Table Of ContentPage i
Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being
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SUNY Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Anthony Preus, Editor
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Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being
An Analysis of Plato's Philebus
Cynthia Hampton
State University of New York Press
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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1990 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews.
For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data
Hampton, Cynthia M., 1958
Pleasure, knowledge, and being : an analysis of Plato's Philebus /
Cynthia Hampton.
p. cm.—(SUNY series in ancient Greek philosophy)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0791402592.—ISBN 0791402606 (pbk.)
1. Plato. Philebus. 2. Pleasure. 3. Knowledge, Theory of.
4. Ontology. I. Title. II. Series.
B381.H35 1990
171'.4—dc20 8911603
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE AUTHORS OF MY BEING,
MY PARENTS, AND TO MY FIRST SOCRATIC
INTERLOCUTOR, MY BROTHER.
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. The Nature of Pleasure and Knowledge: Ontological and Methodological 13
Considerations (11A–1A)
2. The Classifications of Pleasure and Knowledge (31B–59D) 51
3. The Good Life and the Good as Cause (59E–67B) 81
Appendix: The Philebus and Aristotle's Testimony—Interpretations of Jackson 95
and Sayre
Notes 103
Bibliography 129
Index 135
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Preface
My work on the Philebus, in various forms and stages of development, has had a long gestation. Consequently, I have many people to thank. Under the direction of
Richard Parry, I first wrote on this dialogue as part of my Agnes Scott College honors thesis on the Theory of Forms in the later dialogues. In graduate school at
Northwestern, I decided to concentrate on the four kinds passage in the Philebus, and was supported by my dissertation committee composed of R. E. Allen,
Kenneth Seeskin, and John McCumber. The transition from dissertation to conference papers and published articles was much aided by Martha Nussbaum, the
members of her 1985 NEH seminar in Greek ethics, Jonathan Barnes, Larry Jost, Lee Horvitz, and my colleagues in the philosophy department at Ohio University.
The writing of this book was facilitated by funds granted from the American Council of Learned Societies, and from Ohio University. In this connection, let me thank
those (in addition to the ones already mentioned) who supported my application for the grants: Michael Morgan, William Prior, Bob Turnbull, and my Ohio University
colleague in Classics, Steve Hays. My deepest gratitude goes to those who commented on my manuscript and enabled me to present it in its final form: Julius
Moravcsik, Anthony Preus, Henry Teloh, Mitchell Miller, Kenneth Sayre, and the SUNY referee who has remained anonymous. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge
those who helped with the mechanical labor: Alice Donohoe and Harriet Lang, who typed the first draft on disk before I was computer literate, and helped with
subsequent corrections. Special thanks go to my assistants, Mark Graham and Bill Pagonis, who assumed the odious job of proofreading and editing the final copy. Of
course, any remaining errors of content or style are my own.
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Introduction
In 1875, George Grote spoke for many Platonic scholars when he described the Philebus as "neither clear, nor orderly....Every commentator of Plato, from Galen
downward, has complained of the obscurity of the Philebus." 1 One hundred years later, J. C. B. Gosling, in the most recent complete commentary on the Philebus
(1975), contends that the structure of the dialogue becomes clear if it is seen as a response to the mathematician Eudoxus, whose views on pleasure, according to
Aristotle, were enlisted to support vulgar hedonism. But the overall coherence of the Philebus does not result from its sustained line of argument. "There are other
ways of pursuing a coherent strategy than developing a closeknit argument and Plato is not above them."2 Kenneth Sayre in Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle
Resolved (1983),3 and Gisela Striker in Peras und Apeiron (1970),4 are both more optimistic than Gosling about how the arguments of the dialogue fit together as
a whole. But they both concentrate on the ontology without seriously considering how it is essentially related to the classifications and ranking of both pleasure and
knowledge. Sayre, like Gosling, also appeals to sources outside the Platonic corpus, such as Aristotle's testimony, instead of considering the Philebus either on its
own terms or in relation to other Platonic dialogues. In general, these commentators produce coherent interpretations only by ignoring key aspects of the dialogue, and
therefore do not reveal the coherent structure of the Philebus as a whole.
Despite the perennial and current complaints about the obscurity of the Philebus, I intend to demonstrate that the dialogue does have a fundamentally coherent or
unified structure which is revealed upon careful consideration of how the announced topic of the good life is related to the ontological and
methodological/epistemological passages. Careful attention must be paid to how these passages are presented in the text. Although I recognize that the Philebus, like
any of Plato's dialogues, is a multidimensional work, my
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primary concern is with what might be called the argumentative or persuasive features. I take as my starting point the assumption that Plato's arguments cannot be
understood apart from the context in which they arise, so that one must keep in mind what has been said previously in the dialogue, and why a given argument is
presented at the point that it is. Certain dramatic aspects of the dialogue also need to be kept in mind along with the more discursive features. I, however, am only
interested in the points where the dramatic context sheds light on the discursive, since my primary aim is to illuminate the dialogue in terms of the latter. Even so, I take
it that Plato's arguments are not dry logical exercises but rather are meant to persuade both his interlocutors and readers to live good lives. In order to do so, Plato
addresses the issue of the good life in terms of true and false world views (ontology), and of the accurate recognition of reality (methodology and epistemology). Thus
the dialogue shifts back and forth between ethics, ontology, and methodology/epistemology. No wonder that commentators, who often expect (or at least desire)
Plato's arguments to be presented in a linear fashion, end up railing against the obscurity of the Philebus! Nevertheless, there is method in his (apparent) madness,
which I intend to reveal by striving for the most straightforward interpretation possible. (In terms of a general approach to the Philebus, I consider myself closest to
Reginald Hackforth, whose book I still find refreshingly commonsensical despite some disagreements I have with it.) In order to get a general idea of the seemingly
complex interrelation of the ethical, ontological, and methodological/epistemological strands in the Philebus, let us consider the following brief synopsis.
The central question posed in the dialogue concerns the roles of pleasure and knowledge in the good life. Socrates first tries to help Protarchus (who stands in for
Philebus after the latter has withdrawn from active participation in the discussion, at 11C) to realize that "pleasure" does not refer to some monolithic entity, by
persuading Protarchus to grant as a hypothesis that both pleasure and knowledge are of various types, some of which may even oppose one another (12C–14B).
These types must be enumerated and analyzed in order to understand the relation of each to the good life. At this point, Socrates identifies the problem of classifying
pleasure and knowledge with a number of puzzles (aporiai) about the one and the many (14C–15C) which he approaches by introducing what he calls the Divine
Method (16C–18D). Instead of directly applying this method to pleasure and knowledge, Socrates and Protarchus first agree that neither pleasure nor knowledge in
isolation from each other constitutes the good life, but rather a mixture of the two does. The question then becomes, which plays the more important role in the good
life, pleasure or knowledge? (20D–23C). In order to settle this issue, Socrates first divides the cosmos into four kinds:
