Pleasure and Goodness in Plato's PhilebusAuthor(s): Neil CooperSource: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 70 (Jan., 1968), pp. 12-15Published by: Wiley for The Philosophical QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2218024 .

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12

PLEASURE AND GOODNESS IN PLATO'S PHILEBUS

BY NEIL COOPER

It was Plato's main aim in the Philebus to show that the words ' pleasant' and ' good' are not two names for one and the same thing and that 9p6voits has a higher rank among Goods than pleasure has. As his logical and onto- logical armoury (ErTpa pCXE Phil. 23b 8), he makes use of the Pythagorean concepts of the Limit and the Unlimited. I shall try in this paper to re- construct this armoury and the argument for which he employs it, to shed some light on the moral philosophy of the Philebus by exhibiting its generally neglected connection with the Politicus, and to uncover the ethical motives which led Plato to reconstrue the meaning of the word 'good' in a philo- sophically provocative manner.

First, Plato's terminology requires some comment. Plato's way of saying that something is a matter of degree is to say that " it admits the More and Less" (8XETra TO ,a7Xov Kii f-rrov). Plato believes that he is talking about things rather than words and his classification in the Philebus is quite explicitly of TrrvT-a -r vwv ovra (23c 3). However, the validity of Plato's argument is in no way affected by the ontological commitments of his theory. If we employ " semantic ascent ", as indeed Plato sometimes does himself, and paraphrase talk about things in terms of talk about words, the validity of the argument remains unaffected by translation to a higher semantic level.

Secondly, in order to discuss Plato's work we must make a classification for ourselves. The Greeks were very interested in pairs of opposites, but in modern times their pioneer work has been largely neglected. Pairs of opposites may be divided into three classes. There are pairs of opposites which are mutually exclusive and do not admit of any comparison, for

example, 'odd' and 'even' as applied to numbers. We can call these " either/or " terms. The second class is of pairs of opposites both of which admit of comparison, 'hot' and 'cold', for example. We use these pairs of opposites to divide up scales, scales being ordered by a transitive asym- metrical relation of the form ' being R-er than '. Therefore, as Plato noticed (Politicus 283d 10,) these scale-words are implicitly comparative. It is thus no accident that Plato talks indifferently of the Greater and Smaller or (as in Politicus 283c 8) of the Great and Small, referring by means of these words to the whole scale, namely, Size.

The third class of pairs of opposites I shall call the class of " asymmetrical pairs ", for example, ' straight' and ' crooked ', 'perfect' and ' imperfect', ' right' and 'wrong'. It is usually the case that one member of the pair admits of comparison while the other does not; the first member in each

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PLEASURE AND GOODNESS IN PLATO'S PHILEBUS 13

case represents a limit, it is what Sapir (Philosophy of Science 1944, " Grad- ing ") once called a " polar " word. Nothing can be less crooked than what is perfectly straight nor less wrong than what is perfectly right. Strictly speaking the first member cannot admit of comparison, but since the second member often does, a sense can be given to the comparative form of the first member by interpreting it as the converse of the comparative form of the second. Hence a sense can be given to such expressions as ' straighter ', ' more perfect ' and so on.

Let us now examine Plato's classification. He divides all existent things into (1) -rO wTpas, the limit, (2) -rTO arEpov, the unlimited, (3) the mixture of the two (23c-d), and (4) the cause of the mixture. When we talk of temper- ature or, as Plato would have said, the Hot and Cold, we are talking about the whole scale and not some definite point on it, and thus temperature belongs to class (2), the Unlimited. On the other hand, a temperature of 40?F. is a definite point on a scale and so belongs to class (3). What provides definiteness here is the number 40, which is not a point on a scale, and there- fore belongs to class (1). But the temperature 98.4?F. is not just any definite temperature, it is the right or normal temperature for the human body, it is a mixture or combination of a special kind. Things like good health and harmony are brought into being not just by any combination of wirpaS and OrrwEpov, but by "the right combination" (25e 7, &pa onK Ev PEV v6oots

-r TOUTcOV 6pOi' KotVCovia -rTv iytIiaS pUaiv Ey?VVr'acv ;). By using this ex-

pression Plato is making it quite clear that there are right combinations and wrong combinations, although oddly enough this distinction is ignored by most of the commentators. But if we have a look at the other evaluative language used in this part of the dialogue, we can confirm this interpretation. Thus in 26a7 a right combination is said to take away -rO pv wroAX Aioav Kal TcmEIpov where rTO wroAX Aifav, " the much too much ", seems to be a sub- class of -rT arrepov. Again, earlier (24c 6 ff.) Plato appears to go out of his way to make a distinction (pointed out by R. G. Bury, The Philebus of Plato (1897), p. 40n), between -rTO wrC6v and TrO pTrpov, between a definite quantity and the right definite quantity or due measure. Protarchus (24b9) has just said "They must be very much so, Socrates " (Kal ao6Spa yE, c5

IoKpacrrs); Socrates pounces on this innocent word " op6pa" and says, "That's a good answer and reminds me that this expression 'very much' that you have just uttered, and 'slightly', too, have the same property as ' more ' and 'less '. When they are present in a thing they never permit it to be of a definite quantity, but always introduce into everything we do the character of being 'very much' so-and-so as compared with 'moder- ately' so-and-so, or the other way round. They bring about the more and the less and obliterate definite quantity. For, as we were saying just now, if they didn't obliterate definite quantity, but permitted it and due measure (acur6 rE Kal T-O pTplov) to find a place where 'more and less' and 'very much and slightly' reside, these latter would find themselves turned out of their own quarters ". (The above is substantially Hackforth's translation

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14 NEIL COOPER

(Plato's Examination of Pleasure, Cambridge, 1958) with modifications.) One may infer from this, then, that things like health and harmony not only have a definite quantity but also "due meaure ", the right definite quantity; not only is each a rroo6v, but also a pErptov. Or, to ascend seman- tically, not only are 'healthy' and 'harmonious' polar words, but they are favourably evaluative polar words. It is therefore a right combination which produces the right definite quantity and this is where 9p6vrlois, the cause of the combination or mixture (class 4), comes in. Which combination is the right one it is the function of pp6vroiat to determine.

Now on the face of it one might suppose that 'good' and 'bad' ad- mitted the More and Less and thus were in the class of the Unlimited. On a purely grammatical criterion this would seem to be the case, since we talk of 'better' and 'worse'. Were Plato to admit this, he would be un- able to show that 'good' and 'pleasant' belonged to different ontological and logical pigeon-holes. Plato has, however, strong reasons for refusing to

place 'good' in the class of the Unlimited. Here we can get help from the Politicus. In this dialogue Plato reverts (283c-287b) to the topic of due measure (T6 p-Trpov). One must not only measure things against one an- other, but whether one is dealing with words or with real things, one must measure them against " the nature of due measure " (TrV T-ro pETrpiov pUCv), against a standard, and see whether they fall short of it or exceed it, and it is in this that bad men and good men differ from one another (ev c6 Ka

SltappouoVal P&uAora ipoov oi -r KaCKo Kcl oi &yaOoi). The problem which lies behind these brief remarks of Plato's can, I think, be reconstructed in the following way. If 'good' and 'bad' were scale-words like other scale- words, 'long' and 'short' for example, then the difference between the good and the bad would appear to be arbitrary. What is called "long " is called "long " relative to what is short (283d 11). We talk of long worms as opposed to short worms, and we mean by 'a long worm' a worm which is longer than the average worm or longer than the majority of worms. But if we adopted similar criteria for the meaning of the expression ' good man ', the consequences would be disastrous for a monistic view of morality. For if when we refer to a man as a " good man " we mean a man who is inclined to conduct himself better than the average or better than the majority, we make our moral standards dependent on the contingent characters of men, we accommodate our standards to the mediocrity or even the rascality of the average or the majority. If we only compared things with one another in respect of greater or less, if all comparison were purely relative, then this would be the end of all knowledge and morality, it would destroy both the ordinary -rTXvat and TrOAITIK. To use Plato's own words (in Taylor's translation (London, 1961) with slight modifications): "Now this theory will make an end of the arts and all their productions; in particular it will do away with statesmanship (woAITIK6)--the subject of our present en- quiries-and with the weaving we have used as an illustration. In all such

occupations excess of due measure and defect from it are treated not as

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PLEASURE AND GOODNESS IN PLATO'S PHILEBUS 15

non-existent but as real difficulties to be avoided; in fact, it is by avoiding them and observing due measure that these arts produce all good and fine things ". The existence of a standard, a pco-ov or prTpiov against which things can be measured or assessed as good or bad is thus taken by Plato to be a necessary condition of the possibility of any knowledge, moral or non-moral. What is good is what conforms to the standard, what is bad is what deviates from it either in the direction of excess or in the direction of defect. What is good, then, is a mean between extremes, and 'good' and 'bad' are to be interpreted as an asymmetrical pair like 'right' and 'wrong'. The path of righteousness is too straight and narrow to admit of degrees. If morality and knowledge are to be possible, we have, according to Plato, to fly in the teeth of the surface grammar of the word 'good' and reconstrue it as a polar word.

If this interpretation of Plato's Philebus and Politicus is accepted, then the main lines of his argument in the Philebus become clear. The character- istic of being good belongs to the class of the Limit, like the numbers 40 and 98.4 in the earlier example. Particular things such as the human body are mixtures of the Limit and the Unlimited, they are at definite points on a scale; particular good things such as the human body in a state of health are the right mixtures of the Limit and the Unlimited, they are at the right points on a scale. If we now consider Pleasure in general, we can see that it fails to satisfy the necessary condition of being a good thing, namely having some of the Limit mixed in it. For since Pleasure in general is a whole scale, it cannot be a definite point or at a definite point on the scale, and a fortiori it cannot be the right point or at the right point on the scale, and so Pleasure as such cannot be a good thing. It is because Plato is using an a fortiori kind of argument that he does not need to emphasize the dis- tinction between a definite quantity (Tr6 roaotv) and due meaure or the right definite quantity (T6 P-rplov). For in the Philebus, unlike the Politicus, the distinction between the two is not essential to the argument. It is sufficient for him to show that a good thing must have an element of the Limit in it, must be at a definite point on a scale, a condition which is never satisfied by Pleasure in general. Pleasure and Goodness are thus necessarily distinct, but this does not exclude the possibility of good pleasures. There are, of course, definite points on the pleasure-scale and there is such a thing as the proper amount of pleasure. The pleasures (63e5) which accompany virtue, health and temperance, these pleasures Plato is ready to include in the mixture which constitutes the Good Life. The quasi-Benthamite Calculus of Pleasures expounded in the Protagoras (356a1-357b4) and ex-

plicitly rejected in the Phaedo (69a-b) merely involves the measurement of pleasures against one another instead of against a standard, and is therefore incapable of determining the right amount of pleasure. This can only be done by pp6vrcnas.

University of Dundee.

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