Complete Works (94 page)

P
ROTARCHUS
: In what way?

S
OCRATES
: The way some god or god-inspired man discovered that vocal sound is unlimited, as tradition in Egypt claims for a certain deity called Theuth. He was the first to discover that the vowels in that unlimited [c] variety are not one but several, and again that there are others that are not voiced, but make some kind of noise, and that they, too, have a number. As a third kind of letters he established the ones we now call mute. After this he further subdivided the ones without sound or mutes down to every single unit. In the same fashion he also dealt with the vowels and the intermediates, until he had found out the number for each one of them, and then he gave all of them together the name “letter.” And as he realized that none of us could gain any knowledge of a single one of them, taken [d] by itself without understanding them all, he considered that the one link that somehow unifies them all and called it the art of literacy.

P
HILEBUS
: Protarchus, I understood this even better than what came before, at least how it hangs together. But I still find that this explanation now suffers from the same defect as your earlier one.

S
OCRATES
: You are wondering again what the relevance of it all is, Philebus?

P
HILEBUS
: Right, that is what I and Protarchus have been wanting to see for quite a while.

S
OCRATES
: But have you not already under your nose what you both, as [e] you say, have long wanted to see?

P
HILEBUS
: How could that be?

S
OCRATES
: Did we not embark on an investigation of knowledge and pleasure, to find out which of the two is preferable?

P
HILEBUS
: Yes, indeed.

S
OCRATES
: And we do say that each of them is one.

P
HILEBUS
: Right.

S
OCRATES
: This is the very point in question to which our preceding discussion obliges us to give an answer: to show how each of them is one and many, and how instead of becoming unlimited straightaway, each
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one of them acquires some definite number before it becomes unlimited.

P
ROTARCHUS
: Socrates has plunged us into a considerable problem, Philebus, by leading us around, I don’t know how, in some kind of circle. But make up your mind which of us should answer the present question. It would seem quite ridiculous that I, who had volunteered to take over the thesis from you as your successor, should now hand it back to you because I don’t have an answer to this question. But it would be even more ridiculous if neither of us could answer it. So what do you think we should do? [b] Socrates seems to be asking whether there are
kinds
of pleasures or not, and how many there are, and of what sort they are. And the same set of questions applies to knowledge.

S
OCRATES
: You speak the truth, son of Callias. Unless we are able to do this for every kind of unity, similarity, sameness, and their opposite, in the way that our recent discussion has indicated, none of us will ever turn out to be any good at anything.

P
ROTARCHUS
: I am afraid that this is so. But while it is a great thing for [c] the wise man to know everything, the second best is not to be mistaken about oneself, it seems to me. What prompts me to say that at this point? I will tell you. You, Socrates, have granted this meeting to all of us, and yourself to boot, in order to find out what is the best of all human possessions. Now, Philebus advocated that it is pleasure, amusement, enjoyment, and whatever else there is of this kind. You on the contrary denied this for all of them, but rather proposed those other goods we willingly and [d] with good reason keep reminding ourselves of, so that they can be tested as they are lying side by side in our memory. You claim, it seems, that the good that should by right be called superior to pleasure, at least, is reason, as well as knowledge, intelligence, science, and everything that is akin to them, which must be obtained, rather than Philebus’ candidates. Now, after both these conflicting positions have been set up against each [e] other, we threatened you in jest that we would not let you go home before the deliberation of these questions had reached its satisfactory limit. But since you made a promise and committed yourself to us, we therefore insist, like children, that there is no taking back a gift properly given. So give up this way of turning against us in the discussion here.

S
OCRATES
: What way are you talking about?

P
ROTARCHUS
: Your way of plunging us into difficulties and repeating
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questions to which we have at present no proper answer to give you. But we should not take it that the aim of our meeting is universal confusion; if we cannot solve the problem, you must do it, for you promised. It is up to you to decide whether for this purpose you need to divide off different kinds of pleasure and knowledge or can leave that out, if you are able and willing to show some other way to settle the issues of our controversy.

S
OCRATES
: At least there is no longer anything terrible in store for poor [b] me, since you said it this way. For the clause “if you are willing” takes away all further apprehension. In addition, some memory has come to my mind that one of the gods seems to have sent me to help us.

P
ROTARCHUS
: How is that and what about?

S
OCRATES
: It is a doctrine that once upon a time I heard in a dream—or perhaps I was awake—that I remember now, concerning pleasure and knowledge, that neither of the two is the good, but that there is some third [c] thing which is different from and superior to both of them. But if we can clearly conceive now that this is the case, then pleasure has lost its bid for victory. For the good could no longer turn out to be identical with it. Right?

P
ROTARCHUS
: Right.

S
OCRATES
: So we will not have to worry any longer, I think, about the division of the kinds of pleasure. But further progress will show this more clearly.

P
ROTARCHUS
: Very well said; just push on.

S
OCRATES
: There are some small matters we ought to agree on first, though.

P
ROTARCHUS
: What are they?

[d] S
OCRATES
: Whether the good is necessarily bound to be perfect or not perfect.

P
ROTARCHUS
: But surely it must be the most perfect thing of all, Socrates!

S
OCRATES
: Further: must the good be sufficient?

P
ROTARCHUS
: How could it fail to be that? This is how it is superior to everything else there is.

S
OCRATES
: Now, this point, I take it, is most necessary to assert of the good: that everything that has any notion of it hunts for it and desires to get hold of it and secure it for its very own, caring nothing for anything else except for what is connected with the acquisition of some good.

P
ROTARCHUS
: There is no way of denying this.

[e] S
OCRATES
: So let us put the life of pleasure and the life of knowledge on trial, and reach some verdict by looking at them separately.

P
ROTARCHUS
: In what way do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: Let there be neither any knowledge in a life of pleasure, nor any pleasure in that of knowledge. For if either of the two is the good, then it must have no need of anything in addition. But if one or the other
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should turn out to be lacking anything, then this can definitely no longer be the real good we are looking for.

P
ROTARCHUS
: How could it be?

S
OCRATES
: So shall we then use
you
as our test case to try both of them?

P
ROTARCHUS
: By all means.

S
OCRATES
: Then answer me.

P
ROTARCHUS
: Go ahead.

S
OCRATES
: Would you find it acceptable to live your whole life in enjoyment of the greatest pleasures?

P
ROTARCHUS
: Why, certainly!

S
OCRATES
: And would you see yourself in need of anything else if you had secured this altogether?

P
ROTARCHUS
: In no way.

S
OCRATES
: But look, might you not have some need of knowledge, intelligence, and calculation, or anything else that is related to them?
⁵
[b]

P
ROTARCHUS
: How so? If I had pleasure I would have all in all!

S
OCRATES
: And living like that you could enjoy the greatest pleasures throughout your life?

P
ROTARCHUS
: Why should I not?

S
OCRATES
: Since you would not be in possession of either reason, memory, knowledge, or true opinion, must you not be in ignorance, first of all, about this very question, whether you were enjoying yourself or not, given that you were devoid of any kind of intelligence?

P
ROTARCHUS
: Necessarily.

S
OCRATES
: Moreover, due to lack of memory, it would be impossible for [c] you to remember that you ever enjoyed yourself, and for any pleasure to survive from one moment to the next, since it would leave no memory. But, not possessing right judgment, you would not realize that you are enjoying yourself even while you do, and, being unable to calculate, you could not figure out any future pleasures for yourself. You would thus not live a human life but the life of a mollusk or of one of those creatures in shells that live in the sea. Is this what would happen, or can we think of any other consequences besides these? [d]

P
ROTARCHUS
: How could we?

S
OCRATES
: But is this a life worth choosing?

P
ROTARCHUS
: Socrates, this argument has left me absolutely speechless for the moment.

S
OCRATES
: Even so, let us not give in to weakness; let us in turn rather inspect the life of reason.

P
ROTARCHUS
: What kind of life do you have in mind?

S
OCRATES
: Whether any one of us would choose to live in possession of every kind of intelligence, reason, knowledge, and memory of all things, while having no part, neither large nor small, of pleasure or of pain, living [e] in total insensitivity of anything of that kind.

P
ROTARCHUS
: To me at least neither of these two forms of life seems worthy of choice, nor would it to anyone else, I presume.

S
OCRATES
: But what about a combination of both, Protarchus, a life that
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results from a mixture of the two?

P
ROTARCHUS
: You mean a mixture of pleasure with reason and intelligence?

S
OCRATES
: Right, those are the ingredients I mean.

P
ROTARCHUS
: Everybody would certainly prefer this life to either of the other two, without exception.

S
OCRATES
: Do we realize what the upshot of this new development in our discussion is?

P
ROTARCHUS
: Certainly, that of the three lives offered to us, two are not [b] sufficient or worthy of choice for either man or animal.

S
OCRATES
: As far as they are concerned, is it then not clear at least, that neither the one nor the other contained the good, since otherwise it would be sufficient, perfect, and worthy of choice for any of the plants and animals that can sustain them, throughout their lifetime? And if anyone among us should choose otherwise, then he would do so involuntarily, in opposition to what is by nature truly choiceworthy, from ignorance or some unfortunate necessity.

P
ROTARCHUS
: It certainly looks that way.

[c] S
OCRATES
: Enough has been said, it seems to me, to prove that Philebus’ goddess and the good cannot be regarded as one.
⁶

P
HILEBUS
: Nor is your reason the good, Socrates, and the same complaint applies to it.

S
OCRATES
: It may apply to
my
reason, Philebus, but certainly not to the true, the divine reason, I should think. It is in quite a different condition. But now I am not arguing that reason ought to get first prize over and [d] against the combined life; we have rather to look and make up our minds about the second prize, how to dispose of it. One of us may want to give credit for the combined life to reason, making it responsible, the other to pleasure. Thus neither of the two would be the good, but it could be assumed that one or the other of them is its
cause
. But I would be even more ready to contend against Philebus that, whatever the ingredient in the mixed life may be that makes it choiceworthy and good, reason is [e] more closely related to that thing and more like it than pleasure; and if this can be upheld, neither first nor second prize could really ever be claimed for pleasure. She will in fact not even get as much as third prize, if we can put some trust in my insight for now.

P
ROTARCHUS
: By now it seems to me indeed that pleasure has been defeated as if knocked down by your present arguments, Socrates. In her
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fight for victory, she has fallen. And as for reason, we may say that it wisely did not compete for first prize, for it would have suffered the same fate. But if pleasure were also deprived of second prize, she would definitely be somewhat dishonored in the eyes of her own lovers, nor would she seem as fair to them as before.

S
OCRATES
: What, then? Had we not better leave her alone now, rather than subject her to the most exacting test and give her pain by such an examination?