At Apology 33c Socrates explains that "some people enjoy … my company" because "they … enjoy hearing those questioned who think they are wise but are not." At Philebus 48a-50b he makes central to his account of the pleasure of laughing at comedy the exposé of the self-ignorance of those who presume themselves wise. Does the latter passage explain the pleasure of watching Socrates at work? I explore this by tracing the admixture of pain, the causes, and the "natural harmony" (...) that Socrates' general account of pleasure implies for laughing at comedy. These reflections precipitate an aporia about the moral effect of Socrates' elenchtic practice. I suggest a path through the aporia that keys from Socrates' notion of "human wisdom" and the distinctive structure Plato gives the dialogues. (shrink)

L’examen des deux descriptions platoniciennes du plaisir intellectuel en République IX et dans le Philèbe soulève diverses questions : d’abord celle des critères qui permettent de démontrer leur supériorité sur les autres plaisirs, ensuite celle de savoir dans quelle mesure leur caractérisation, notamment leur qualité de plaisirs purs, est compatible avec le modèle général du plaisir comme réplétion, dans lequel Platon vient les inscrire. Il s’agit donc d’examiner la cohérence du traitement platonicien du plaisir intellectuel et sa capacité à faire (...) face à deux objections qui lui sont traditionnellement opposées : est-on fondé à affirmer leur caractère pur, c’est-à-dire sans lien avec la douleur? Le modèle de la réplétion qui leur est appliqué permet-il de penser d’autres plaisirs que ceux émanant de l’apprentissage, c’est-à-dire du comblement d’un manque préalable? (shrink)

At the very end of Plato's Philebus Socrates and Protarchus place the goods of a human life in a hierarchy (66a-67b). Previous interpretations of this passage have concentrated upon its relevance to the good human life, including the allowance of (true and pure) pleasures. This view picks up Plato's metaphor of a mixture of reason and pleasure, but the ranking of the goods is emphatically a vertical stratification and not a mixture in which all elements are equally fundamental. In this (...) article I argue that each and all of the higher ranked goods are necessary conditions for the goods of the level immediately below. The ranking represents an attempt to identify as far as possible what is responsible for the characteristics of the good in human life, and therefore to narrow down the definition of the good itself. (shrink)

Dans cet article on se propose d’examiner les fondements ontologiques de l’argument anti-hédoniste de Philèbe 53c4-55a1. On soutiendra que l’usage des notions de γένεσις et οὐσία dans cet argument ne montre ni un abandon de la thèse de l’opposition du sensible à l’intelligible, ni, pour autant, une application mécanique de cette thèse. On souhaite montrer, en revanche, que ces notions jouissent d’une relativité sémantique telle que leurs significations varient en fonction des contextes argumentatifs, dont le passage retenu du Philèbe est (...) un exemple particulièrement représentatif. Dans ce passage, en effet, elles désignent, principalement, pour la première un processus génétique et pour la seconde un tout qui est constitué par l’imposition causale d’une limite à ce qui est en soi illimité. Sur la base de cette première proposition, on défendra une nouvelle lecture de la relation entre Phlb. 53c4-55a1 et les caractérisations de chaque membre du « troisième genre » comme γένεσις εἰς οὐσίαν (26d8) et γεγενημένη οὐσία (27b8-9). (shrink)

In the Philebus, Socrates maintains two theses about the relationship between pleasure and the good life: the mixed life of pleasure and intelligence is better than the unmixed life of intelligence, and: the unmixed life of intelligence is the most divine. Taken together, these two claims lead to the paradoxical conclusion that the best human life is better than the life of a god. A popular strategy for avoiding this conclusion is to distinguish human from divine goods; on such a (...) reading, pleasure has merely instrumental value, and it benefits human beings only as a result of their imperfect nature. I argue that certain ‘pure’ pleasures are full-fledged, intrinsic goods in the Philebus, which are even worthy of the gods . This positive evaluation of pure pleasure results from a detailed examination of pleasure, which reveals that different types of pleasures have fundamentally different natures. (shrink)

Plato’s treatment of the theme of insatiability of desire in the Philebus is only implicit, but deeply original. Considering pleasure as the immediate object of desire, and caracterising pleasure as an apeiron (i.e. an undetermined or an illimited), it locates the origin of that phenomenon not in the essence of desire itself, but in its object, which by nature always eludes it. The only way of avoiding it is therefore to reorientate desire towards another object, namely the intelligible, which is (...) the only thing able to limitate it – which does not mean to reduce it, but rather to give it the means of finding its own satisfaction in itself. The desire thus transformed is philosophy itself, the only way towards goodness and happiness according to Plato. (shrink)