Philebus Notes 3

(Originally written July 19, 2018 in book 17)

Philebus
Plato

(continued)

"Bad men, then, delight for the most part in false pleasures, good men in true ones" (Plato, 77).

False pleasures are a 'ridiculous imitation' of true pleasures.

There are three types of life:
1) The pleasant
2) The painful
3) The painless, joyless life.

To be without pain is not the same as to feel pleasure.

The greatest pleasures and pains occur not when the body or soul is healthy, but when they are sick.

Ignorance is always an evil.

Pleasure belongs to the class of becoming, i.e. the pleasure one has involves the process of being thirsty. Thus, pleasure is not pure Being. The Good in pure Being and does not involve process and is thus, not becoming. Being is higher than becoming. Thus, pleasure cannot be the Good because as the Good it must be the highest.

Socrates claims that dialectic has the greatest claim to discovering pure truth. He concedes that while Gorgias' act of persuasion may acheive more utility, it does not have a strong claim as does dialectic to understanding the truth of a thing.

"We find fixity, purity, truth and what we have called perfect clarity, either in those things that are always unchanged, unaltered and free of all admixture, or in what is most akin to them; everythign else must be called inferior and of secondary iporantce" (Plato, 122).

There is a Greek proverb about the need for repeating a good thing 'once and twice and once again' - use this in Future Modern Ancient Greeks for comedic effect

Philebus claims that pleasure and the pursuit of it is the Supreme Good of all living Creatures. Socrates claims they are different and intelligence has more claim to be ranked as good than pleasure.

Knowledge of things unchanged is greater than knowledge of changing things. Knowledge of pure Being is greather than knowledge of becoming.

THe mixture that comes to the threshold of the Good is all knowledge, the knowledge of both unchanging and changing things and those pleasures that do not have folly attached to them. The pleasures of a temperate existence are allowed in, but those that cause ruin or disturbance are not.

Beauty, proportion and Truth are synonymous. The mixture will be good if these three things are in it. These things make the mixture good.

Socrates' heiarchy of what is closest to the Good:

1) Whatever is measured or appropriate
2) Whatever is proportional and beautiful
3) Reason and intelligence
4) That which belongs to the soul itself (Science, Art, Right Opinions
5) Pure pleasures of the soul, some attached to knowledge, some to sensation