1

Pure Pleasure as a Paradigm of

Good Becoming in Plato’s Philebus

NAME REMOVED

Abstract: The Philebus, as I argue, suggests that all pleasures become and thus are conditional and

dependent in their being. Yet it also includes pure pleasures in its final list of good-making factors

in the good life. I argue that these claims are compatible. After arguing that Socrates establishes

certain ontological pre-conditions for the emergence of any pleasure—including deficiency-

fulfillment, becoming, and psychical dependency—, I suggest that these ontological conditions

placed on pleasure’s emergence do not prevent pure pleasure from having an intrinsic goodness.

INTRODUCTION

The Philebus contains Plato’s most thorough treatment of the question of pleasure’s value.

Even so, disputes arise concerning whether Socrates concedes in the dialogue that some pleasure

is valuable in itself.1 Interpretive debates focus largely on Socrates’ summary statements in the

conclusion. From 62c-64b, Socrates lists the segments (τμήματα) of knowledge and of pleasure

which are to be included in the mixture of the good life (61e5). All knowledge is included, while

only some pleasure is included. In a second list, elaborated from 64c5-66d2, Socrates ranks the

possessions (κτήματα) which bring goodness to the good life (66a6 and 64c9).2 Socrates’ lists can

be summarized in chart format as follows:

1 Daniel Russell, Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 21-27, following

Korsgaard’s account of the difference between final value and intrinsic value, lays the groundwork for recent debates

on pleasure and intrinsic goodness in Plato. He defines (i) an intrinsic good as something “valuable in its own right”

(vs. an extrinsic good for which “value must be brought about in it”). He argues that all intrinsic goods are also (ii)

unconditional goods, meaning they “bring about value in other things” (vs. conditional goods in which “something

else brings about value”). Russell also distinguishes (iii) final goods (vs. instrumental goods) and argues that this

distinction is separate from the other two. Russell ultimately concludes that, in Plato generally and in the Philebus, no

pleasure is intrinsically or unconditionally good, not even “pure pleasure”; all pleasures are such that value is brought

about in them by other things and other things make them valuable. That is, all pleasures fail the negative sides of the

criteria he sets for intrinsic and unconditional goodness. I will argue, by contrast, that pure pleasure indeed satisfies

the positive sides of his criteria: pure pleasure “causes” value to emerge and it is a valuable “possession” in its own

right. Considerations of axiology therefore do not align entirely with considerations of ontology in the Philebus. For

while pure pleasure is dependent on other conditions for its emergence (such as measure, reason, etc.)—and therefore

pleasure has being extrinsically and conditionally—, such ontological dependency does not imply that pleasure is

necessarily deficient in goodness. 2 The second list ranks the possessions which participate in causing goodness in the good life. Socrates describes

this principle driving his final ranking at 64c5-d9, a passage which I interpret in Part III. There he says he is seeking

the “cause (αἴτιος)” of measure’s presence in the mixture, and the final ranking then lists the possessions which to

different extents meet this standard.

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The Ingredients in a Well-Mixed Life:

1. All kinds of knowledge (ἐπιστήμας) are

explicitly included (62c).

2. Some pleasures (ἡδονὰς) are explicitly

included:

- those that are true and pure (62e; 63d-e);

- those that are necessary (62e);

- those relating to health and temperance (63e);

- those attending upon virtue in general (63e).

Other pleasures are explicitly not included:

- the most intense pleasures (63d);

- the pleasures going with folly and evil (64a).

3. Finally, we must mix in truth (ἀλήθειανis)

(64b).

The Rank of “Possessions” Causing

Goodness to Emerge in the Mixture:

1. measure, and the moderate, and the timely (τὸ

μέτρον καὶ τὸ μέτριον καὶ καίριον), and like

things (66b);

2. what has measure, the fine, the final, and the

sufficient (τὸ σύμμετρον καὶ καλὸν καὶ τὸ

τέλεον καὶ ἱκανὸν), and like things (66b);

3. reason and intelligence (νοῦν καὶ φρόνησιν)

(66b);

4. things of soul (ψυχῆς): sciences, arts, and right

opinions (ἐπιστήμας τε καὶ τέχνας καὶ δόξας

ὀρθὰς) (66c);

5. soul’s painless and pure pleasures (ἡδονὰς …

καθαρὰς), which follow (ἑπομένας) sciences

(ἐπιστήμαις) or perception (αἰσθήσεσιν) (66c);

6. [The “ordered song” (κόσμον ἀοιδῆς) ends

with the unnamed “sixth generation” (ἕκτῃ δ᾽

ἐν γενεᾷ).]

Since only some pleasures—in fact, only the “pure pleasures”—appear in the second list, it has

become a pressing task to discern the ultimate axiological status of these pleasures. Matters are

complicated for interpreters because pleasures, throughout the dialogue, fall into the class of

deficiency-dependent phenomena which are always becoming.3 Despite this fact, pleasures are

included in the good life and pure pleasures are ranked as a possession causing goodness. Do not

these two aspects of pleasure—becoming and goodness—conflict with one another?

Those who would solve this problem have fallen into two discernible camps. On the one

hand, some interpreters have suggested that for Plato generally it must be the case that pleasure

“rightly estimated and abstracted from all evil consequences” is good.4 Indeed, some take the

appearance of pleasures in both lists as the vital piece of evidence showing that pleasure as such,

3 I defend this claim against the alternatives in Part II. In general, I take there to be common characteristics—

especially the condition of “ongoing deficiency fulfillment”—which are shared by all pleasures in the Philebus. I thus

agree with, e.g., Dorothea Frede, “Disintegration and Restoration: Pleasure and Pain in Plato’s Philebus” in The

Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Thomas Tuozzo,

“The General Account of Pleasure in Plato’s Philebus,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996): 495-513;

Gerd Van Riel, Pleasure and the Good Life: Plato, Aristotle, & the Neoplatonists (Leiden: Brill, 2000); and more

recently Mitchell Miller, “The Pleasures of the Comic and of Socratic Inquiry: Aporetic Reflections on Philebus 48a-

50b” Arethusa 41 (2008): 263-289. This view places me in disagreement on this issue with Cynthia Hampton,

Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being: An Analysis of Plato’s Philebus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990)

and with J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). In sections II

and III, I will clarify my understanding of these general conditions on and the character of pleasure’s emergence. 4 Paul Shorey, The Unity of Plato’s Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903), 22-25. Shorey argues

here about pleasure generally in Plato.

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when “properly understood,” is good.5 On the other hand, some have argued that the Philebus

concedes nothing at all to pleasure, for Socrates’ inclusion of some pleasures in the ranking does

not suggest that those pleasures are intrinsically valuable.6 While pleasure appears in the good life,

they say, it is extrinsically good. Dorothea Frede, for example, argues that even pure pleasures are

not good per se because their emergence depends on the process of fulfilling some deficiency. In

short, a perfect life would not involve pleasure, because a perfect life would be, in the first place,

without any deficiencies in need of fulfillment.

In response to this dilemma in the scholarship—and in particular to what I will refer to as

the “perfectionist” reading of the Philebus (i.e., the view that pleasure is necessarily deficient in

value because it emerges only when deficiencies are being fulfilled)—, I shall suggest that the

Philebus’ thesis on the value of pleasure can be best reconstructed through an examination of the

“pure pleasures” themselves. For, technically, pure pleasures are the sole pleasures appearing on

the list of good-making “possessions” in the good life.7 Armed with an understanding of the

5 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics: Phenomenological Interpretation Relating to the Philebus

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 192-4; Gabriela Carone, Plato’s Cosmology and its Ethical Dimensions

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 108-9; and Francisco Bravo, “Genesis of Pleasure and Pleasure-

Genesis in Plato’s Philebus” in Inner Life and Soul. Psyche in Plato (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia Verlag,

2011), 61 all argue that when pleasure is understood properly as it is, rather than as becoming, pleasure is then

understood to be good. Such a view would be tempting if all the accounts of true pleasure were free of implications

of becoming. However, as I argue in Parts II and III, all pleasures come-to-be and they never fully are. The impetus

for believing that pure pleasures are not becoming, I suspect, stems from the view (which I reject) that to be a “false

pleasure” is to fail to “be a pleasure.” For the debates dealing this issue, see, e.g., J.C.B. Gosling, “False Pleasures:

Philebus 35c-41b” Phronêsis: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy 4 (1959): 44-53; Anthony Kenny, “False Pleasures in

the Philebus: A Reply to Mr. Gosling” Phronêsis: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy 5 (1962): 45-52; Terry Penner,

“False Anticipatory Pleasures: Philebus 36a3-41a6” Phronêsis: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy 15 (1970):166-178;

Dorothea Frede, “Rumpelstiltskin’s Pleasures” Phronêsis 30 (1985): 151-180; and Sylvain Delcomminette,

“Appearance and Imagination in the Philebus” Phronêsis 48 (2003): 215-237. 6 For arguments against the intrinsic value of pleasure, see e.g. Dorothea Frede, “Life and Its Limitations: The

Conception of Happiness in the Philebus” in Plato’s Philebus: Selected Papers from the Eighth Symposium

Platonicum (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia Verlag, 2010); Russell, Plato on Pleasure; and Catherine Zuckert,

Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 409-410. See

also, Aufderheide, “An Inconsistency in the Philebus?” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2013): 817-

837. Aufderheide (i) states very precisely the puzzle I discover in the dialogue (Can pleasure be good, while

becoming?); (ii) he notices that there must be a standard other than simply being which accounts for value, since some

pleasure is good; and (iii) he distinguishes the “two lists” as I have and notes that the final ranking lists good-making

factors, good in their own right. Nevertheless, he argues that Plato accepts the subtlers’ arguments against the goodness

of anything qua becoming: “nothing insofar as it is a genesis is good in its own right” (835). Thus, while Aufderheide

says pure pleasure is good (in its own right), he also argues that it cannot serve as a paradigm for the possible value

of becoming or of other pleasures, since it itself, according to his reading, is not good insofar as it becomes. (Indeed,

he concludes that pleasure lacks goodness precisely to the extent that it becomes.) I reject this view—i.e., the subtlers’

view—in Part II of this essay, and I argue that pure pleasure is a case of intrinsic goodness qua becoming. 7 Emily Austin, “Fools and Malicious Pleasure in Plato’s Philebus” History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (2008):

125-139 argues that “mixed” pleasure-pain experiences belong in the sixth “empty” position in the list of goods. I find

this view implausible because I see the distinction between the two lists (see Part III) as in part based on two ideas: (i)

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account of pure pleasures, we can discern, as I shall argue, that each side of the interpretive

dilemma contains an aspect of truth: pleasure, taken generally, is indeterminate with respect to

value, and it depends on other conditions which would make possible its emergence as valuable.

Even so, some pleasures—namely the pure pleasures—do indeed emerge as intrinsically good

when they emerge, and they are in no way deficient with respect to their proper value.8

If, as I am suggesting, some pleasure is indeed intrinsically good, then the consequences

are significant. For if the occurrence of any pleasure implies that there is an ongoing fulfillment of

an ontological deficiency, and yet if pure pleasure is also intrinsically good, then the perfectionist

reading faces an important challenge: dependency in being does not immediately imply deficiency

in value. My strategy for defending this claim is to argue, in Parts I and II, that for Socrates

pleasures are in each case becoming because they indeed depend on ongoing “deficiency

fulfillment” of body or soul. However, I also argue that the more important pre-condition for

pleasure’s emergence is its dependency on soul: without soul, even bodily motions would not attain

the status of pleasure or pain. With this psychical pre-condition in mind, we learn that in order to

classify pleasures we must analyze the psychical states conditioning their emergence. I examine

the pure pleasures in particular, focusing on the strictly psychical pleasure of learning. By arguing

that for Socrates learning is a pure, psychical process of coming to knowledge (i.e., a becoming),

I aim to show that learning is both a pleasing experience and a good case of becoming.9 This

an ingredient in the good life is not necessarily intrinsically good; (ii) whatever is intrinsically good is unmixed with

its opposite: good pleasure is unmixed with pain. Thus, while “mixed” pleasures are included in the good life (see the

first list above), they are not themselves good per se (see the second list). Whatever the empty ranking may “stand

for,” therefore, I am inclined to say that it is rightly left unnamed. For if one accepts that the second list refers to

intrinsic goods, Austin’s view would license calling a partly painful experience “intrinsically good,” and the difference

between (i) and (ii) would be obscured. Austin is, however, in good company, as many thinkers tend in her direction.

Beatriz Bossi, “How Consistent is Plato with Regard to the ‘Unlimited’ Character of Pleasure in the Philebus?” in

Plato’s Philebus: Selected Papers from the Eighth Symposium Platonicum (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia

Verlag, 2010), 132, however, uses exactly the same reasons I find for not including mixed pleasures in the final

ranking. 8 Russell, Pleasure in Plato, 27 denies this point explicitly, saying we cannot “have it both ways.” That is, he

thinks we cannot have pleasure generally be extrinsically good while some pleasures are intrinsically good. His denial,

in my view, stems from a larger confusion of ontological dependency with axiological deficiency. I do think pure

pleasure’s emergence depends on deficiency of being; fulfillment cannot occur if there is no deficiency to fill. Yet this

dependency does not exclude pure pleasure from having intrinsic goodness. Something is intrinsically valuable in the

positive sense, I think, if its value and causal contribution to the good life cannot be reduced to other sources or to its

ontological conditions. Pure pleasure contributes just such a value. Indeed, an intrinsic good, I think, does not have to

be the sole source of its own value in order to be intrinsically good, as Russell thinks, nor does an intrinsic good have

to be able to be or to exist independently, alone and by itself. 9 I shall argue, however, that to be an intrinsic good does not imply necessarily that something should be an object

of pursuit. Indeed, pure pleasure should not be pursued, since it depends on a lingering ontological deficiency.

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account explains why Socrates includes it (along with some pure psycho-bodily pleasures) in the

final ranking of good-making possessions. In the end, if my argument succeeds, it should

revolutionize the way we teach and understand the relationship between Plato’s axiology and his

ontology. For it teaches us that the scope of goodness extends beyond being: pure pleasure

demonstrates that some becoming can be wholly good.

I. PLEASURE AS DEPENDENT ON SOUL

At Philebus 32a5-b7 Socrates provides a general account of the pleasures of living beings.

The passage initially reads as if it is restating without modification the deficiency-condition

doctrine made famous by Socrates’ refutation of Callicles in the Gorgias. There, Socrates argued

that while a good such as health has a career that outlasts the recovery-process from sickness, this

fact does not hold true for pleasure: pleasure does not outlast the process that fulfills deficiency.10

Here again, in the Philebus, Socrates argues that pleasure emerges only when a deficiency is in

process of being fulfilled:

Socrates: To cut matters short, see whether the following account seems acceptable to you.

When the natural combination of limit and unlimitedness that forms a live organism

[ἔμψυχος], as I explained before, is destroyed, this destruction is pain, while the return

towards its own nature [τὴν δ᾽ εἰς τὴν αὑτῶν οὐσίαν ὁδόν], this general restoration

[ἀναχώρησιν], is pleasure.

Protarchus: So be it, for it seems to provide at least an outline.

Socrates: Shall we then accept this as one kind [ἓν εἶδος] of pleasure and pain, what

happens in either of these two kinds of processes?

Protarchus: Accepted.

10 The argument in the Gorgias is that pleasures are like the case of, for example, recovery from a painful lack of

nourishment (e.g., 494c ff, 496e ff). The pleasure felt in “eating” can occur only if a lack of nourishment that afflicts

body is presently in process of coming to be replenished. (Apparently, we could not enjoy intake of food if we were

ever completely fulfilled.) It follows from this model that the pursuit of pleasure cannot be the pursuit of the good.

The pursuit of pleasure would also at once involve the pursuit of a deficient state of body or soul since, again,

deficiency is a condition of possibility for the process of fulfillment and, again, this fulfillment is a precondition for

pleasure (497a5, 497d5). A hedonist who seeks pleasure would always also have to seek to be deficient in something

precisely in order that he or she might be able to experience pleasure in recovery from the deficiency (494a1-b5). But

just as awareness of fulfillment is pleasure, awareness of deficiency is pain. So the pleasure seeker finds pain as much

as pleasure (495c5-e9), not to mention bad pleasures (499d). The argument concludes with two more agreements about

the good. Aiming for goods (e.g., health) would not be conditioned upon aiming for their opposites as well (e.g.,

sickness) (494c2). Furthermore, the elimination of something bad (e.g., sickness) does not spell the conclusion of the

career of the relevant good (e.g., health) (495e). For these reasons, pleasure is not identical to the good.

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While the passage seems to define pleasure as bodily fulfillment, this is not quite so. Firstly, it

mentions that pains and pleasures, such as the pain of “the coagulation of fluids in an animal

through freezing” and the pleasure of the “return” to normal (32a3), belong to just one kind of

pleasure and pain.11 Furthermore, this passage admits to describing pleasure only in brief “outline.”

For, as we shall see momentarily, Socrates does not think that bodily processes of fulfillment are

by themselves sufficient for pleasure or pain to emerge. He also will not limit pleasure to

experiences involving bodily motions. Thus, the passage turns out to be not entirely general. Prior

to this passage, however, Socrates gave a somewhat more general account (which he will need to

clarify later) describing pleasure as something occurring for a soul-endowed (ἔμψυχος) being as it

“goes back to its natural condition [εἰς τὴν αὑτῆς φύσιν ἀπιούσης],” or to its “harmony [ἁρμονία],”

after a disruption (31d5).12 This more general passage importantly does not tie pleasure to bodily

processes. It only specifies that pleasure is a going-back which is experienced by beings with

soul.13 Indeed, there is no mention anywhere in the Philebus or elsewhere of pleasures for a being

without soul.

Socrates reiterates and develops bodily in a later passage his view of the way a living being

undergoes bodily flux. This later passage suggests that body’s integrations and disintegrations are

always ongoing.14

Socrates: It has now been said repeatedly that it is a destruction of the nature of those

entities through combinations and separations [συγκρίσεσι καὶ διακρίσεσι], through

processes of filling and emptying [πληρώσεσι καὶ κενώσεσι], as well as certain kinds of

growth and decay [τισιν αὔξαις καὶ φθίσεσι], that gives rise to pain and suffering, distress,

11 Describing the fulfillment process, Socrates uses, in addition to the above terms, also ἀπιούσης, ἀπόδοσίς, or,

more generally, simply πλήρωσις, without any connotation of re-turn. This passage also reveals that we should not

take fulfillment and deficiency too literally. In the case of freezing, the deficiency is a kind of coming-together or

“coagulation,” while the return to normal involves “redistribution.” Neither of these terms implies that there is a literal

“container” being fulfilled. The term πλήρωσις appears, therefore, to be used generally for a coming-to-a-norm (which

norm must be instituted by a cause, per 26e), while κένωσις is used for any move away from the norm. Contrast my

claim that πλήρωσις is the general term used to describe the “becoming” of pleasures with David Wolfsdorf, Pleasure

in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 43, 77, and 97-99, who takes the

general term for pleasure to be restoration. 12 At 31d8 Socrates qualifies the whole initial account of pleasure, saying that it is a suitable account “if we must

pronounce only a few words on the weightiest matters in the shortest possible time.” 13 Socrates refers to the “natural condition” (τὴν αὑτῆς φύσιν, 31d9) as a mixture or harmony (ἁρμονία),

established by a cause (αἰτία) bringing limit and the unlimited together (26e). Socrates seems intent on hinting that at

least some souls participate in this causality itself, establishing into becoming (at least to some extent) their own limits.

See note 75. 14 Cf. Van Riel, Pleasure for an account of the flux as always ongoing in body.

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and whatever else comes to pass that goes under such a name. […] But when things are

restored to their own nature again [εἰς δέ γε τὴν αὑτῶν φύσιν ὅταν καθιστῆται], this

restoration, as we established in our agreement among ourselves, is pleasure. […] But

what if nothing of that sort happens to our body [σῶμα], what then? […] If in fact nothing

of that sort took place, I will ask you, what would necessarily be the consequence of this

for us?

Protarchus: You mean if the body is not moved [μὴ κινουμένου τοῦ σώματος] in either

direction, Socrates?

Socrates: That is my question.

Protarchus: This much is clear, Socrates, that in such a case there would not be either any

pleasure or pain at all.

Socrates: Very well put. But I guess what you mean to say is that we necessarily are always

experiencing one or the other, as the wise men say. For everything is in eternal flux [ἀεὶ

γὰρ ἅπαντα … ῥεῖ], upward and downward?

Protarchus: They do say that, and what they say seems important (42c7-43a3).

In this passage, Socrates restates the bodily pleasures doctrine of the earlier passage and then

considers the view that all things always “flow [ῥεῖ].” This view appeals to Protarchus generally,

and it is held by the wise. Yet, Socrates asks Protarchus to at least consider a hypothetical case of

a body which is not in flux. While (in a segment of the passage I excluded) Protarchus does not

initially accept this suggestion, he eventually decides to at least consider it as a counterfactual. If

there could be a stable state of body, he admits, then the living beings experiencing the state would

have to be described as remaining at “their natural condition [τὴν αὑτῶν φύσιν],” without the

processes of disintegration or replenishment. Thus, remaining consistent with the earlier, general

claim that pleasure and pain occur when a living being is disrupted or fulfilled, Socrates and

Protarchus here agree that if a being could be without bodily flux it would altogether lack the

necessary conditions for bodily pleasure.15 Such a condition, however, does not seem possible for

an embodied living being, according to Protarchus, since bodily flux always seems ongoing.

15 Socrates will not in the end accept that the absence of bodily fulfillment and deficiency excludes the possibility

of all pleasure, for there are strictly psychical deficiencies and fulfillments (see Part III). Nor will he accept that all

things are in incessant motion, simply because all things bodily are, or may always be, in flux.

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These two passages by themselves would appear to suggest that living beings are always

undergoing pain and pleasure, never arriving at the harmonious mean, precisely because they are

always undergoing bodily flux. It would therefore seem that we could never experience a state

without either pain or pleasure (nor could we ever experience pleasure without pain or pain without

pleasure). Importantly, however, both of the passages I have so far analyzed are parts of larger

arguments which advance to a wholly different conclusion. Socrates has yet to clarify the way that

soul’s proper experiences do not have to arise from, or exist in parallel with, the bodily flux. A

living being will not, for Socrates, be necessarily bound at all times to a flux of pleasure and pain

even if the body is always in flux. The argument for this conclusion depends on Socrates’ eventual

discovery of a striking non-parallelism between body and soul generally, and this non-parallelism

must be taken into account in the analysis pleasure and its kinds.

Advancing towards this new clarification, Socrates proceeds next to examine a range of

psychical states which involve pleasure. Importantly, these conditions or states of soul allow for

different kinds of pleasures than just soul’s pleasures taken in bodily processes. Socrates’ tactic is

to explain, firstly, two extremes of the psychical condition and then, secondly, he fills out

additional activities in between. The first extreme is the case we have already seen: a living being

has a psychical relation to some bodily flux (i.e., perceptions) (32c-d). (Socrates also includes in

this first group the living being’s capacity to anticipate or retain bodily affections.) Secondly, at

the opposite extreme, he deems “the life of wisdom and intelligence [τὸν τοῦ νοεῖν καὶ φρονεῖν

βίον]” to be a divine condition by comparison to other possible lives. Such a condition has no

relation to bodily flux at all, neither to present nor to anticipated or remembered bodily motions

(33a6-9 and 21d8-e2).16 Finally, Socrates fills out the intermediate range of soul’s states. He

distinguishes and defines soul’s states of perception (i.e., the conjoined shock of body and soul in

16 For (i) the gods, something like a natural condition (which mortal animals do not finally attain) would be a

condition also neutral with respect to pleasure and pain (see 27b1, 32e, 33b6-9, 21e, 44b-d, 55a, and 66c5). For (ii)

most other mortal beings, it is probably the case that the psychical condition is largely or entirely bound to bodily

motions, meaning that the ability to attain the psychically neutral condition (or, separately, the pure pleasure condition)

is impossible or rare (i.e., when the body is briefly [if this is even possible] not in flux). However, for (iii) living beings

like us, a neutral condition is possible but it depends on our non-perception of flux (as I argue below). Now Carone,

Plato’s Cosmology, 262-64 argues against both my view and the explicit statement at 33b6 that (i), gods, experience

pleasure. She bases her argument on denying that all pleasures are lack-fulfillments. I challenge this premise in parts

II and III. But her conclusion is also challenged by the fact that in the various passages which supposedly support the

view that the gods experience pleasure, the term used is never ἡδονή. Suzanne Obdrzalek,

“Next to Godliness: Pleasure and Assimilation in God in the Philebus” in Plato’s Philebus: Selected Papers from the

Eighth Symposium Platonicum (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia Verlag, 2010), 213-14 rightly challenges

Carone’s position along these lines. A world with only gods would, I think, be a world with no pleasure for Plato.

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common motion, at 34a4), of memory (i.e., the preservation of perception, at 33a9, or of a μάθημα,

at 34b9), and finally of recollection (i.e., soul’s regaining a lost memory by itself, at 34b9-c1).17

Socrates is defining these states, we shall see, because he is arguing that, in fact, the psychical state

is what sufficiently determines whether there is a pleasure and what kind of pleasure is

experienced.18

Examining the psychical state of perception more closely, Socrates claims that only those

bodily affections which are in fact held “in common” with soul are truly perceptions:

Socrates: You must realize that some of the various affections [παθημάτων] of the body are

extinguished within the body before they reach the soul, leaving it unaffected. Others

penetrate through both body and soul and provoke a kind of upheaval [σεισμὸν] that is

peculiar to each [ἑκατέρῳ] but also common to both [ἀμφοῖν] of them (33d2-5).

In the first case Socrates mentions, where the affections do not reach soul, there is no perception

at all, only unperceived flux. Socrates insists on calling this condition non-perception (ἀναισθησία)

in order to distinguish it from forgetting (λήθη), which is departure of memory (33e-34a1). When

a memory of a perception, or of a μάθημα, has not yet emerged (νῦν οὔπω γέγονε), we cannot say

that memory is “lost”; for in truth it has yet to arise (33e3-6).19

With this general account of a set of psyche’s activities in hand, Socrates can now connect

the account of these psychical conditions to the accounts of various kinds of pleasures. The account

of psyche’s non-perception (ἀναισθησία), in particular, is important. For, when we return to the

passage at 43a-b (where Socrates and Protarchus have discussed the possibility that all things

bodily are in flux), we see that Socrates continues his argument there by invoking just this earlier

concept of non-perception:

Socrates: […] But I guess what you mean to say is that we necessarily are always

experiencing one or the other, as the wise men say. For everything is in eternal flux [ἀεὶ

γὰρ ἅπαντα … ῥεῖ], upward and downward?

Protarchus: They do say that, and what they say seems important.

17 In note 73, I expand on the idea that a lesson can be forgotten or lost as well as learned or re-learned. 18 This is not to say that the psychical state alone determines whether there is a bodily pleasure, since such

pleasures also depend on bodily motions. 19 On forgetting versus non-perception generally, see Theodore J. Tracy, Physiological Theory and the Doctrine

of the Mean in Plato and Aristotle (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1969), 123-36, which describes “diseases of

soul” based on the ἀναισθησία/λήθη distinction.

10

Socrates: But as for me, answer this question: whether all living creatures in all cases notice

it [αἰσθάνεται] whenever they are affected in some way, so that we notice when we grow

[οὔτ᾽ αὐξανόμενοι λανθάνομεν] or experience anything of that sort, or whether it is quite

otherwise.

Protarchus: It is indeed quite otherwise. Almost all of these processes totally escape our

notice [λέληθε].20

Socrates: But then what we just agreed to was not well spoken, that the changes “upwards

and downwards” evoke pleasures and pains. […] But if stated in this way, it will be better

and become unobjectionable[:] [Great] changes cause pleasures and pains in us, while

moderate or small ones engender neither of the two effects (43a1-c4).

Since, as I have shown, Socrates has already developed his concept of non-perception at 33e ff, he

is now free to invoke it in this later passage. Indeed, if he had not already developed the concept,

we might have expected him to reject the whole argument of the “wise men” and to deny that there

is a radical flux. For radical bodily flux would seem to imply that there is never a state without

pleasure or pain. Instead, Socrates does not reject completely their claim. Rather, he uses the

concept of non-perception to argue that there are at least some unperceived bodily motions, i.e.,

there are occasions when bodily motions do not affect soul.21 But unperceived motions of body or

soul are precisely not bodily pleasures or pains. Rather, if there is to be an actual pleasure of body,

this pleasure is dependent on the “motions” of body being held in common with soul, just as

Socrates argued earlier that perception is dependent not only on bodily motion but also on soul.22

20 It almost appears here that Socrates forgets his prior distinction between non-perception and forgetting, for he

almost seems to use the terms λανθάνειν and ἀναισθησία synonymously. This appearance should be resisted, however,

for there are two possible readings whereby Socrates can be understood as retaining his distinction, while Protarchus

is the one who overlooks it. Firstly, Socrates could be seen as giving Protarchus options for response. Socrates asked

whether there is or is not perception of the affection or whether or not growth is forgotten. Tellingly, Protarchus

responds by saying that the flux is “forgotten [λέληθε].” It would therefore be Protarchus, not Socrates, who has thus

forgotten the distinction between non-perception and forgetting. Alternatively, it is also possible that λανθάνειν is here

used non-technically by Socrates and Protarchus to mean “overlook.” The term was used non-technically at 33d9, just

before Socrates corrected himself and introduced the term’s technical sense. In either case, Socrates is not guilty of

overlooking the earlier distinction. 21 Van Riel, Pleasure, 24-25 suggests that unperceived deficiencies and replenishments are unperceived only

because of the low intensity of their impact. There are such examples of low intensity impacts given in the Philebus

and Timaeus. Recently, however, Van Riel has suggest that there may indeed be intense pure pleasure, and that pure

pleasure are not dependent on the low intensity of impacts. I agree. For the account of “low intensity impacts” in this

passage, Socrates deems merely to be better than the view that we are always subject to bodily motion and thus to

pleasure and pain. Further, at 32a ff and 51a ff Socrates references non-perception without specific reference to any

corresponding small magnitude of bodily impacts. 22 Not all psychic pleasures involve psyche relating to or anticipating bodily motions. The point here is that no

pleasure is taken in the present bodily motion unless that motion is also shared with soul (i.e., perception). See Amber

11

Fulfillment and deficiency of body, therefore, are not sufficient conditions for pleasures or pains

of body, as the initial, rough “outline” of pleasure’s nature seemed to suggest (at 32a ff). Rather,

only when those bodily motions “register” psychically, i.e., when they are perceived, is there bodily

pleasure or pain. Bodily pleasure thus depends on soul, not merely on body.

Thus, as the passage continues, Socrates argues that the psychical condition, which

determines whether there is or is not pleasure or pain, is not necessarily bound to bodily motions

or processes. Even if there are always ongoing bodily processes, nevertheless a third condition,

besides that of becoming-deficient or becoming-fulfilled, is possible. Socrates thus describes the

“neutral state” of neither pleasure nor pain23:

Socrates: [Great] changes cause pleasures and pains in us, while moderate or small ones engender

neither of the two effects.

Protarchus: That is more correct than the other statement, Socrates.

Socrates: But if this is correct, then we are back with the same kind of life we discussed

before. […] The life that we said was painless, but also devoid of charm. […] So we end

up with three kinds of life, the life of pleasure, the life of pain, and the neutral life. Or

what would you say about these matters?

Protarchus: I would put it in the same way, that there are three kinds of life.

Socrates: […] [Thus, that] the middle kind of life could turn out to be either pleasant or

painful would be the wrong thing to think, if anyone happened to think so, and it would

be the wrong thing to say, if anyone should say so, according to the proper account of the

matter (43c5-e9)?

Thus, when a flux is not noticed, the condition of soul is neither one of bodily pleasure nor one of

bodily pain, even if there is an ongoing bodily “flow.” Thus, the question of soul’s being in such a

“neutral condition” is separate from the question of whether there is bodily flux.24 The absence of

bodily flux indeed guarantees an absence of bodily pleasure or pain as Socrates explicitly says at

D. Carpenter, “Embodied Intelligent (?) Souls: Plants in Plato’s Timaeus” Phronêsis: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy

55 (2010): 281-303 for an excellent treatment of this topic. 23 Plato scholarship owes enormously to Van Riel, Pleasure and Kelly Arenson, “Natural and Neutral States in

Plato’s Philebus” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 44 (2011): 191-209 (which appears to follow

Van Riel) for establishing the distinction between the neutral state and the natural condition, based on these passages. 24 Motions of body, we recall, were described generally as increases or decreases, or as fulfillments and emptyings

(see note 11). Neutral states of neither pleasure nor pain would thus emerge only unreliably, if ever, when soul is

bound to bodily motions. See also note 35 on the constant flux of the unlimited kind, which adds to our conviction

that, for Plato, bodily flux is probably always ongoing.

12

32e and 42e. But there can still be a lack of bodily or psychical pleasure or pain, even if the body

remains in flux. This last point is vital, for it allows Socrates to say, eventually, that while pleasures

are dependent on a deficiency-fulfillment of some sort (i.e., of body or soul), an unperceived

emptying can be combined with a psychically perceived filling. Soul can therefore experience

bodily pleasure unmixed with pain, i.e., aesthetic pure pleasure (see Part III).25

Importantly, the initial, “outline” account of pleasure and pain, linking them to bodily

changes, was not wrong. When soul perceives the bodily restoration, there is indeed pleasure.

Rather, the earlier account is merely a limited account; it is merely a description of a narrow kind

of pleasure, i.e., psycho-bodily pleasure (and this is all Socrates ever claimed it was) (32a5). When

soul perceives bodily fulfillment (and bodily fulfillment is thereby shared with soul), then there is

a pleasure of bodily fulfillment. My account thus explains why the earlier passages (and the

Gorgias) said that these bodily pleasures were fulfillments: there are no bodily pleasures without

bodily fulfillments (even though fulfillments are not sufficient for pleasure). Thus, this second

group of passages has shown that the initial account cannot by itself serve as the general account

of pleasure. While such motions are required for there to be bodily pleasures, the motions must be

psychically relevant if there is to be pleasure. Not all motions of body are, however, psychically

relevant.

Thus, between our two passages, we learn that Socrates places a psychical condition on

even the bodily pleasures: bodily flux must be held in common with soul if bodily pleasure or pain

is to result.26 Thus, the very pleasures which might seem to some thinkers to be soul-independent

pleasures—the most bodily of the pleasures—are in fact soul-dependent. This psychical criterion

allows Socrates to reconsider the kinds of pleasures living beings can experience. Whether in cases

of soul’s perceptions (51a ff), of its memory of a different condition vis-à-vis its present condition

(35b ff), or of its experiences of learning all by itself (52a-e), the psychical condition determines

whether the condition of the ensouled being is pleasing or not. Indeed, in Part III, I will show that

25 There is no elaboration of the experience of pleasure-less pains in the Philebus as there is at Timaeus 65b. 26 It would be an abstraction to speak of pleasures without any psychical conditions at all. For even at 21b ff,

when pleasure is abstracted from cognitive activities and treated “by itself,” perception is not mentioned as one of the

things from which this “abstracted” pleasure is abstracted. Thus, when Socrates mentions that life of the mollusk lacks

cognitive abilities and is unable to recognize even that it is pleased, he implies, I think, that psychical motion and

bodily motion are all but indistinct for such a being: The life of the mollusk may involve pleasure in some sense of

the term, but it is a sense almost indistinguishable from bodily motions as such (which are by themselves pleasure-

less) (21c7). Thus, even if the mollusk has pleasure, it is the weakest sense of pleasure, almost indistinguishable from

non-pleasurable, non-perceived motions.

13

not all fulfillments and deficiencies are even body-related. Rather, soul has its own deficiencies

and fulfillments to worry about, i.e., the experiences of ignorance, of forgetting, etc.27

Finally, before turning to the account of pure pleasures, we should first make a few, more

general observations about the impact of Socrates’ establishment of the psychical condition for

pleasure. Firstly, the psychical condition leads us to see that pleasure, taken generally, is broader

than the initial description of the “natural pleasures.” The incessant motions of generation and

destruction of body guarantee that if soul’s activity were strictly bound to noticing bodily motion,

then soul’s experiences would be in a constant, parallel motion. Soul might then be bound always

to undergo pleasure and pain, for cases where there is no bodily flux whatsoever are entertained

only as hypotheticals. Indeed, if soul’s attainment of a neutral state were to depend on body’s

attainment of non-flux, then soul’s neutral state would be improbable, since we have no known

cases of bodily processes ceasing to flow.28 Instead, happily, soul has the capacity to perceive or

to not perceive bodily motions. Thus, soul’s being in a neutral state or a condition of pleasure

without pain will not depend on body’s “happening” to undergo a neutral condition, or on its

“happening” to arrive at a fulfillment without simultaneous deficiency (which would be a bodily

pleasure without pain). We have no reason to believe that the bodily flux by itself would ever reach

such conditions of either neutrality or of fulfillment without deficiency.29 Therefore, Socrates’

deeper analysis of pleasure re-frames the initial, “outline” account of the natural pleasures (which

would otherwise seem to bind body and soul), and Socrates argues that bodily (i.e., psycho-bodily)

pleasures are just a narrow case of pleasures.30

Thus, the general account of pleasure has been broadened from an account that would seem

to consider fulfillments of body or soul to be by themselves pleasures to a more precisely

classification those bodily pleasures as just one kind of psychical experience. While the thesis

about the psychical dependency of even bodily pleasures reveals to us that bodily pleasures are

just one narrow kind of pleasure, it does not yet explain to us what a pure psychical pleasure would

27 See notes 72-77. 28 See note 24. 29 Socrates does not exclude the idea that bodily flux is ongoing (43a1), even though “not all things are in flux.” 30 Gosling and Taylor, The Greeks, 140 argues (against the view I hold) that not all pleasures require fulfillment

of some kind or another (bodily or psychical). While I cannot include all of the arguments here, I can, firstly, direct

the reader to the arguments of Frede, “Disintegration,” Tuozzo, “General Account,” and Van Riel, Pleasure, 21-22

(among others) which defend general “fulfillment” conditions as holding for pleasures. Secondly, in Part III, I defend

the model’s application even to the pure pleasures. Thirdly, while Arenson has noted in correspondence that the mixed

pleasures of soul at 47e ff seem to not be fulfillments, Miller, “Pleasure of the Comic” has provided an excellent

argument showing how the fulfillment model really does apply to this difficult case.

14

be like or what the psychical condition is like in various pleasures. Thus, the next step in Socrates’

argument will be to narrow the general account of pleasure (as a “psyche-dependent phenomenon

corresponding to a fulfillment”) so as to reveal the ways that the different kinds of pleasures are

conditioned by soul. Furthermore, if we are to account for pleasure proper, i.e., for the paradigmatic

pleasure, we have to account for soul’s state or condition when a properly pure pleasure—and

eventually when a properly psychical pure pleasure—is experienced. Happily, Socrates indeed

specifies the psychical conditions for the emergence of these various pleasures in his analysis of

kinds of pleasures—both psycho-bodily and psychical—from 34e-52e.31 By the end of this

analysis, Socrates’ question has become: If a wholly choiceworthy and valuable pleasure—pure

pleasure—were to emerge for body or soul, what would be the psychical condition involved? This

question will be the focus of Part III.

II. PLEASURE AS BECOMING

Before moving to the account of pure pleasures, however, we must examine the way that

the Philebus treats pleasure as becoming.32 It is important to raise the point here because recent

studies have linked pleasure’s nature as “becoming” to the fulfillment-of-deficiency condition for

pleasure (which I have just argued is merely a necessary condition, whether noticed or unnoticed,

for pleasure’s emergence). Furthermore, pleasure’s status as becoming would be the most obvious

piece of evidence one might try to use in arguing against its intrinsic goodness. After all, Socrates’

arguments in the Gorgias in particular imply that the pursuit of pleasure is harmful because that

very pursuit analytically contains the pursuit of a deficient state of being.33 I will now argue that

the Philebus confirms this prohibition on pursuing pleasure as a goal, precisely because pleasure

31 The present arena does not afford me the opportunity to intervene directly into the lively debates on false

pleasures. 32 I will at no point argue that all pleasures are merely becoming, i.e., becoming as abstracted from any relation

to being. See Eugene Benitez, Forms in Plato’s Philebus (Assen/Maastrich: Van Gorcum, 1989), 92-108 for an

account of the many ways becoming is spoken of as having some relation to be being without its being identical to

being. 33 There, Socrates treats pleasure as essentially “in process,” and it has no career if the process ceases (because

the deficiency-being fulfilled no longer exists). See note 11 above in particular. Now, the Gorgias does not clarify the

psychical pre-condition for pleasure and thus argues that pleasure cannot outlast “pain” (496e5). Once the psychical

condition for pleasure is established in the Philebus, however, it becomes clear that both dialogues imply that pleasure

cannot outlast “deficiency-fulfillment” (while some pleasure is logically and really separate from pain). In any case,

since pleasure still depends on deficiency-fulfillment in the Philebus, and goodness does not depend on deficiency,

Socrates’ argument against Callicles still holds true across both dialogues.

15

is a kind of becoming and a fulfillment.34 However, the fact that even pure pleasure should not be

pursued will not imply, as I shall argue, that pure pleasure lacks intrinsic goodness.

The thesis that pleasure is becoming is stated in two ways in the Philebus. Firstly, at 27d

and 31a9, Socrates and Philebus agree that pleasure belongs to the class of things which are

indefinite (ἀπείρων). Indefinite things, however, endlessly change, without any proper measure or

stability (24b8-d4).35 Pleasure’s belonging to this class, wherein everything is what it is only by

relation to its contrary, would imply that pleasure is doomed to a kind of “becoming more and less

[μᾶλλόν τε καὶ ἧττον γιγνόμενα],” i.e., to a kind of endless change from opposite to opposite. For

example, just as a purely relative “more than” (i.e., a “more” defined only as more than what is

less than itself) immediately requires a “less than” for its own existence (since to be more than

itself it must be less than itself), so too does pleasure, insofar as it is unlimited, logically require

the existence of its opposite, pain.36 Socrates conceives of this co-emergence of opposites as

implying an inability to arrive at an end (τέλος), a measure (μέτριος), or a definite how-many

(ποσός); and he sees this inability as something positively harmful to whatever has this unlimited

34 The definition of the experience of pure pleasure will preclude a prior search for the experience of pure pleasure,

for the search implies a notice of one’s own deficiency. See Part III. 35 Describing the flux of the unlimited through the example of “hotter and colder,” Socrates argues that whatever

is unlimited “becomes unlimitedly”:

Check first in the case of hotter and colder whether you can conceive of a limit, or whether the ‘more and

less’ [τὸ μᾶλλόν τε καὶ ἧττον] do not rather reside in these kinds, and while they reside in them do not permit

the attainment of any end [τέλος]. For once an end [τελευτάω] has been reached, they will both have been

ended [τετελευτήκατον] as well. […] Our argument forces us to conclude that these things never have an end

[τέλος]. And since they are endless [ἀτελῆ], they turn out to be entirely unlimited [ἀπείρω γίγνεσθον]. […]

Wherever they apply, they prevent everything from adopting a definite quantity [ποσὸν] by imposing on all

actions the qualification ‘stronger’ relative to ‘gentler’ or the reverse they procure a ‘more and less’ while

doing away with all definite quantity. We are saying now, in effect, that if they do not abolish definite

quantity, but let quantity and measurement [μέτριον] take a foothold in the domain of the more and the less,

the strong and the mild, they will be driven out of their own territory [ἐκ τῆς αὑτῶν χώρας]. For once they

take on definite quantity, they would no longer be hotter and colder. The hotter and equally colder are always

in flux and never remain [προχωρεῖ … καὶ οὐ μένει], while definite quantity means standstill and the end of

all progression [προϊὸν ἐπαύσατο] (24b8-d4).

Socrates thus suggests that we may try to understand the unlimited as a character always in flux, becoming, or process

(προχωρεῖν). The flux of the more and less never in itself arrives at an end (τέλος), at any definite how-many (ποσός),

or has any measure (μέτριος). The unlimited is always “becoming unlimited [ἀπείρω γίγνεσθον],” by which Socrates

appears to mean that whatever is unlimited cannot remain in any condition. The duality of the class—the inability of

one opposite to escape from its own other or to be its own other—thus manifests itself as a constant shifting from one

to the other (or, indeed, as a compresence of opposites). “More” really just is always becoming “less” (even as it

becomes more) in the unlimited class. For just as X becomes more (than itself), at once X itself grows to be less (than

itself). Thus, if it becomes more than itself, it must at once become less than itself. Similar claims about “more and

less” appear at Republic 431a and 438b and at Parmenides 141a. 36 For Socrates’ critique of the pursuit of pleasure as a goal because pleasure is preconditioned on ongoing lack-

fulfillment, see note 11. See also Phaedo 60b5 where Socrates says pleasure and pain are opposites and yet are joined

at the head.

16

character (24b8-d4). For this reason, when Philebus claims that pleasure must be unlimited if it is

to be best (“For how could pleasure be all that is good if it were not by nature boundless in plenty

and increase?”), Socrates responds by quipping that if pleasure’s value comes from its “unlimited”

nature, then pleasure’s value is equally bad.37 For, insofar as pleasure is “unlimited emergence

[ἀπείρω γίγνεσθον],” it stands no chance of escaping its own opposite (24b7). Thus, pleasure left

to itself in the unlimited kind would be nothing but ongoing procession (προχωρεῖν) of opposites

without end or measure.

Socrates, however, also links pleasure to becoming in a second way, for pleasure also

appears in the class of things having some definiteness, i.e., the mixed class (forged from the limit

and unlimited). Any determinate becoming, for Socrates, is a mixture of the definite with the

indefinite; and it results from an introduction (ἐντίθημι) of limit into the endless flux by a cause

(αἰτία) (25e2 and 26e7-9). Socrates refers to such mixtures as harmonious conditions which

“emerge into being [γένεσιν εἰς οὐσίαν]” given the cooperation of the limit (26d7). The “natural

pleasures and pains” of living beings, which we have previously examined, “show up together

[φαίνεσθον]” in just this mixed class, according to Socrates (31c5). They arise for ensouled beings

which, since they are themselves quasi-ordered mixtures, have a relatively delimited condition.

But since this condition is not totally “limited” (or totally “limit”), the relative order or structure

of these living beings is subject to both disruption and return to order (31c9). Thus, for a mixed

being whose order is disrupted, the return to the order is pleasing if it is noticed (32b1-4). Pleasure

is therefore still a becoming (in this second sense), but it is no longer a radically unlimited

becoming. It “becomes” relative to an order in which it becomes.38

37 Socrates: “Nor would, on the other hand, pain [if it is unlimited] be all that is bad, Philebus! So we have to

search for something besides its unlimited character that would bestow on pleasures a share of the good” (27e7-28a4).

Thus, if unlimitedness were (per impossible) responsible for the goodness of something, it would also become

responsible, at once, for the badness of something. 38 Socrates confirms that pleasures arise in and for beings of the mixed class: “When the natural combination of

limit and unlimitedness that forms a live organism, as I explained before, is destroyed, this destruction is pain, while

the return towards its own nature, this general restoration, is pleasure” (32b1-4). These mixture-pleasures are defined

relatively to the order or structure of the living beings (mixtures) for which they emerge: return to normal order is, for

a mixed being, a pleasure. Thus, these mixture-pleasures are no longer defined in the “absolutely relative” sense, as

unlimited pleasures are. Insofar as they are no longer merely relatively determined (like “more and less,” see above),

but determined relative to a not-merely-relative order (i.e., a mixture), they themselves are no longer strictly unlimited-

pleasures but mixture-pleasures. Further, since pleasures which occur in the mixed class do not have to be mixed with

their relative opposites, Socrates can later argue that some pleasures for living beings (mixtures) are completely free

of pain (51a ff). While these pure pleasures are said, at 52c, to belong to the class of things with measure (ἔμμετρος),

they are not said to belong to the class of limit (πέρας). For things “with measure” emerge for living beings in the

mixed class. These pleasure have no unlimitedness (and thus no pain) characterizing their particular emergence (even

though the mixed class as a whole is forged from out of the unlimited). Contrast my reading of 52c with Eva Braan,

17

Thus, pleasures are depicted by Socrates as becoming, but in two ways: on the one hand,

pleasure becomes indefinitely; on the other hand, for beings who are already somewhat delimited

and ordered, pleasure becomes somewhat definitely, i.e., relative not to its own opposite but

relative to a somewhat determinate order. Beatriz Bossi has argued, rightly in my view, that there

is no contradiction in maintaining both accounts.39 She argues that pleasures generally retain a

tendency to unlimitedness, even when they emerge in the mixed class. Her argument is supported

by the fact that only a few lines separate Socrates’ affirmation of the indefiniteness of pleasure at

31a7-8 (“[Pleasure] is itself unlimited and belongs to the kind that in and of itself neither possesses

nor will ever possess a beginning, middle, and end.”) and his account of it as emerging in the mixed

(and quasi-determinate) class at 31c7-32b4. Bossi thinks this double-account stems from the fact

that pleasures have to be, so to speak, continuously “cared for” by a soul or a cause, which has to

continuously impose or re-impose limits and order on the indefinite tendency. Otherwise the

unlimited tendency of pleasure would become manifest, and they would inevitably destroy

themselves and the living beings for whom they occur (26b7). Indeed, Socrates dramatically

depicts the “goddess” as engaging in an activity of delimiting the unlimited pleasures, precisely so

that those pleasures are “saved” (ἀποσώζειν at 26c1), i.e., prevented from immediately destroying

themselves and dissolving themselves into their own opposites.40 While Philebus thinks the

imposition of limits on unlimited pleasure destroys unlimited pleasure, Socrates thinks this

imposition instead saves the unlimited (27e9). (Socrates is suggesting, I believe, that we too ought

to act as causes like the goddess, saving pleasures by delimiting their unlimited tendency.) In both

accounts, then, pleasure becomes. The difference concerns only whether becoming is delimited

and salvaged by soul or cause, or whether becoming is left alone to its internal tendency to become

indeterminately and self-destructively, i.e., to be nothing separate from its own opposite.

Feeling our Feelings: What Philosophers Think and People Know (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2008), 48, who

thinks pure pleasures, and only pure pleasures, really belong in the class of πέρας. 39 Bossi, “How Consistent is Plato?” 40 Bossi, “How Consistent is Plato?” 130. Bossi argues that once pleasure is “limited” by the cause (here, cause

is personified as a goddess), thus creating natural harmony, pleasure does not easily remain within those bounds. There

always remains the potential for “unlimitedness to develop beyond the natural limits she herself sets.” Thus, “ordering

action is not finished [by the goddess] but requires our subsequent government to subdue pleasure to its measure and

proportion with regard to other desires” (130, my emphasis). Bossi’s explanation is consistent with my claim (see note

75) that humans participate in an ongoing establishment of measure, analogous to the way the cause is depicted at

30c3-5.

18

Becoming, of course, has an important history in the dialogues. The notion of pleasure as

becoming and never attaining being entire recalls the famous distinction between becoming and

being at Timaeus 27e41:

Timaeus: As I see it, then, we must begin by making the following distinction: What is that

which always is [τὸ ὂν ἀεί] and has no becoming, and what is that which becomes [τὸ

γιγνόμενον] but never is? The former is grasped by understanding, which involves a

reasoned account. It is unchanging. The latter is grasped by opinion, which involves

unreasoning sense perception. It comes to be and passes away, but never really is.42

Importantly, students of the dialogues often take Timaeus’ distinction between becoming and being

to be equivalent to a value-distinction, such that being is to be identified strictly with good, whereas

becoming is to be identified with deficiency of goodness. These students are thus led to the view

that if pleasure becomes, it is not good.43

Indeed, perhaps the most lucid presentation of such an argument for devaluing all

becoming is found in the Philebus itself. From 53c-55d Socrates considers the arguments of some

“clever friends” or κομψοὶ (henceforth, the “subtlers,” following Gosling & Taylor). The subtlers

present a “teleological refutation” of anyone who would consider pleasure as both becoming and

good. The argument is simple: (i) to become is to become for the sake of some being; (ii) being is

always the good in this relationship, while the becoming is deficient of being/good; (iii) pleasure

is a becoming; (iv) therefore, pleasure is not good.

It is worth noting that the subtlers’ argument is very similar to the one used by Aristotle in

Book X of the Nic. Ethics to argue that pleasure is not essentially γένεσις, κίνησις, or πλήρωσις.

Both the subtlers and Aristotle purport to show that γένεσις is dependent on the good/being relative

to which it emerges (and, for Aristotle, it is dependent on the distinctive ἐνέργεια). Aristotle’s point

is to prove that pleasure is, or accompanies, actual being; it is not essentially in process. Indeed,

he is opposing the radically anti-hedonistic implications of subtlers-style arguments. Even so,

41 The indefiniteness of pleasure also recalls the account of the flux of contents in the receptacle in the Timaeus.

See Donald Zeyl, “Plato and Talk of a World in Flux: Timaeus 49a6-50b5” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

79 (1975): 125-148 and Robert Bolton, “Plato’s Distinction between Becoming and Being’ Review of Metaphysics 29

(1975): 66-95 for two excellent accounts of “flux” in general in Plato. 42 The arguments against retaining ἀεί in reference to becoming are persuasive and thus seriously challenge the

Proclean postulation of an eternal, divine becoming. Francis M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology (Indianapolis:

Routledge, 1935) retains the ἀεί but gives a nice overview of the stakes of the debates about this passage. 43 See Bravo, “Genesis” and Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics, 192-4 for more refined defenses of this view as

it pertains to pleasure.

19

Aristotle still holds in common with the subtlers the premise that all becoming, or process, is

normatively subordinate to being, or actuality.44 Following this line of thought, Amber Carpenter

has recently argued (following M. Frede and A. Code) that Plato too generally equates “becoming”

with “metaphysical and normative deficiency.”45 That is, Plato posits that becoming is that which

is deficient with respect to being; and ontological deficiency and normative deficiency (or

axiological deficiency), says the argument, go hand in hand.

There is certainly an economy to Carpenter’s argument for equating becoming with

ontological dependency. Socrates has already agreed that pleasure is generally dependent on a

deficiency-fulfillment, and separately he argues that it is a becoming. Carpenter’s thesis simply

allows us to consider one claim as implying the other. If we keep this link in mind, and if we notice

that subtlers’ argument is presented with some approval by Socrates in the Philebus itself, then we

might be led to think that pleasure’s status as becoming is also fatal to its bid for goodness. For if

deficiency in being is equivalent to value-deficiency, as the subtlers’ argument says it is, then we

have only two options: (i) either we may deny that good pleasure becomes like the other pleasures;

(ii) or we may deny that any pleasure is intrinsically good at all because all pleasures become.46

While most commentators choose one side or the other, I do not think we have to accept

these two options as, in truth, exhaustive. Rather, while Socrates really does find the subtlers’

argument to be helpful—and interpreters are right to notice Socrates’ friendliness to these

thinkers—, at least four arguments could be adduced showing that their views are not actually

embraced by the Philebus. If these arguments succeed, then we can reject each horn of the

dilemma. We can argue, in the end, that all pleasures come to be and yet some pleasures still could

come to be as intrinsically good. Grasping this possibility, however, will require rejecting the

subtlers’ perfectly strict identification of being with goodness. In my reading, Socrates is indeed

asking us to reject this identification.

44 That is, because becoming is subordinated to actuality by Aristotle, and because he wants to argue that pleasure

is an end-goal, he is forced to argue that pleasure is or belongs to actuality. 45 Amber D. Carpenter, “Pleasure as Genesis in Plato’s Philebus” Ancient Philosophy 31 (2011): 81-91, my italics.

As I will argue, becoming and pleasure are indeed metaphysically dependent as she suggests (if by metaphysical, we

mean ontological); but they are not for that reason necessarily normatively deficient (if by normatively we mean

axiologically, or with-respect-to-the-good). For this reason, I disagree with Carpenter’s reading of “pure pleasure,”

which treats it as axiologically deficient simply because it depends on ontological deficiencies like all other pleasures.

My point is that axiological deficiency does not strictly follow from ontological deficiency. 46 Aufderheide, “Inconsistency” states this problem clearly. However, he argues that the ontological dependency

of pleasure is evidence of its lesser value. His argument thus accepts the subtlers’ identification of being and goodness.

See note 56.

20

Firstly, then, we can argue against the first horn of the dilemma and reaffirm that all

pleasures, including good pleasures, are becoming. The most general strategy would be to argue

that the cost of allowing that some pleasures (i.e., the good ones) do not become is too costly from

a textual-interpretive standpoint. The Philebus, as we have seen, links pleasure generally to

becoming. Further, as we shall see, it links even pure pleasure, i.e., the good pleasures, to the

fulfillment process model.47 Even these pleasures involve πλήρωσις, and πλήρωσις implies

becoming.48 This view, of course, also follows the Gorgias closely, which itself depicts pleasure

as necessarily ceasing to exist when the process of fulfillment ends (487e).49 The same view is

reflected by Republic 583e9, which treats even the true pleasures of learning as a πλήρωσις which

eliminates one’s own ignorance. These dialogues thus support the Philebus’ position: pleasure

essentially involves fulfillment and thus becoming.

There is a second argument against the view that Socrates accepts the subtlers’ position.

For, Socrates nowhere—apart from in his exegesis of the subtlers’ views—entertains the view that

good pleasures are good “for the sake of” something else. 21d ff describes pleasure generally as

part of a “choiceworthy” life, but never as choiceworthy “for the sake of….” Likewise, the final

ranking describes the good pleasures as “following” the sciences; but it does not define any goods

that may follow from good pleasures or to which they lead.50 While reasoning, for example, could

be conceived as good for itself and as good for the way it makes possible other goods that follow

from itself, pure pleasure is not said to be good for any further effect.51 This depiction of pure

pleasure as a valuable “accompaniment” to other goods is supported by themes in other dialogues.

47 “[All] those that are based on imperceptible and painless lacks, while their fulfillments are perceptible and

pleasant” (51b4-5). At 52s5, pure pleasures involve “filling with knowledge.” Both terms are πλήρωσις. See also

Gorgias 496e5, 497d6, and Republic 583e9 ff on pleasure as motion and fulfillment. See Part III for my account of

the pure pleasures, which confirms the Republic’s account. 48 The arguments for treating πλήρωσις as a state, rather than a process are unpersuasive. See note 74. 49 The Gorgias consistently treats pleasure as becoming. Indeed, it explicitly contrasts the way that the good is

present (παρεῖναι) in soul with the way that pleasure becomes present (παραγίγνεσθαι) to soul (506d). For more on

pleasure and fulfillment, see Bravo, “Genesis.” He says that pleasures generally are becoming, per these passages.

Yet Bravo’s solution to the problems raised by the subtlers’ argument is to accept (without direct evidence) the

conclusion that good pleasure no longer becomes like the other pleasures. He is willing to allow pure pleasure to be

wholly good only because he is willing to argue that wholly is. 50 I am not begging the question here by calling pleasure “valuable,” for all agree that pleasure is valuable in some

sense in the Philebus. 51 I describe later the relationship of the goods which are ranked in the final list. I argue that the “higher” items in

the final ranking condition the possibility of the lower ones. Clearly, of course, pure pleasure is not the last good,

since it is followed by a sixth. I am therefore not arguing here that there is no good at all which can “result from” pure

pleasure. Rather, I am arguing that pure pleasures are not good for the sake of the effects they generate. Further, any

effects are left as unknowns in the Philebus.

21

The Gorgias, for example, depicts the good pleasures as the ones following from one’s orientation

to the good.52 Republic 357b is likewise explicitly invested in denying that the “harmless

pleasures” are good “for the sake of what results from them [οὐ τῶν ἀποβαινόντων ἐφιέμενοι]”; a

harmless pleasure is “welcomed for itself [αὐτὸ αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα ἀσπαζόμενοι].” With this special

phrasing, Socrates clearly states that they are not good for whatever else comes from them; yet it

also does not deny that pleasures are, ontologically speaking, consequences.53 Given this balance

of evidence, since the Philebus entertains the idea that good pleasures are good “for the sake of”

some other good only in its exegesis of the subtlers’ views, we ought best to conclude that Socrates

is simply explicating in these passages the subtlers’ views. He does not accept the subtlers’ view

that all becoming, and thus all pleasure, is good for the sake of being.

Thirdly, Socrates explicitly indicates the respect in which he finds the subtlers’ argument

helpful. It is helpful, he says, just because it shows us that if pleasure is a becoming and involves

deficiency-fulfillment, then it is absurd to pursue pleasure as a goal (i.e., as something for the sake

of whose occurrence we should take an intermediate action or manipulate conditions). Thus,

Socrates values the subtlers’ argument because it provides leverage against another group of

thinkers that we can call the désirants:

52 Socrates suggests almost in passing at Gorgias 470a9 that if one is already undertaking to act or rest for the

sake of a genuine good (and therefore one is doing what one wants), then “acting as one sees fit follows [ἕπηται]

acting beneficially” (470a9). Further, he later says that “beneficial pleasures” go along with beneficial undertakings

(499d) and that it is not in everyone’s power “to pick out which sorts of pleasures are good [ἐκλέξασθαι ποῖα ἀγαθὰ

τῶν ἡδέων ἐστὶν]” (500a7). 53 Interestingly, on the occasions when Republic II uses the phrase “good for their consequences” in reference

things other than pleasures (i.e., for health, etc.), the term for consequence is γιγνόμενον. In the case of pleasure,

however, it was evidently important to Plato that Socrates not be perceived to be denying that a harmless pleasure is

indeed some kind of consequence or γιγνόμενον. (For Socrates is only saying that while a good pleasure is indeed a

γιγνόμενον, it is not valuable for the sake of whatever else might come from it. It is “welcomed for the sake of itself

[αὐτὸ αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα ἀσπαζόμενοι].”) Plato therefore carefully shifts the term he uses for “consequences” when he uses

it in reference to pleasure: rather than denying that harmless pleasures are good for “what becomes from them” (for

this might lead one to deny that pleasure is a becoming and a consequence) he instead says that they are not welcomed

for “what results from them” (οὐ τῶν ἀποβαινόντων ἐφιέμενοι). We should also notice that when Socrates says some

pleasures are welcomed for themselves he is not saying that we ought to pursue pleasure nor does he permit us to

manipulate conditions in order to obtain it. By contrast, for Aristotle, something is a final goal if it is valuable for its

own sake and other things are valued for its sake (e.g., Metaphysics 994b9-16, my emphasis). But when Plato

(Republic 357b) treats certain pleasures as valuable “for their own sake” he does not thereby necessarily imply that

other things are to be valued for the sake of pleasure. He indicates that harmless pleasures are to be “welcomed” for

their own sake, or that good pleasures are the choiceworthy members of their class (Philebus 22b; 66c), but not that

we should choose paths conducive to their emergence or manipulate conditions for their sake. As I will show, even

pure pleasure is never an end-goal for the sake of which I should value or do other things (since this would imply

valuing the deficiency which is required for their emergence). Pleasure can of course be a “final good” if one does not

imply by the term “final” that it is to be pursued as a goal but only that it is “not good for what results come from it.”

Cf. Russell, Plato on Pleasure, 21, 26 whose use of the term “final” agrees in part with my reading and does not

necessarily imply end-goal status in Aristotle’s sense.

22

Socrates: It is true then, as I said at the beginning of the argument, that we ought to be

grateful to the person who indicated to us that there is always only generation [τὸ γένεσιν]

of pleasure and that it has no being [οὐσίαν] whatsoever. And it is obvious that he will

just laugh at those who claim that pleasure is good.

Protarchus: Certainly.

Socrates: But this same person will also laugh at those who find their fulfillment in

processes of generation [τῶν ἐν ταῖς γενέσεσιν ἀποτελουμένων] (54d4-9).

Socrates’ gratefulness thus stems from the fact that the subtlers’ argument displays a relation of

non-identity, and of ontological dependency, between becoming and being: becoming depends on

a deficiency of being. Becoming is not itself independent “being [οὐσίαν].”54 As a result Socrates

is grateful for the subtlers’ decisive refutation of “those who pretend to find their goal or purpose

in becoming [τῶν ἐν ταῖς γενέσεσιν ἀποτελουμένων].” For such persons are clearly misguided. In

finding their “purpose” in becoming they would also inadvertently be finding their purpose in

“deficiency of being”:

Protarchus: How so, and what sort of people are you alluding to?

Socrates: I am talking about those who cure their hunger or thirst of anything else that is

cured by processes of generation [γένεσις]. They take delight in generation as a pleasure

[χαίρουσι διὰ τὴν γένεσιν ἅτε ἡδονῆς οὔσης αὐτῆς] and proclaim that they would not

want to live if they were not subject to hunger and thirst and if they could not experience

all the other things one might want to mention in connection with such conditions.

Protarchus: This is very like them.

Socrates: But would we not all say that destruction is the opposite of generation?

Protarchus: Necessarily.

Socrates: So whoever makes this choice would choose generation and destruction [τὴν δὴ

φθορὰν καὶ γένεσιν αἱροῖτ᾽ ἄν τις τοῦθ᾽ αἱρούμενος] […] (54d9-55a6).55

54 I do not take Socrates to commit himself, here, to the notion that becoming has no being or no relation to being.

His point is that becoming is not identical to being, and the subtlers agree in asserting this difference. See Benitez,

Forms, 92-108. 55 Socrates’ exposition of the subtlers’ argument continues by saying that nobody would choose destruction

instead of a “neutral life” of neither pleasure nor pain (i.e., with no experience of deficiency). We must keep in mind

that Socrates, but not the subtlers, has distinguished the “neutral life” of unperceived flux (as well as pure pleasure)

from the “natural condition” (which is probably unattainable for animals). The subtlers, and not Socrates, would

therefore identify the neutral life with the natural condition for humans. Thus, while the subtlers conclude that we

have only the two options—a life preferring destruction (i.e., becoming, pleasure) or the neutral/natural life of being

(which alone lacks all lack-of-being)—, Socrates shows us that we have more than two options. For example, Socrates

23

The fault of these desire-addicted types is that they confuse the pleasure that emerges (e.g., when

an observed fulfillment is taking place) with being the very purpose of life. They take becoming

itself to be a purpose. They therefore seek to bring about a state of affairs in which becoming is

sustained or more becoming is created. Not only do they thereby inadvertently seek destruction

(since deficiency is a necessary condition for becoming/pleasure), but they are also confused about

the nature of becoming/pleasure. For if pleasures are emergent things, then pleasures depend on a

deficiency-relation to being. So, Socrates is saying that the error of these désirants resides in the

way they treat becoming, and pleasure, as if (ἅτε) it were independent being, i.e., as if it were

independent of a deficiency-relation to being, or as if it were itself some kind of “being itself

[ἡδονῆς οὔσης αὐτῆς].” In truth—as Socrates and the subtlers can agree—emergent things

(γιγνόμεναι) are not being, i.e., they are not independent of deficiency-of-being or becoming. As

a result, Socrates and the subtlers’ can agree that the particular confusion of these désirants is two-

fold: (i) they take what is essentially dependent on deficiency of being to be independent of any

deficiency of being whatsoever; (ii) they take this becoming (which they think is in fact being) to

be a goal. Therefore, when the désirants set pleasures—and thus γιγνόμεναι—as a goal to attain,

they are, unawares, each time also setting as their goal “deficiency of being.”56 The désirants elect,

unwittingly, to create or sustain destruction (φθορά) “for the sake of” pleasure’s emergence.

Thus, Socrates can accept the subtlers’ idea that we must not try to take becoming, since it

is deficiency-dependent, to be itself a purpose as these désirants do. But Socrates cannot agree

with the subtlers when they set as their own end-goal a life of being alone, which would exist

without any becoming or pleasure (see, e.g., 22d and 66a).57 Unlike the subtlers, Socrates has

allows (see Part III) that a pleasurable experience apart from pain and apart from participating in causing destruction

occurs in pure pleasure. The subtlers cannot conceive of such a possible experience. Further, we certainly cannot

assume Socrates agrees with the subtlers in their conclusion that the good life is a neutral life. For the neutral life

without pleasure, and such a life is not “sufficient or desirable for man or any other living being” (22b1). 56 It is not good to desire or create a deficiency of being. This thesis does not commit Socrates to saying that being

and the good are identical, nor that all phenomena which are dependent on deficiency of being are bad. He is only

committed to saying that it is not good to desire or create a deficiency of being. In order to assert the latter, he only

needs to say that all being is some good, not that less being is related in any necessary way to less goodness. My view

must therefore be contrasted with Aufderheide, “Inconsistency.” 57 If the subtlers are taken to be the same as the anti-hedonists of 44b, then they are also the master naturalists

who prefer a divine-like, neutral life of reason divorced from pleasure and pain. Gosling & Taylor separate the subtlers

from these thinkers, even though Gorgias 493a and Republic 505b-c would at least suggest that they are all alike anti-

hedonists. On this score, I am grateful to J. Bova for pointing to the passage at Republic 505b-c contrasting these

κομψότεροι—i.e., the subtle people who say that the good is φρόνησις alone—with the more hedonistic types. There,

I take it, Socrates explicitly mocks the subtlers since they cannot say what φρόνησις is “about” except to say that it is

“of the good.” Thus, they cannot explain its goodness. Interestingly, Gorgias 493a likewise describes the originator

24

another option besides (a) pursuing deficiency-of-being (i.e., like the désirants) or (b) pursuing a

life of being, apart from becoming altogether (i.e., like the subtlers). For Socrates, as I will now

argue in Part III, good pleasure can only emerge when that very pleasure is not desired as an end-

goal. They are, instead, surprises, in a sense. These pleasures are the choiceworthy and welcome

ones, good for their own sake and nothing further. But the deficiency implied in the fulfillment

process (which is indeed required for their emergence) indicates that they must never be desired

as a goal. For then, in the act of desiring them, we would also desire a deficiency of being.

Therefore, the subtlers are certainly correct to reject the désirants; and the subtlers’ argument must

be taken seriously, exactly as Socrates suggests. Not all aspects of it, however, are acceptable. For

the subtlers reject all becoming, on the grounds that it depends on deficiency of being. They fail

to even ask whether some non-being could be good, despite deficiency of being; for their a priori

identification of goodness and being precludes this possibility.

Before turning finally to the account of pure pleasure, we should suggest a fourth argument

against taking the Philebus to endorse the subtlers. As I have already begun to indicate, the subtlers’

argument is committed (in no subtle fashion) to identifying being with goodness. Socrates’ friendly

but ambivalent attitude toward them is no grounds for assuming that in this passage he overturns

Republic VI’s claim that the good “transcends being in power and dignity.” The subtlers’ full-

fledged identification of being with good would logically necessitate that no mode of non-being,

such as becoming, could share in sufficient goodness, unless it were to become identical to being.

But being does not become. Thus, if becoming were always “for the sake of being,” in such a way

that the becoming’s ultimate good were to be, then, in that case, there could be no such thing as

becoming which is intrinsically good qua becoming.58 For then “good becoming” would be

synonymous with “being.” Something would (a) become well only inasmuch as that thing (b) does

not become. In the following section, then, I will argue that Socrates gives us a positive example

of good becoming, and from it we learn that the proper good of becoming is not not-to-become.

of the leaky-jar metaphor (who says life without any need of fulfillment is best) as a κομψός. Apparently, Socrates is

fairly consistent in calling κομψοί those who prefer a life of reason to the exclusion of pleasure. 58 Van Riel, Pleasure, 40 has noticed this implication of the subtlers’ account, and he takes it to be Plato’s position.

He argues that all pleasure “tends towards its own destruction, since it is directed to a condition beyond all lack (and

thus beyond replenishment).” He means: pleasure, as becoming, is directed to being, which lacks becoming; therefore,

pleasure is directed to destroying itself. If my arguments succeed, and Socrates rejects the subtlers’ argument

identifying the goal of pleasure with being, then this inference would not follow. Instead, the goal of pleasure—if it is

aided to emerge by a cause which delimits and saves it—would be to become well.

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III. THE EMERGENCE OF PURE PLEASURES

We recall that pleasure occurs as, and only if, there is a psychically relevant (e.g.,

perceived) process of filling a deficiency. The psychical condition is essential, and pleasures are

bound up with states ranging from perception to memory and recollection (33a-d). The psyche is

no blank slate but always encounters perceptible things and bodily motions (if it encounters them)

while already being capable of beliefs, memories, etc. Such capacities allow some souls to

perceive, or to not perceive, bodily occurrences, depending on the soul’s activities of attention to

perceiving and preserving perception of bodily processes, and depending on its other cognitive

activities, some of which have no reference to bodily processes (34a5 ff, 32a9, and 41a ff). Soul’s

capacities condition its experiences to such an extent that even the basic desires are soul-

dependent. According to Socrates, “every impulse and desire, and the rule over the whole animal

is the domain of the soul” (35d2-3); and “we will, then, never allow that it is our body that

experiences thirst, hunger, or anything of that sort” (35d6). Furthermore, since soul has activities

that are proper to itself, and not merely activities in relation to body, Socrates can argue not only

that soul’s state conditions the possibility of perceptual pleasures, but also that soul is capable of

independent pleasures of its own, which are neither perceptual (because they involve no relation

to bodily motions) nor bound to be parallel to bodily processes.59 To examine the psychical

condition at work in the pure pleasures—both psycho-bodily and psychical—, however, it is

helpful first to examine an account of the psychical condition in an impure pleasure.

As an example of an impure pleasure Socrates mentions a person ravaged by thirst who

desires to be filled with water (34e-35d).60 Soul is here perceptive that body is emptying-out (and

thus we have necessary and sufficient conditions for thirst and pain) all while, at the same time,

soul takes pleasure in the act of anticipating fulfillment with water (which fulfillment is not

presently fulfilling the bodily deficiency). A source of replenishment would bring about the body’s

return to a prior measure (health), though this desired filling-with-water is not now arriving.61 This

59 Satoshi Ogihara, “The Contrast between Soul and Body in the Analysis of Pleasure in the Philebus” in Plato’s

Philebus: Selected Papers from the Eighth Symposium Platonicum (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia Verlag,

2010) helpfully catalogues the many ways soul is independent of body in the Philebus. 60 Socrates uses the example to establish the central role of soul, rather than body, in motivation. See especially

Helen S. Lang, “On Memory: Aristotle’s Corrections of Plato” Journal of the History of Philosophy 18 (1980): 379-

393. 61 Socrates’ argument is in fact even more complicated. He argues that soul can even access a coming bodily

fulfillment which has never yet been encountered by body. Socrates decides that memory accounts for the way that

soul can access (desire) this fulfillment which is heretofore unheard of. Thus, memory certainly cannot be restricted

to memory of prior perception. For this reason, Socrates was careful, in his earlier account of memory, to say that

26

distinctively psychical “accessing [ἐφάπτειν]” of a yet-to-come fulfillment is a pleasing encounter

for soul. However, it merely adds psychical pleasure on top of perceptual pain.62 Soul’s memorial

access to the filling with water thus produces an overall experience which is a “mixture” of

pleasure and pain (36b5).63 The important point in this example is the idea that soul can access and

experience the bodily fulfillment as anticipated, regardless of whether the fulfillment (i.e., bodily

motion) is occurring for body.

Even so, soul is not truly self-motivating in cases when it desires a source of fulfillment

because it perceives a deficiency (as when a desert traveler projects a mirage-oasis when thirsty).

In such a case, soul’s projection of water-flowing-in is motivated by soul’s perception of

deficiency, e.g., by the pain of thirst. This pain sometimes leads soul to invent false anticipations.

This case is perhaps akin to what Feuerbach meant by an “imaginary projection,” i.e., a projection

created by a subject as a result of its recognition of deficiency and its revolt against it.64 Likewise

for Socrates: whenever soul creates anticipations because soul is motivated by deficiency, soul has

at best an impure, mixed pleasure-pain experience (36b5). Even if soul’s imaginary projection

were to happen to be true (as when a thirsty desert traveler imagines an oasis at the exact moment

he or she collapses into a real oasis and drinks from it), soul’s hopeful and pleasant projection is

at best still part of an overall mixed condition of soul. For, here, soul is still motivated by perception

of deficiency, i.e., by pain.

The importance of “pure pleasures” (51a-52e) comes to light precisely at this junction. For

they are the pleasures which are altogether separate from lack-driven desire (but not from lack

memory is preservation either (a) of perception or (b) of a μάθημα. Thus, for Socrates, memory can provide soul with

access to something never yet perceived. Memory is thus not merely of the past sensuous encounter. Cf. Benitez,

Forms, 114. 62 Socrates uses this account as a defense of hope. Protarchus thinks that being thirsty is a pain, and so is the hope

that I might have for a non-present filling. That is, hoping adds a second level of pain, making for “double pain.”

Socrates disagrees and argues that the hoping for non-present filling-with-water is a pleasure (not a pain) which mixes

with the pain of thirst. Hope adds pleasure to pain, creating a mixed experience. The experience of despair when the

bodily condition is being destroyed is the true “double pain.” Socrates thus provides a powerful defense of hope here,

although he implies that it would be better not to have to hope. 63 At Phaedo 60b, Socrates comments that pleasures are unmixed at a given time with pain. This passage, I think,

does not contradict the idea that there can be mixtures of pleasures and pains. Firstly, just prior to this passage, at 59a,

Phaedo comments that the experience of Socrates’ death was a mixture of pleasure and pain. Plato is thus placing

Socrates’ distinctive way of experiencing of pleasure in contrast with those of the narrators. Since Socrates is depicted

as the quintessential human reasoner in the Phaedo, it makes perfect sense that he would not experience pleasures as

mixed with pains at once. 64 Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 276-285.

27

fulfillment in effect).65 The desire for them coincides with and is generated as they are already

presently emerging for us. In “pure pleasure,” soul accesses a source of fulfillment and accordingly

experiences fulfillment because that fulfillment actually arrives for soul or body (while the

deficiency which is becoming fulfilled goes unnoticed):

Protarchus: But, Socrates, what are the kinds of pleasures that one could rightly regard as

true?

Socrates: Those that are ordered to so-called pure colors and to shapes and to most smells

and sounds and in general all those that are based on imperceptible and painless lacks

[τὰς ἐνδείας ἀναισθήτους ἔχοντα καὶ ἀλύπους], while their fulfillments are perceptible

and pleasant [τὰς πληρώσεις αἰσθητὰς καὶ ἡδείας].

Without notice of lack in either body or soul, soul’s orientation is free of admixed desire-motives

(i.e., pain).66 In this case, in contrast to the case of the thirsting traveler in the desert, there is

decidedly no corresponding perception of any deficiency which could be motivating soul’s

orientation or desire. Socrates’ technical account of such occasions, when they occur perceptually,

is thus to say that there are “perceptible fillings” which fulfill “imperceptible deficiencies” (51b).67

Such a perceived fulfillment can, for one, occur in relation to the actual bodily process that soul

perceives, as when soul engages with body in the act of smell, thereby perceiving a fulfillment of

the senses (51e2). The smell example implies that we do not enjoy sweet smells because we notice

deficiency for them in ourselves; yet the perceptible coming-to-order is perceived as taking place

and is pleasant.

Similarly, other aesthetic pure pleasures come about in relation to (πρὸς) colors or sounds.

Socrates is careful to specify, however, that these beautiful things are not beautiful relatively (οὐ

… ἕτερον καλὰς) but absolutely (ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὰς καθ᾽ αὑτὰς) (51d6-7). We encounter beauties

themselves—absolutely beauties in the plural—, and pure pleasures “follow [ἕπεσθαι]” these

beauties themselves. Along these lines, Socrates gives the example the experiences of enjoying the

65 My interest in non-lack-driven desire owes much to the work of David Kangas. His excellent work on joy is

exemplified in “Dangerous Joy: Marguerite Porete’s Good-bye to the Virtues” The Journal of Religion 91 (2011):

299-319. 66 Socrates is careful to note that freedom from pain is not a sufficient criterion for pleasure (44a5) but only a

“mark of similarity” (51e3). A person free of pain could be in the neutral condition, which also utterly without pleasure.

Pleasure, therefore, cannot be defined as freedom from pain, contra Epicurus. 67 All evidence suggests that this account of a pure pleasure as involving the psychically conditioned (e.g.,

perceptual) fulfillment of an unnoticed deficiency, is found in all the pure pleasures. The fulfillment is either bodily

(as when the body is injured and recovers) or psychical (as when soul is ignorant or unjust and recovers).

28

pure musicality of a note (51d7). The sense of μέλος, here, is that of something which is not an

isolated “tone” existing by itself but rather something which is what it is insofar as it emerges in a

“structure” of interrelated constituents, i.e., as the note is constitutive of and constituted by its

sharing in the order of a musical piece.68 Soul is thus not driven by a desire to make the manifest

musical structure into a simple one (nor to dissolve it into infinitude). For the note would then not

be the note it is. This is perhaps why the pleasure of enjoying the note is both a pleasure and it is

pure. It is a pleasure because the condition of soul is one of attentiveness to the determinacy of a

melody as it becomes manifest through the contribution of multiple constituents emerging

together.69 The experience is pure because the experience is not missed or sought before it emerges;

it is a unique, fulfilling emergence. Soul is thus in a condition of concern for the original

“determinate plurality” of the “beauties themselves” which it now encounters. No lack is driving

soul.

If my reading of the aesthetic pure pleasures is correct, then these pleasures are conditioned

by a psychical relation—perception—to a determinate manifold, i.e., to beauty as emerging in a

manifestly plural way. The psychical condition is not determined by a prior appetite for unity or

for an endless multiplicity but rather by concern for the determinate, manifest emergence as

manifest, e.g., for this emerging order of beauties themselves by themselves. Soul is not disturbed

by the prior absence of the order or in search of the order before it has emerged; nor is it pained

by the possible passage of this order. We do not miss the note before it occurs (unless, that is, we

are appreciating a memory of a melody, and not this melody as it emerges); nor do we lament the

fact that the sounds which manifest the note are each always flowing and passing. Further, soul

does not desire that the particular multiplicity of the order be eliminated into a total unity; for then

the note, as a μέλος, would be abolished. Soul is rather taking pleasure in the new emergent order

as that emergent order emerges.

The account of the pure pleasures of soul by itself follows the account of the aesthetic

pleasures. As with aesthetic pleasures, when I experience a pure pleasure of soul, I am in no way

68 See Mary McCabe, Plato’s Individuals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 251-253 and Verity

Harte, Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 27-28, 162, and

200 for an account of notes, in Plato, as constitutive of structures in which they exist, such that the very identity of a

note is determined according to the structure it participates in constituting. See also 17c6-e7 where the procedure of

finding the “how many” (see note 70) is applied to discovering musical intervals. 69 Hence, there is a “fulfillment” in the general sense of the term, analogous to the way that bodily processes

involve fulfillments at 32a ff. See note 11.

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motivated by awareness of a prior insufficiency or need. I am seeking neither to be impressed by

an experience of an infinitely multiplicitous otherness nor to reduce what I am encountering to a

one-alone.70 Rather, just as one must come to grasp the exact “how many” of a multiplicity before

one can know which multiplicity this is, so too in learning am I actually coming to grasp the precise

nature of what I encounter. My experience of the new, distinctive lesson (μάθημα) thus brings me

the paradigmatically pure pleasures:

Socrates: Then let us add to these the pleasures of learning [τὰς περὶ τὰ μαθήματα ἡδονάς],

if indeed we are agreed that there is no such thing as hunger [πείνας] for learning

[μανθάνειν] connected with them, nor any pains that have their source in hunger [πείνην]

for learning [μαθημάτων].

Protarchus: Here too I agree with you.

Socrates: Well, then, if after such a filling with knowledge [μαθημάτων πληρωθεῖσιν],

people lose it again through forgetting [λήθης], do you notice [καθορᾷς] any kind of pain?

Protarchus: None that could be called inherent by nature [οὔ τι φύσει], but in our reflections

[λογισμοῖς] on this loss when we need [χρείαν] it, we experience it as a painful loss.

Socrates: But, my dear, we are here concerned only with the natural affections themselves

[αὐτὰ τὰ τῆς φύσεως μόνον παθήματα], apart from reflections on them.

Protarchus: Then you are right [ἀληθῆ] in saying that the lapse [λήθη] of knowledge

[μαθήμασιν] never [χωρὶς … ἑκάστοτε] causes us any pain.

Socrates: Then we may say that the pleasures of learning [τὰς τῶν μαθημάτων ἡδονὰς] are

unmixed with pain and belong, not to the masses, but only to a very few?

Protarchus: How could one fail to agree (51e7-52b9)?

Pure pleasures of soul accompany lessons (μαθήματα). The affections (παθήματα) of loss or

forgetting (λήθη), which do indeed condition the lessons, nevertheless go unnoticed and are

painless.71 No yearning for the lesson accompanies these experiences. Rather, only through

70 A connection can perhaps be made between the reference to learning, here, and the “divine method” passage

(16d ff), which famously states that all skill and learning requires that we determine the exact “number” of any unity

or manifold. That is, we must not simply leap to the conclusion that the source is “one or many or infinite.” That is,

determining the “how-many [ὁπόσος]” of any posited unity or multiplicity is more important for learning than is

knowledge of the bare fact that something is one, many, or unbounded (16d7-e2). The meaning of this passage is

disputed, but it clearly indicates that learning is thwarted whenever we rest satisfied with seeing something simply as

one or simply as indeterminately multiple. The same held true for aesthetic pure pleasures: our experience is one of

relating neither to a disorienting lack-of-determinacy nor to a single Form beyond any relation to multiplicity. 71 Contrast with Herodotus 1 207: τὰ δὲ μοι παθήματα ἐόντα ἀχάριτα μαθήματα γέγονε.

30

discursive inferences (λογισμοῖς) after the fulfillment (πληρωθεῖσιν) might I infer that I must not

have known what these lessons are now revealing. Only then can I infer that that forgetting (λήθη)

previously took hold of me.72 My lack of knowledge can then be seen as a need (χρείαν) by me,

and thus as a pain, only because of the learning experience; without the learning, the lack would

be unnoticeable.73 This lack, forgetfulness, or ignorance remains uncognized during the learning

process. The experience of the lesson by itself therefore references no loss or lack; the experience

is an experience of fulfillment only.74

72 There are at least two reasons to read this passage as I have, i.e., such that it allows forgetting or ignorance

either to presently condition learning’s possibility or to be presaged as a potential future event which may follow the

learning. Firstly, the parallel with aesthetic pleasures is here explicit, and it is therefore advisable to treat soul’s

unnoticed forgetting as analogous to body’s unnoticed emptying. Body’s fulfillment coincides with an unperceived

lack. Thus, it is likely that soul’s forgetting should also to be understood as coinciding with no notice of lack, though

the lack can be inferred indirectly through reflection (λογισμοῖς) after the experience. Learning makes possible the

feeling of the need, and thus the learning makes possible the pain of lacking what is being learned. If this first argument

only proves it likely that soul-fulfillment is presently conditioned by an unnoticed lack (and not merely succeeded by

a potential future loss), then Republic 585b1-6 also makes it highly probable. This passage, parallel to the Philebus

passage, says that the true pleasures of soul are fulfillments of soul’s ignorance: ἄγνοια δὲ καὶ ἀφροσύνη ἆρ᾽ οὐ

κενότης ἐστὶ γῆς περὶ ψυχὴν αὖ ἕξεως; [...] οὐκοῦν πληροῖτ᾽ ἂν ὅ τε τροφῆς μεταλαμβάνων καὶ ὁ νοῦν ἴσχων. The

evidence in the Republic and Philebus therefore agrees: πλήρωσις implies, even in the case of pure pleasure, a

fulfillment of deficiency. 73 Learning makes possible our noticing of the lack of the thing learned, and thus the learning makes possible the

pain we feel when we notice that we lack, to some extent, what we are learning. Thus, (i) when one is learning, if one

lacks this μάθημα because one has previously learned it and lost it, then this present learning recovers the lost μάθημα.

In this first case, the lack can be attributed to λήθη. To feel a “need” for the forgotten lesson just indicates that one

has already begun to relearn it: the pleasure of learning is prior to, separate from, and makes possible the pain of

recognizing that one has forgotten the lost lesson. However, (ii) when one is learning a μάθημα, if one (unknowingly)

lacks this μάθημα but one has not previously learned it before, then this present learning process is not a recovery but

an original acquisition. In this case, the lack being fulfilled is a more general ignorance (ἄγνοια). It is a lack, the very

possibility of which is revealed to us for the first time with this new arrival of knowledge. For we are incapable of

forgetting that of which we have no memory (33e6), and this truth surely holds both for memories of perception and

for memories of μαθήματα. We cannot forget lessons we have never yet learned. 74 The evidence in the Republic and Philebus agrees: πλήρωσις implies a fulfillment of deficiency (see Part II). It

is also likely, as I have argued following Carpenter, that lack-fulfillment and becoming go hand in hand. It is therefore

entirely appropriate that the term πλήρωσις is ambiguous in the Greek, referring to either a “process” or a “completion

of a process.” Both can be understood as cases of becoming; i.e., even if fulfillment is understood as a “completion of

a process,” that completion itself can be understood as an ongoing coming-to-completion. Carone, Plato’s Cosmology

and Bravo, “Genesis,” by contrast, try to use this very ambiguity of πλήρωσις as grounds to assert that, strictly

speaking, fulfillment can be understood as a state of being. But one cannot use the ambiguity of a term in one’s defense

of the idea that fulfillment means “being,” when one of the possible meanings of the term is in fact “becoming.”

Ambiguities, by definition, do not give evidence which could decide the matter. In my view, if pure pleasures retain

their becoming in any way at all, and they are also not deficient in goodness, then my conclusion has been reached.

For my argument does not deny that pleasures relate to being in some way and that they are by participation. It only

says that they still become in some sense. Both conceptually and textually, therefore, I think there are no grounds for

denying that pure pleasures retain their becoming. They manifest a condition shared with all pleasures: deficiency-

fulfillment and becoming. For this reason, they can be examples of pleasure, standing for the possibility that pleasure,

and becoming, admits of being salvaged.

31

The pleasures of lessons are thus the pleasures of coming-to-knowledge. But I could not

come to knowledge if I were already in a condition of knowing with respect to what, precisely, this

lesson brings. Learning would not be possible if I were absolutely knowing. In learning, while I

am therefore neither fully in a state of truth nor aware of my ignorance, I am also not, if I am

learning, in a state of utter forgetfulness (λήθη) or ignorance (ἄγνοια). I myself therefore am this

process of moving away from unseen ignorance to an emerging order of knowledge, i.e., to a new

me.75 The learning of the lesson is therefore a process of becoming new. Only then am I able—vis-

à-vis who I have become—to begin to realize how ignorant I was beforehand, and only then could

I reflect on how much I still lack in this new respect. Perhaps, in order to characterize this

paradigmatic experience of change for the good, an example is appropriate. For all of us can relate

to the surprise we feel when, on the occasion of learning, the learning itself allows us to see that

we must not have been able, before having begun to learn in this way, to seek out this lesson which

we are learning. I could not have known what I was missing. This experience reveals what it is to

learn. It reveals, however, that learning is just this experience of a pure progression which itself

conditions the possibility of recognizing the absence of what I am learning.76

75 The Philebus never uses the phrasing we find in the Phaedrus or Laws X where soul is called “self-moving

motion.” Even so, if some psychical fillings are not merely re-turns to a pre-given natural harmony but are rather

original turnings (since soul participates in causation of original mixtures) then something like self-moving motion is

implied in the Philebus. The priority of πέρας relative to any mixture made from it, along with the flexibility of the

concept of filling (πλήρωσις), allows us to suggest that psyche can access and even institute-into-becoming a measure

which has never yet come to be until now. Soul does not merely return to a pre-given norm (though this might also

happen sometimes by coincidence) when soul is fulfilled. Unlike any previous defender of the fulfillment model for

pleasures (to my knowledge), I think soul’s pure pleasures are in fact autonomous psychical pleasures occurring when

the psyche originally accesses and establishes-into-becoming a measure and source of fulfillment (vis-à-vis measure

itself). The activity establishes the very norm relative to which the fulfillment to that norm progresses. The lack of

this measure in the emergent world was previously necessarily imperceptible because it was yet-unknown in the world

of becoming. Only now (i.e., now that soul is instituting the new norm) is it even possible for one to infer that the

norm was previously lacking. Thus, the pleasure of the fulfillment is pure, not merely because the lack was de facto

unnoticed but because the lack was impossible to notice in the world of becoming beforehand. This is not to say there

was no lack; it is to say that the lack was in principle unnoticeable because no living being capable of recognizing the

lack had ever yet accessed and instituted-into-becoming the norm relative to which the lack could be conceived as

needed. My account would have the effect of explaining, in turn, why the political art of “legislation” in the Gorgias

(465) is called the art of caring for soul and why this art is also associated with self-control of the soul. Legislation,

there, means accessing measure and instituting order socially or individually according to that measure. Unlike the art

of justice, the art of legislation does not set out to correct a deficiency. And yet, the effect of legislation (though not

the goal), would still be to preempt the emergence of a lack, i.e., to preempt the emergence of a lack the possibility of

which is comprehended for the first time due to this very new institution of the preemptive law. The arrival of the law

into the world of becoming thus makes possible the inference to a possible lack of that law (or desire for it), just as

learning (52a ff) makes possible reflection on one’s own ignorance or forgetting. 76 Traditional accounts of Plato’s view of learning, which suggest that learning demands the recognition of lack

(pain) as a precondition for learning, perhaps fail to notice that learning must already be in process if I am able to

notice my lack and desire missing knowledge. Reconciliation of the Philebus’ account of learning with the accounts

of recollection in the Meno and the Phaedo must remain a project for a future paper. Here, however, I can suggest that

32

To approach whatever one encounters as a lesson one must not presume erroneously that

one is all knowing; but one must also not strive “to have one’s mind blown” at each event. To seek

out the mind-blowing experience—as when we become addicted to experiencing “the new”—

would be to seek to be deficient in knowledge so that one could learn. That would be vice, for it is

not good to need to learn. Even so, it is still a wholly good thing to learn if one lacks knowledge.

The learning is not an unfortunate event. Far from it, for the “lesson” is just an experience of

coming to the measure that will be, and already has begun to be, definitive of oneself. Pure

pleasure, thus, “we will assign to the class of things that possess measurement” (52d1-2). It belongs

here because it is a kind of becoming which is pure: it is pure coming to measure.77

For this reason, I think, Socrates treats pure pleasures as having an important role to play

the good life. He expresses their importance by listing them among not only the ingredients but

also the possessions which make the good life good. In order to understand the significance of their

inclusion on the second list, however, we must first examine Socrates’ statements which describe

the principle of that second ranking. Two of his statements are essential. Firstly, at 64c5-d9,

Socrates proposes to rank the extent to which “causes” or “factors” account for the presence of

measure in the good life:

Socrates: What ingredient in the mixture [τί … ἐν τῇ συμμείξει] ought we to regard as most

valuable [τιμιώτατον] and at the same time as the factor [αἴτιον] that makes it precious

to all mankind? Once we have found it, we will inquire further whether it is more closely

related and akin [προσφυέστερον καὶ οἰκειότερον] to pleasure or to reason, in nature as

a whole. […] But it is certainly not difficult to see what factor [αἰτίαν] in each mixture it

is that makes it either most valuable or worth nothing at all. […] That any kind of mixture

that does not in some way or other possess measure or the nature of proportion [μέτρου

the Philebus is not contradicting those accounts, i.e., the way they depict learning as painful or as preceded by aporia.

Rather, I take it that the Philebus is saying, “There are conditions of possibility of for being able to realize that you

are ignorant. Indeed, you must already be learning by the time you are able to recognize such a thing as your own

ignorance with respect to what you are learning.” Therefore, “originary learning” is separable from aporia and pain,

since it is a precondition for cognition of lack, which is pain. Succinctly: Learning can occur without prior recognition

of ignorance; but recognition of ignorance cannot occur without prior learning. I would like to add here that this

insight—learning is separable from and prior to suffering—can say something important not only about ethics in

relation to oneself, but also about ethics in relation to others. We should not, for example, wish suffering upon other

people as we sometimes do in cases of Schadenfreude. From this realization, we might be tempted to conclude that

we also should not wish lessons upon them. I have shown, however, that this latter conclusion does not follow. For,

since learning X is separable from and prior to suffering from the lack of X, we can morally wish a lesson on another

person, without thereby wishing that they learn the lesson “the hard way,” i.e., through suffering. 77 This passage does not imply that pure pleasure belongs to the class of limit. See note 38.

33

καὶ τῆς συμμέτρου φύσεως] will necessarily corrupt its ingredients and most of all itself.

For there would be no blending in such cases at all but really an unconnected medley, the

ruin of whatever happens to be contained in it (64c5-d9).

Here, Socrates says that the factor or “cause [αἴτιος]” in the mixture which makes the mixture (of

the good life) valuable is whatever is responsible for the measure in it. But Socrates has already

argued at length in the fourfold ontology (23c2-27c7) that measure, or limit, does not just “happen”

to show up in mixtures, so that mixtures (of limit and unlimitedness) have emerged. Rather,

measure emerges because limit is introduced to the unlimited by some cause. And anything

qualifying as a “cause [αἰτία]” is only properly so called insofar as it imports measure, crafting a

mixture. The cause makes mixtures emerge in the first place because it brings measure to what

lacks measure (26e5-27a3). Thus, in the passage from 64c5-d9, when Socrates asks which

candidate in the mixture is “more closely related [προσφυέστερον]” to this “factor” or “cause,” he

is asking about the extent to which things are causes of, or share in causing, the presence of

measure in mixtures. The final ranking, which follows, then expresses this ranking of causes, i.e.,

of the extent to which things manifest causation.78

Secondly, additional evidence for this conclusion (that the final ranking ranks participation

in causation) lies in the fact that Socrates’ statements above align perfectly with 22c8-e2. There,

Socrates and Protarchus have just agreed that the good life is a mixture of some sort. Thus, neither

78 The ranking of causes is, of course, determined by reference to what they import into the mixture. Thus, the

ranking is guided by reference not only to causation but to what causation “imports.” For just this reason, at 64a4 the

idea of the good, or the measure, is ascertained as a guide to grasping the extent of cause’s operation:

Socrates: Well, then, if we cannot capture the good in one form [μιᾷ … ἰδέᾳ], we will have to take hold of it

in a conjunction of three [σὺν τρισὶ]: beauty, proportion, and truth [κάλλει καὶ συμμετρίᾳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ].

Let us affirm that these should by right be treated as a unity [ὡς τοῦτο οἷον ἓν] and be held responsible

[αἰτιασαίμεθ᾽] for what is in the mixture, for its goodness is what makes the mixture itself a good one [καὶ

διὰ τοῦτο ὡς ἀγαθὸν ὂν τοιαύτην αὐτὴν γεγονέναι].

Protarchus: Very well stated.

Socrates: Anyone should by now be able to judge between pleasure and intelligence, which of the two is

more closely related [συγγενέστερόν] to the supreme good [ἀρίστου] and more valuable [τιμιώτερον]

among gods and men. […] So, now let us judge each one of the three in relation to pleasure and reason.

For we have to see for which of those two we want to grant closer kinship [ὡς μᾶλλον συγγενὲς] to each

of them (65a-b6).

The good is here tracked down as beauty, symmetry, and truthfulness (κάλλει καὶ συμμετρίᾳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ). We can

“consider these three as if they are one (λέγωμεν ὡς τοῦτο οἷον ἓν).” Whatever may exhibit this three-fold character

can then be taken to be responsible (αἰτία) for the mixture’s having emerged, insofar as it has “emerged as good [ὡς

ἀγαθὸν … γεγονέναι].” Comparatively, according to this three-fold standard, then, Socrates judges pleasure to be

generally inferior to knowledge. To be generally inferior to knowledge in a comparative sense, however, means that

whereas all kinds of knowledge are good, only some pleasures are good. Some pleasures are even harmful (66a). Pure

pleasure, by contrast, “we will assign to the class of things that possess measurement” (52d1-2). It exhibits the presence

of measure. Since its emergence imports this measure, it can therefore be ranked among the causes.

34

candidate will compete any longer for the “first prize” of being identical to the good. Each

competes for a new prize, i.e., the prize of being the “cause [αἴτιόν].” Immediately, the passage

clarifies that the cause is that, in the mixture, which is “more of a kind and more like

[συγγενέστερον καὶ ὁμοιότερόν]” to what “makes [the good life] choiceworthy and good” (22d9).

The use of the comparative (i.e., “more of a kind,” “more like,” and “more closely related”) in

each of these passages is remarkably consistent. Both passages therefore insist that the

“competition,” which will be reflected in the final ranking, will be decided precisely insofar as the

candidates share in causing the emergence of goodness and measure in the good life. Pure pleasure

is therefore listed as one of the things which is, indeed, to some extent “of a kind” with the cause;

for cause is what accounts for the presence of measure. The pure pleasure of learning can thus be

ranked fifth among “possessions” responsible for goodness. Indeed, we can even understand

experience of learning as the experience of becoming more causative: learning is perhaps even the

experience of coming to self-measure oneself vis-à-vis measure itself.

Thus, the larger strategy of the dialogue since 22d, which is the strategy of discerning what

is most proximate to the cause of measure’s presence in the good life, is, I think, fulfilled in the

dialogue’s final lists (see my introduction). Again, the lists are two-fold. (i) The first list reflects

Socrates’ discernment of the different kinds of pleasure and knowledge, which task he has

undertaken for the sake of deciding whether all or some of each candidate’s kinds (i.e., the kinds

of knowledge and pleasure) are to be admitted as ingredients in the mixture. (ii) The second list

reflects Socrates’ discernment of which things (within each of the two kinds of candidates) are

more closely related to the cause. With respect to (i), the task of discerning the different kinds of

knowledge is important; but it does not factor into the decision about what knowledge to include

in the good life: all kinds of knowledge are included. The discernment of different kinds of

pleasures, however, does factor into the decision on the ingredients; for not all pleasures are good.

Some pleasures, qua pleasures, are explicitly not included (because, for example, they accompany

vice). With respect to (ii), the ranking of the contributing factors according to their relative likeness

to the cause of the emergence of goodness is vital because it tells us what order, or rank of orders,

a good life will establish. Pure pleasure has a place in this ranking, I would suggest, because it

itself emerges with order and it brings a unique kind of order to the overall order.

35

Of course, pure pleasure depends for its emergence on the establishment of the prior

orders.79 Indeed, it depends on a psychical condition in which the constitutive elements of

knowledge are present: it depends on a life of measure, reason, and psychical conditions, etc. Thus,

pure pleasure cannot take first place, since it depends on other factors; for its very emergence must

follow those factors. Thus, since those factors are just the elements for knowledge, Socrates

describes pure pleasure as something that appropriately “follows sciences and certain sense

perceptions [ἐπιστήμαις τὰς δὲ αἰσθήσεσιν ἑπομένας].”80 Pure pleasure thus ranks fifth. In this

sense, reason certainly can be said to be “more akin” to the cause. But pure pleasure too must be

classed as “of a kind” with the cause.81

Thus, as I understand it, the final ranking of the good-making factors in the good life is not

a ranking of things more or less good. Each has a goodness proper to the kind of things that it is;

and each certainly does “import” goodness—i.e., beauty, symmetry, and truth—to the whole.

While pleasure’s kind admits only rarely of good versions—for pure pleasure requires a whole set

of pre-conditions if it is to emerge—, this rarity of pure pleasure does not mean that it is any less

good when it emerges. Thus, I take the final ranking not to be a rank of goodness but to be Socrates’

attempt to order conditions of possibility of the mixture’s emergence as a good whole, i.e., as a

79 My understanding of the final ranking as a ranking of “necessary conditions” has similarities to the view

excellently defended by Phillipa M. Lang, “The Ranking of the Goods at Philebus 66a-67b” Phronêsis: A Journal of

Ancient Philosophy 55 (2010): 153-169. In my reading, the six candidates are “ranked” below or above one another

not because one is more or less good but because the higher condition the lower ontologically. My view is also similar

to Aufderheide, “Inconsistency.” Aufderheide, however, accepts the subtlers’ argument (binding being and goodness),

and he therefore has to conclude that a lower ranking in terms of ontological “dependency” implies a lower ranking

in terms of value. 80 Pleasure’s status as “following” is, in both the Gorgias and the Philebus, depicted as a kind of becoming, not a

kind of being strictly speaking. As I have argued, to become and to be deficient-in-being go hand in hand. Thus, if

pleasure is my goal (i.e., if I am manipulating conditions to cause pure pleasure’s emergence, so that pure pleasure

rather than some other pleasure will emerge), then I cannot achieve pure pleasure, according to Socrates’ definition

of pure pleasure. For, to seek to bring about any pleasure is to seek to create or sustain a deficiency (e.g., destruction

of the bodily condition or the λήθη of soul). The pleasure I can attain in seeking pure pleasure is thus, for Socrates, at

best a false pleasure. Thus, the critique of Plato by Van Riel, Pleasure, 40-42, which suggests Plato’s account of pure

pleasure encourages us to “manipulate conditions” for the sake of attaining the pure pleasure rather than other

pleasures, may miss the point. For the case with Plato seems to me to be quite the opposite: we ought never to pursue

pure pleasure as a goal; and doing so would preclude its emergence anyway. Van Riel suggests that Plato should have

said that “it is only by aiming at something other than pleasure that we will reach pleasure itself.” I take it that Van

Riel’s own view, which he sees as a critique of Plato’s is, strikingly, actually Plato’s view (if by “pleasure itself” Van

Riel means “pure pleasure”). 81 Nothing in the Philebus or elsewhere suggests that this comparative ranking of the causes—i.e., the final

ranking—reaches a “low point” at which the thing listed as a comparative cause, or constitutive element, is not

genuinely a cause. That is, at no point is pure pleasure’s comparative responsibility deemed to be zero, i.e., a non-

responsibility. At no point is its comparative goodness (manifest as beauty, symmetry, and truth) deemed to be non-

goodness. Rather, all evidence suggests that each ranking member is causative to some extent of the mixture’s status

“as good [ὡς ἀγαθὸν].”

36

mixture with due measure. If this is correct, then each member conditions the possibility of the

emergence of the intrinsic good following in the ranking. The higher does not give to the lower the

special goodness proper to the lower. For example, pure pleasure is that pleasure which follows

only when the proper order of goods above it, such as the good that is reason, is already in place

in one’s life; but reason cannot by itself bring about the goodness specific to pure pleasure. Reason

alone does not contain pleasure’s goodness.

Thus, while pure pleasure may be an uncommon, a highly dependent (ontologically), and

indeed a very rare example of pleasure, it can still be understood, just like the other goods in the

ranking, as good in itself. That is, pure pleasure can be considered as an intrinsic good.82

CONCLUSION

When perfectionist readers of the Philebus assume that the “perfect condition” without

becoming would be the “best good life,” better than the good life, they are in essence suggesting

that it would be best if all becoming were to end. Through an examination of pure pleasure,

however, we can see that the perfectionist strand of Philebus interpretation can be challenged

textually and conceptually. Perfectionist readers presuppose that the ontological deficiency which,

for example, can be inferred from the experience of fulfillment—e.g., the fulfillment involved in

learning—indicates that such a fulfilling process is something we ought best to exclude (even

though we perhaps cannot exclude it and we must settle for “second best”).83 They interpret the

pure pleasures either as not intrinsically good because they become or as not becoming because

they are intrinsically good. But this dilemma arises, as I have argued, only if we fail to grasp the

radical implications of the good’s transcendence of being: its scope extends to some non-being.

Direct textual evidence in the Philebus challenges the strict alignment of being and goodness.

Further, conceptually speaking, the latter horn of the dilemma leads to the absurd conclusion that

good becoming could emerge as good only if it were to no longer become, i.e., if it were strictly to

be. Such an argument ignores the possibility that there is a proper goodness to some cases of

82 See note 1 on intrinsic goodness, as well as the ranking of goods in my introduction. 83 Cf. Frede, “Disintegration.” Perfectionist readers (i.e., the readers who strictly align being and goodness) seem

to me to be generally persuaded by Aristotle’s critique of becoming or process. For Aristotle, any goodness of

processes is really only a goodness insofar as the processes are relative to an actual being which is the good and which

defines the goal of the process. Indeed, for Aristotle, for the subtlers, and indeed for much of the philosophical

tradition, degrees of goodness and of being are strictly aligned. The Philebus, by contrast, appears to me to challenge

this whole tradition. If, as I have argued, good pleasure is not “less good” because it is “less in being,” then a strict

alignment of greater good with greater being cannot be maintained.

37

becoming. It ignores that there may be, in some cases, a goodness proper to the journey itself, as

they say.

In defense of the possible goodness of the journey, I have argued that pleasure becomes

and never fully is, and this means that pleasures are “ontologically dependent,” i.e., dependent on

the ongoing fulfillment of a deficiency of being. But I have also argued, based on the evidence of

pure pleasure, that ontological dependency is not the same thing as deficiency in goodness. While

the final ranking in the good life orders conditions of possibility of the whole mixture’s emergence

as good, and while each member conditions the being or emergence of those below, nevertheless

each also manifests sufficient and unique goodness and participates in causing the emergence of a

good mixture as a whole. But this means that the pure psychical pleasures—whether strictly

psychical or psycho-bodily—can be understood as intrinsically good even though their emergence

is dependent on other things such as reason, right opinion, etc. The fact of their ontological

dependency does not demean the intrinsic value of their emergence. For while pleasures are good

only if there are other conditions in place—good pleasures only emerge under certain conditions—

, it is also the case that pure pleasure has its own value as pleasure and as becoming. Something is

intrinsically valuable in the positive sense, as I have argued, if its value and causal contribution to

the good life cannot be reduced to other sources or to its ontological conditions. (Of course, nothing

in the final ranking is identical to the good itself by itself; each of the goods is sufficiently good

by participation in the good.84) While we may therefore “rank” measure, the measured, reason,

opinion, and pleasure accordingly as the higher ontologically conditions the lower, the intrinsic

goodness of each is not subject to ranking according to “more and less.”

Thus, as I understand the Philebus, the dialogue suggests that we should be wary of positing

perfection as “better than good.” Perfection, if there were such a thing, would measure itself against

the standard of goodness. But the standard of goodness, as I have argued, extends also to some

becoming, and thus the good does not demand the elimination of becoming. By what standard,

then, would perfection-without-becoming ever be judged to be better than good? Evidently, not

by the standard of goodness. For goodness can also be found in becoming. We should therefore,

in my view, take a wholly different approach to both Plato interpretation and to axiology. Admitting

84 “[Both] reason and pleasure had lost any claim that one or the other would be the good itself, since they were

lacking in autonomy and in the power of self-sufficiency and completeness” (67a5-8, translation modified).

Aufderheide, “Inconsistency,” 826 also notices that each of the goods on the final ranking differs from the good itself;

however, he concludes that their value is “dependent” because their being is dependent.

38

that some pleasure exemplifies the good of which becoming is capable, qua becoming, we can then

recognize the good’s manifestation in becoming as well as in being. The good’s manifestation in

and as an exemplary case of becoming thus reveals to us, time and time again, that the good

transcends being. In turn, good’s transcendence of being guarantees that good becoming is always

a possibility. Some non-being can be good. We should therefore always be open to the experience

of becoming, and in particular to the experience of a lesson. Learning is not an unfortunate

necessity; it is an intrinsically good change bringing intrinsically good pleasures.

We set out to ask: How can a pleasure retain the generic attributes which are shared with

all pleasures and at the same time contribute an intrinsic goodness to the good life, a contribution

which would seem to transcend the possibilities inherent within that kind? I have argued that pure

pleasure indeed belongs to the “kind” of pleasures, for it is an example of pleasure among others:

it depends on deficiency-fulfillment, it is a becoming, and it is psychically dependent. Yet, I have

also argued, in effect, that pure pleasure is a paradigm: it stands for the good possibilities of the

whole class of pleasures, as it is itself both purely pleasure and also purely unmixed in its goodness.

For this reason, I would suggest that pure pleasure stands for the hopes of all of the pleasures.

Indeed, it stands for the hopes of all things that come to be.

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