Note 135 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

Compare, respecting this Platonic view, Republic, v. pp. 478-479, and pp. 583-585, where Plato contrasts the παναληθὴς or γνησία ἡδονή, which arises from the acquisition of knowledge (when the mind nourishes itself with real essence), with the νόθη (p. 587 B) or ἐσκιαγραφημένη ἡδονή, εἴδωλον τῆς ἀληθοῦς ἡδονῆς, arising from the pursuits of wealth, power, and other objects of desire.

The comic poet Alexis adverts to this Platonic doctrine of the absolutely pleasurable, here, there, and everywhere, — τὸ δ’ ἡδὺ πάντως ἡδύ, κἀκεῖ κἀνθάδε, Athenæ. viii. 354; Meineke, Com. Frag. p. 453.

In the Phædrus (258 E), we find this same class of pleasures, those which cannot be enjoyed unless preceded by some pain, asserted to be called for that reason slavish (ἀνδραποδώδεις), and depreciated as worthless. Nearly all the pleasures connected with the body are said to belong to this class; but those of rhetoric and dialectic are exempted from it, and declared to be of superior order.

The pleasure of gaining a victory in the stadium at Olympia was ranked by Greeks generally as the maximum of pleasure: and we find the Platonic Sokrates (Republ. v. 465 D) speaks in concurrence with this opinion. But this pleasure ought in Plato’s view to pass for a false pleasure; since it was invariably preceded by the most painful, long-continued training.

The reasoning of Sokrates in the Philêbus (see especially pp. 46-47) against the intense and extatic pleasures, as being never pure, but always adulterated by accompanying pain, misfortune, disappointment, &c., is much the same as that of Epikurus and his followers afterwards. The case is nowhere more forcibly put than in the fourth book of Lucretius (1074 seq.): where that poet deprecates passionate love, and points out that pure or unmixed pleasure belongs only to the man of sound and healthy reason.