Philebus
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Benjamin Jowett
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~24,800 words · 118 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlato. (n.d.). Philebus (Benjamin Jowett, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/philebus
- MLAPlato. Philebus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/philebus.
- ChicagoPlato. Philebus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/philebus.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Is pleasure the good, or is knowledge? The answer is neither on its own: the good life is a mixture, and the dialogue tries to say in what proportion.
Context and history
One of the last and hardest. It introduces the distinction between pure pleasures and pleasures mixed with pain, which Aristotle would take up, and an analysis of limit and the unlimited that comes straight from the Pythagoreans. The text where Plato comes closest to an ethics of measure.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
SOCRATES: Reflect; would you not want wisdom and intelligence and forethought, and similar qualities? would you not at any rate want sight? PROTARCHUS: Why should I? Having pleasure I should have all things. SOCRATES: Living thus, you would always throughout your life enjoy the greatest pleasures? PROTARCHUS: I should. SOCRATES: But if you had neither mind, nor memory, nor knowledge, nor true opinion, you would in the first place be utterly ignorant of whether you were pleased or not, because you would be entirely devoid of intelligence. PROTARCHUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And similarly, if you had no memory you would not recollect that you had ever been pleased, nor would the slightest recollection of the pleasure which you feel at any moment remain with you; and if you had no true opinion you would not think that you were pleased when you were; and if you had no power of calculation you would not be able to calculate on future pleasure, and your life would be the life, not of a man, but of an oyster or 'pulmo marinus.' Could this be otherwise? PROTARCHUS: No. SOCRATES: But is such a life eligible? PROTARCHUS: I cannot answer you, Socrates; the argument has taken away from me the power of speech. SOCRATES: We must keep up our spirits;--let us now take the life of mind and examine it in turn. PROTARCHUS: And what is this life of mind? SOCRATES: I want to know whether any one of us would consent to live, having wisdom and mind and knowledge and memory of all things, but having no sense of pleasure or pain, and wholly unaffected by these and the like feelings?…