This is the beginning of a post to create a table to compare the major arguments against Pleasure as the highest good set forth by Plato (primarily from Philebus), then as those arguments were adopted or modified by Aristotle (primarily in Nichomachean Ethics Book Ten), and Epicurus (from a variety of texts. The goal will be to track the major arguments across each of these three philosophers so that their positions can be compared.
Sources for these texts (need versions with line numbers):
| Plato's Philebus Perseus - Fowler | Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics Perseus - Rackham | Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus (et al.) Perseus - Hicks |
This is going to take some effort, but the way forward is probably going to be:
1 - Identify the major arguments put forth in Philebus and put them in Column 2.
2 - Restate the issue in its general form in Column 1. That will result in the chart being organized according to the way the arguments against pleasure were set forth in Philebus.
3 - Find the relevant issue in Nichomachean Ethics and summarize it in Column 3.
4 - Find Epicurus' position on the relevant issue and summarize in Column 4.
If anyone would like to help with this please let us know and we will add their user account to the list with permissions to edit this document.
| Issue | Plato (Philebus) | Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics) | Epicurus (letter to Menoeceus et al.) |
| Is Pleasure a good, or is the good virtue? (wisdom, right opinion, true reasoning) | [11b] Philebus says that to all living beings enjoyment and pleasure and gaiety and whatever accords with that sort of thing are a good; whereas our contention [Plato/Socrates] is that not these, but wisdom and thought and memory and their kindred, right opinion and true reasonings, re better and more excellent than pleasure for all who are capable of taking part in them, and that for all those now existing or to come who can partake of them they are the most advantageous of all things. | ||
| First argument through 13d is that Socrates asserts that pleasures differ one from another. Protarchus refuses to admit that any pleasure is not good; Socrates says this is patently not true by the analogy of color, as both black and white are colors, yet we consider them to be opposites of each other. Socrates says if Protarchus insists that all pleasures are good the argument cannot proceed [13d]. Protarches collapses and this seals his doom. He says "Let us grant that pleasures are many and unlike and that the forms of knowledge are many and different." [14a] | |||
| (discussion of the relationship between "one" and "many") | |||
