounded together.

The doctrine that pleasure is a γένεσις, Plato cites as laid down by others: certain κομψοί, whom he does not name, but whom the critics suppose to be Aristippus and the Kyrenaici. Aristotle (in the seventh and tenth books of Ethic. Nik.) also criticises and impugns the doctrine that pleasure is a γένεσις: but he too omits to name the persons by whom it was propounded.

Possibly Aristippus may have been the author of it: but we can hardly tell what he meant, or how he defended it. Plato derides him for his inconsistency in calling pleasure a γένεσις, while he at the same time maintained it to be the Good: but the derision is founded upon an assumption which Aristippus would have denied. Aristippus would not have admitted that all γένεσις existed only for the sake of οὐσία: and he would have replied to Plato’s argument, illustrated by the example of ship-building, by saying that the οὐσία called a ship existed only for the sake of the services which it was destined to render in transporting persons and goods: that if γένεσις existed for the sake of οὐσία, it was no less true that οὐσία existed for the sake of γένεσις. Plato therefore had no good foundation for the sarcasm which he throws out against Aristippus.

The reasoning of Aristotle (E. N. x. 3-4; compare Eth. Magn. ii. 1204-1205) against the doctrine, that pleasure is γένεσις or κίνησις, is drawn from a different point of view, and is quite as unfavourable to the opinions of Plato as to those of Aristippus. His language however in the Rhetoric is somewhat different (i. p. 1370, b. 33).

Aristippus is said to have defined pleasure as λεία κίνησις, and pain as τραχεῖα κίνησις (Diog. L. ii. 86-89). The word κίνησις is so vague, that one can hardly say what it means, without some words of context: but I doubt whether he meant anything more than “a marked change of consciousness”. The word γένεσις is also very obscure: and we are not sure that Aristippus employed it.