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Hybrid Varieties of Pleasure and the Complex Case of the Pleasures of Learning in Plato's Philebus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Cristina Ionescu
Cristina Ionescu
Affiliation:
Campion College, University of Regina
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Abstract

This article addresses two main concerns: first, the relation between the truth/falsehood and purity/impurity criteria as applied to pleasure, and, second, the status of our pleasures of learning. In addressing the first, I argue that Plato keeps the truth/falsehood and purity/impurity criteria distinct in his assessment of pleasures and thus leaves room for the possibility of hybrid pleasures in the form of true impure pleasures and false pure pleasures. In addressing the second issue, I show that Plato's view is perfectly able to accommodate an understanding of our pleasures of learning as pure pleasures even if such pleasures are preceded by awareness of a lack (ignorance).

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Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 47 , Issue 3-4 , Summer-Fall 2008 , pp. 439 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2008

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References

Notes

1 For this view see Chiara-Quenzer, Deborah De, “A Method for Pleasure and Reason: Plato's Philebus”, Apeiron, 26 (1993): 37–55, esp. pp. 47, 55Google Scholar; Hackforth, R., Plato's Examination of Pleasure (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945), pp. 98, 102Google Scholar; and Waterfield, R. A. H., “The Place of the Philebus in Plato's Dialogues,” Phronesis, 25 (1980): 270–305, esp. pp. 293, 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar. David A. Reidy argues for the first of half of this view, namely, that all the false pleasures are impure (see his “False Pleasures in Plato's Philebus,” Journal of Value Inquiry, 32 [1998]: 343–56, esp. pp. 350–55Google Scholar), while D. Frede attributes to Plato the view that the impurity (mixed character) of pleasures illustrates a fourth type of falsehood affecting our pleasures alongside of the falsehood of our pleasures of anticipation, the falsehood resulting from over- and under-estimation of the intensity of pleasure, and that resulting from mistaking absence of pain for pleasure (see Frede, Dorothea, “Disintegration and Restoration: Pleasure and Pain in Plato's Philebus” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by Kraut, R. [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992], pp. 443, 449–52Google Scholar, and Plato: Philebus [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1993], pp. xlv–liiiGoogle Scholar). For scholars arguing for the second half, namely, that all pure pleasures are true, see Cooper, John M., “Plato's Theory of Human Good in the Philebus,” Journal of Philosophy, 74 (1977): 714–30, esp. p. 723CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, A. E., Plato: Philebus and Epinomis (London: Dawson of Pall Mall, 1972), pp. 75–77Google Scholar; Van Riel, Gerd, “Aristotle's Definition of Pleasure: A Refutation of the Platonic Account,” Ancient Philosophy, 20 (2000): 119–38, esp. pp. 126, 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Tallon, Andrew, “The Criterion of Purity in Plato's Philebus,” New Scholasticism, 46 (1972): 439–45, esp. p. 440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Much has been written in an attempt to elucidate the particular sense of falsehood here at issue. Most scholars argue that for Plato pleasures of anticipation are false simply when our factual judgements about the future are false. For this view, see Frede, , “Disintegration and Restoration,” pp. 444–46Google Scholar; Gosling, J. C. B., “Commentary,” in Plato, Philebus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 214–18Google Scholar; Guthrie, W. K. C., History of Ancient Greek Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), Vol. 5, p. 220Google Scholar; Irwin, T., Plato's Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 328–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waterfield, Robin, Plato: Philebus (London: Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 23–24Google Scholar. For exceptions to this general view, see Hampton, Cynthia, Pleasure, Knowledge and Being (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), pp. 57–59Google Scholar; Harte, Verity, “The Philebus on Pleasure: The Good, the Bad and the False,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 104 (2004): 111–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moses, Mark, Plato's Dialogue Form (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 140–41.Google Scholar

4 For a convincing defence of the view that Protarchus' point is not that truth and falsehood alike apply only to judgements and not to pleasure, but rather that pleasures are always true for the one experiencing them and can never be false, see Mooradin, Norman, “Converting Protarchus: Relativism and False Pleasures of Anticipation,” Ancient Philosophy, 16 (1996): 93–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ionescu, C., “Plato's Understanding of Pleasure in the Philebus: Absolute Standards of Repletion and the Mean,” Journal of Philosophical Research, 33 (2008): 1–18, esp. p. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Unless otherwise specified, translations are my own.

7 “The heart, then, which ties the veins together, the spring from which blood courses with vigorous pulse throughout all the bodily members, they set in the guardhouse. That way, if spirit's might should boil over at a report from reason that some wrongful act involving these members is taking place—something being done to them from the outside or even something originating from the appetites within—every bodily part that is sensitive may be keenly sensitized, through all the narrow vessels, to the exhortations or threats and to listen and follow completely. In this way the best part among them all can be left in charge” (Plato, , Timaeus 70b, translated by Zeyl, Donald J., in Plato, Complete Works [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997]).Google Scholar

8 We could probably speculate along these lines that Leontius' anger at the appetitive drive of his eyes to look at corpses (Republic 439e–440aGoogle Scholar) might qualify for what in the Philebus Socrates admits as true anger. His anger involves a mixture of pleasure and pain: pleasure at the fact that spiritedness reacts to improper and depleting appetites, and by so doing initiates a restoration of the proper balance of the soul, since spiritedness must be recognized superior to our appetites; and pain at the resistance that his appetitive drive opposes to reason's command and which disturbs the harmony between the three parts of the soul. Leontius' akrasia resides in his anger, though true, being insufficiently intense when competing with his excessive appetites. Though Leontius' anger is true, the mixed pleasure it involves is false in that he mistakes the degree of pleasure he can take from the rule of reason and spiritedness over his appetites, and thinks that the appetite's rule over the other two parts of the soul would be still more pleasant.

9 For an insightful and comprehensive discussion of this theme, which has inspired and influenced my treatment here, see Wood, J. L., “Comedy, Malice, and Philosophy in Plato's Philebus,” Ancient Philosophy, 27 (2007): 77–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 82.

11 Wood puts it convincingly: “The danger Philebus poses, then, comes not just from the combativeness of his conversation, but more importantly from the seductiveness of his way of life. For this reason he must not only be defeated in debate but also diminished in attractiveness. The ridiculing and humiliation of Philebus, then, is to be explained not by a maliciousness in Socrates' character, or Plato's, but by the commitment to philosophy and the need to overcome an obstacle to philosophy” (ibid., p. 89).

12 Aristotle makes this point explicit when he argues that there is no mean for vicious emotions such as spite, shamelessness, envy, or indeed for actions such as adultery, theft, or murder (Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics 1107a9–26).Google Scholar

13 There is no universal agreement regarding the function and membership of any of the four classes. For a detailed and elaborate account of the view endorsed here, see Benitez, E. E., Forms in Plato's Philebus (Van Gorcum: Assen/Mastricht, 1989), pp. 65–91.Google Scholar

14 See Frede, “Disintegration and Restoration,” p. 439Google Scholar; Irwin, , Plato's Ethics, p. 327Google Scholar; Taylor, , Plato: Philebus and Epinomis, p. 41Google Scholar; and Van Riel, , “Aristotle's Definition of Pleasure,” p. 132.Google Scholar

15 Three passages (27e, 31a, and 65c-d) in the Philebus do seem to suggest that all the pleasures (true or false) are assigned to the Unlimited. A closer look at the context of these passages shows, however, that they must refer to false pleasures. In the first passage (27e), Socrates launches a reductio argument against Philebus' view that pleasure must be unlimited because it is good: if pleasure were good due to its membership in the Unlimited, then pain should also be good on account of being unlimited (27e-28a). The second passage (31a) says, albeit unqualifiedly, that pleasure is unlimited, but we should note that so far in the text we have only encountered the hedonist conception of pleasure, and Socrates has not yet introduced distinctions between pure and impure, false and true pleasures. The comment then must apply to the Phile-ban hedonist notion of pleasure and cannot be taken to cover pleasures generally. In the final passage (65c-d), Protarchus calls pleasure the greatest impostor due to its illimitation. The examples he gives here (excessive joy, intense pleasures of love) clearly show that he refers exclusively to pleasures that have already been shown to be false and thus clearly pertain to the Unlimited.

16 For this view, see also Benitez, , Forms in Plato's Philebus, p. 83.Google Scholar

17 In the Republic Socrates makes the same point: pleasures of smell are pure (584b), yet, because they are bodily and thus fill us with becoming and not with Being, they are less true than the pure intellectual pleasures (585b-e).

18 At 29b and 30b Plato uses eilikrines, not, as in the other cases, katharos; but the senses are related. For a similar point in connection to Plato's use of the two terms in the Republic, see also Stokes, Michael, “Some Pleasures of Plato, Republic IX,” Polis, 9 (1990): 2–51, esp. p. 23.Google Scholar

19 For the use of purity as an expression of reality and truth, see also Republic 477a7, where purity is attributed to Being, insofar as it is the object of knowledge.

20 Although throughout Philebus 55c-58a Socrates uses the terms for crafts (technai) and branches of knowledge (epistemai) interchangeably, the dialogue maintains the epistemological distinction between knowledge proper (restricted to dialectic) and opinion (assigned to the crafts) as drawn in the middle dialogues, and specifies their objects as Being and becoming, respectively (58e-59b). In fact, Socrates starts by distinguishing knowledge itself from disciplines that are more or less closely related to knowledge (55d), and, as it becomes evident, the former is reserved for dialectic, which deals with eternal, immutable forms.

21 I wish to thank Benoît Castelnérac for prompting my interest in this question and for insightful conversations on this theme. Though he would likely have reservations in relation to the position defended in this article, his comments and challenges have helped me reach and shape the view for which I argue.