PHILEBUS: With an Introduction and Analysis

From the days of Aristippus and Epicurus to our own times the nature of pleasure has occupied the attention of philosophers. ‘Is pleasure an evil? a good? the only good?’ are the simple forms which the enquiry assumed among the Socratic schools. But at an early stage of the controversy another question was asked: ‘Do pleasures differ in kind? and are some bad, some good, and some neither bad nor good?’ There are bodily and there are mental pleasures, which were at first confused but afterwards distinguished. A distinction was also made between necessary and unnecessary pleasures; and again between pleasures which had or had not corresponding pains. The ancient philosophers were fond of asking, in the language of their age, ‘Is pleasure a “becoming” only, and therefore transient and relative, or do some pleasures partake of truth and Being?’ To these ancient speculations the moderns have added a further question:—‘Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your neighbour,—of the individual, or of the world?’ This little addition has changed the whole aspect of the discussion: the same word is now supposed to include two principles as widely different as benevolence and self-love. Some modern writers have also distinguished between pleasure the test, and pleasure the motive of actions. For the universal test of right actions (how I know them) may not always be the highest or best motive of them (why I do them).