Note 134 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

Plato, Philêbus, p. 62 B.

We may illustrate the doctrine of the Philêbus about pleasures and pains, by reference to a dictum of Sokrates quoted in the Xenophontic Memorabilia (iii. 13).

Some person complained to Sokrates that he had lost his appetite — that he no longer ate with any pleasure (ὅτι ἀηδῶς ἔσθιοι) — “The physician Akumenus (so replied Sokrates) teaches us a good remedy in such a case. Leave off eating: after you have left off, you will come back into a more pleasurable, easy, and healthful condition.”

Now let us suppose the like complaint to be addressed to the Platonic Sokrates. What would have been his answer?

The Sokrates of the Protagoras would have regarded the complainant as suffering under a misfortune, and would have tried to suggest some remedy: either the prescription of Akumenus, or any other more promising that he could think of. The Sokrates of the Phædon, on the contrary, would have congratulated him on the improvement in his condition, inasmuch as the misguiding and degrading ascendancy, exercised by his body over his mind, was suppressed in one of its most influential channels: just as Kephalus, in the Republic (i. 329), is made to announce it as one of the blessings of old age, that the sexual appetite has left him. The Sokrates of the Philêbus, also, would have treated the case as one for congratulation, but he would have assigned a different reason. He would have replied: “The pleasures of eating are altogether false. You never really had any pleasure in eating. If you believed yourself to have any, you were under an illusion. You have reason to rejoice that this illusion has now passed away: and to rejoice the more, because you have come a step nearer to the most divine scheme of life.”

Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato), if he had been present, would have re-assured the complainant in a manner equally decided. He would have said nothing, however, about the difference between true and false pleasures: he would have acknowledged them all as true, and denounced them all as mischievous. He would have said (see Aul. Gell. ix. 5): “The condition which you describe is one which I greatly envy. Pleasure and Pain are both, alike and equally, forms of Evil. I eat, to relieve the pain of hunger: but unfortunately, I cannot do so without experiencing some pleasure; and I thus incur evil in the other and opposite form. I am ashamed of this, because I am still kept far off from Good, or the point of neutrality: but I cannot help myself. You are more fortunate: you avert one evil, pain, without the least alloy of the other evil, pleasure: what you attain is thus pure Good. I hope your condition may long continue, and I should be glad to come into it myself.”

Not only the sincere pleasure-haters, but also other theorists indicated by Aristotle, would have warmly applauded this pure ethical doctrine of Speusippus; not from real agreement with it, but in order to edify the audience. They would say to one another aside: “This is not true; but we must do all we can to make people believe it. Since every one is too fond of pleasures, and suffers himself to be enslaved by them, we must pull in the contrary direction, in order that we may thereby bring people into the middle line.” (Aristot. Eth. Nikom. x. 1, 1172, a. 30.)

It deserves to be remarked that Aristotle, in alluding to these last theorists, disapproves their scheme of Ethical Fictions, or of falsifying theory in order to work upon men’s minds by edifying imposture; while Plato approves and employs this scheme in the Republic. Aristotle even recognises it as a fault in various persons, that they take too little delight in bodily pleasures — that a man is τοιοῦτος οἷος ἧττον ἢ δεῖ τοῖς σωματικοῖς χαίρων (Ethic. Nikom. vii. 11, 1151, b. 24).