Plato and Epicurus
Both Plato (in the Gorgias) and Epicurus talk about higher and lower pleasures and about how the higher need less maintenance than the lower. But they have a different focal point. For Epicurus, the standard is twofold: attainment of pleasure and avoidance of pain and distress. Higher pleasures are higher because they are easier, more natural to attain and their loss brings less pain or disturbance. For Plato, on the other hand, we judge between pleasures on the basis of how they contribute to health of the soul, and we do so in a manner analogous to how we might determine which pleasures are best for the health of the body. So for Epicurus, pleasure is an end in itself, whereas for Plato pleasure is judged according to a standard that, while including pleasure, is ultimately directed toward something like the health of the body.
And the health of the soul is more than just the ability to enjoy pleasure.
The following thought experiment might help make the point: it's not likely, but it's possible that you could feel nothing but pleasure when our body is not healthy. As might be the case with someone who is ill and takes drugs that produce a high. The long term effect of seeking only such pleasure is painful, so an Epicurean would avoid such a mistake on the basis of avoiding that consequence. But what if you could avoid it? The Epicurean wouldn't be able to produce a good reason to avoid a purely pleasant experience in an unhealthy body. She or he might even engage in a definitional dodge, saying that anyone who can pull this off is, by definition, healthy.
Plato would reject such a line of reasoning, as the Gorgias suggests. To seek pleasure apart from health is like pastry baking (that is, junk food). Sure, in the dialogue Socrates engages in consequentialist reasoning to show Polus why such feeding pleasure is undesirable: it leads to long term pain. And Socrates talks to Callicles about higher pleasures as being better than lower pleasures precisely because the latter bring on pain, discomfort, annoyance. So the Epicurean can take these parts of the dialogue out of their context to argue that Plato is a precursor to Epicurus. But Socrates is not making these points so as to endorse a pleasure-centered position: rather, he is engaging in an internal critique of the position, proposed by Callicles, who said that we should not control our cravings.
Consider how, in addition to talking about higher and lower pleasures, Socrates also points to health as the standard by which we judge the pursuit of pleasure. Health is about more than pleasure: it's about the human body's being capable of proper operation. Plato and Plato's Socrates would therefore have good reason to reject the possibility of enjoying pleasure while having a body that could not function: they would regard that scenario as intrinsically undesirable, for health, while including pleasure is much more than that. Pleasure is for the sake of health rather than vice versa.
Besides talking about health, the dialogue repeatedly gives us very strong indication that actions and lives have an intrinsic goodness or badness that cannot be reduced to pleasure. We find this indication in his repeated contrast between the shameful and the admirable. Shame and its contrary are feelings tied up with our judgments of ourselves as identified with our society's judgment of ourselves. When we feel we have behaved shamefully or admirably, we judge ourselves in terms of how others would judge us if they saw us as we see ourselves. We feel shame or the contrary feeling (a kind of joy or pride) on the basis of our judgment that what we have done is good or bad. Our judgment regarding the goodness or badness of our actions gives rise to feelings of shame or pride: hence the goodness or badness of our actions is more basic than those feelings, which are a kind of pain or pleasure. We don't judge our actions on the basis of how they make us feel: rather, we feel as we do about our actions on the basis of whether we have judged them as good or not.
Let's go beyond the Gorgias: let's explore how the notions of shame and a kind of pride (in this context, by "pride" I mean the joy one has in knowing that one has acted admirably) interact with the notions of health of soul and body.
A kind of pride or joy attends the right performance of this or that action in a virtuous manner in a manner to how a kind of pride might attend the skillful use of one's body. One can feel a certain joy in knowing that one has lived one's life as a whole quite well. That is analogous to the joy that an athlete might feel in knowing that she or he is a good athlete. We would not admire a person who dedicates her or his life to bodily pleasure and exercises only for that goal. We would not expect such an athlete to be as healthy as one who primarily sought to enable her or his body to function well. We would not admire a person who, in her or his interactions with others and with his or her environment, saw all of these as merely instrumental toward producing a kind of internal satisfaction, contentment. We would not admire this person, not even when she or he happens to do the right thing. We would regard them as foolish and unlikely to act well, just as we would so regard an athlete who exercised for pleasure rather than for the sake of the proper functioning of his or her body.
In short, we do not admire an Epicurean, even when she or he happens to do the right thing.
And the health of the soul is more than just the ability to enjoy pleasure.
The following thought experiment might help make the point: it's not likely, but it's possible that you could feel nothing but pleasure when our body is not healthy. As might be the case with someone who is ill and takes drugs that produce a high. The long term effect of seeking only such pleasure is painful, so an Epicurean would avoid such a mistake on the basis of avoiding that consequence. But what if you could avoid it? The Epicurean wouldn't be able to produce a good reason to avoid a purely pleasant experience in an unhealthy body. She or he might even engage in a definitional dodge, saying that anyone who can pull this off is, by definition, healthy.
Plato would reject such a line of reasoning, as the Gorgias suggests. To seek pleasure apart from health is like pastry baking (that is, junk food). Sure, in the dialogue Socrates engages in consequentialist reasoning to show Polus why such feeding pleasure is undesirable: it leads to long term pain. And Socrates talks to Callicles about higher pleasures as being better than lower pleasures precisely because the latter bring on pain, discomfort, annoyance. So the Epicurean can take these parts of the dialogue out of their context to argue that Plato is a precursor to Epicurus. But Socrates is not making these points so as to endorse a pleasure-centered position: rather, he is engaging in an internal critique of the position, proposed by Callicles, who said that we should not control our cravings.
Consider how, in addition to talking about higher and lower pleasures, Socrates also points to health as the standard by which we judge the pursuit of pleasure. Health is about more than pleasure: it's about the human body's being capable of proper operation. Plato and Plato's Socrates would therefore have good reason to reject the possibility of enjoying pleasure while having a body that could not function: they would regard that scenario as intrinsically undesirable, for health, while including pleasure is much more than that. Pleasure is for the sake of health rather than vice versa.
Besides talking about health, the dialogue repeatedly gives us very strong indication that actions and lives have an intrinsic goodness or badness that cannot be reduced to pleasure. We find this indication in his repeated contrast between the shameful and the admirable. Shame and its contrary are feelings tied up with our judgments of ourselves as identified with our society's judgment of ourselves. When we feel we have behaved shamefully or admirably, we judge ourselves in terms of how others would judge us if they saw us as we see ourselves. We feel shame or the contrary feeling (a kind of joy or pride) on the basis of our judgment that what we have done is good or bad. Our judgment regarding the goodness or badness of our actions gives rise to feelings of shame or pride: hence the goodness or badness of our actions is more basic than those feelings, which are a kind of pain or pleasure. We don't judge our actions on the basis of how they make us feel: rather, we feel as we do about our actions on the basis of whether we have judged them as good or not.
Let's go beyond the Gorgias: let's explore how the notions of shame and a kind of pride (in this context, by "pride" I mean the joy one has in knowing that one has acted admirably) interact with the notions of health of soul and body.
A kind of pride or joy attends the right performance of this or that action in a virtuous manner in a manner to how a kind of pride might attend the skillful use of one's body. One can feel a certain joy in knowing that one has lived one's life as a whole quite well. That is analogous to the joy that an athlete might feel in knowing that she or he is a good athlete. We would not admire a person who dedicates her or his life to bodily pleasure and exercises only for that goal. We would not expect such an athlete to be as healthy as one who primarily sought to enable her or his body to function well. We would not admire a person who, in her or his interactions with others and with his or her environment, saw all of these as merely instrumental toward producing a kind of internal satisfaction, contentment. We would not admire this person, not even when she or he happens to do the right thing. We would regard them as foolish and unlikely to act well, just as we would so regard an athlete who exercised for pleasure rather than for the sake of the proper functioning of his or her body.
In short, we do not admire an Epicurean, even when she or he happens to do the right thing.
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