Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  PROTARCHUS: In what?

  SOCRATES: Do we not call it ‘recollection’ when the soul recalls as much as possible by itself, without the aid of the body, what she had once experienced together with the body? Or how would you put it?

  PROTARCHUS: I quite agree.

  SOCRATES: But on the other hand, when, after the loss of memory of [c] either a perception or again a piece of knowledge, the soul calls up this memory for itself, we also call all these events recollection.

  PROTARCHUS: You are right.

  SOCRATES: The point for the sake of which all this has been said is the following.

  PROTARCHUS: What is it?

  SOCRATES: That we grasp as fully and clearly as possible the pleasure that the soul experiences without the body, as well as the desire. And through a clarification of these states, the nature of both pleasure and desire will somehow be revealed.

  PROTARCHUS: Let us now discuss this as our next issue, Socrates.

  [d] SOCRATES: It seems that in our investigation we have to discuss many points about the origin of pleasure and about all its different varieties. For it looks as if we will first have to determine what desire is and on what occasion it arises.

  PROTARCHUS: Let us determine that, then. We have nothing to lose.

  SOCRATES: We will certainly lose something, Protarchus; by discovering what we are looking for now, we will lose our ignorance about it.

  PROTARCHUS: You rightly remind us of that fact. But now let us try to return to the further pursuit of our subject.

  SOCRATES: Are we agreed now that hunger and thirst and many other things of this sort are desires? [e]

  PROTARCHUS: Quite in agreement.

  SOCRATES: But what is the common feature whose recognition allows us to address all these phenomena, which differ so much, by the same name?

  PROTARCHUS: Heavens, that is perhaps not an easy thing to determine, Socrates, but it must be done nevertheless.

  SOCRATES: Shall we go back to the same point of departure?

  PROTARCHUS: What point?

  SOCRATES: When we say “he is thirsty,” we always have something in mind?

  PROTARCHUS: We do.

  SOCRATES: Meaning that he is getting empty?

  PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

  SOCRATES: But thirst is a desire?

  PROTARCHUS: Yes, the desire for drink.

  SOCRATES: For drink or for the filling with drink? [35]

  PROTARCHUS: For the filling with drink, I think.

  SOCRATES: Whoever among us is emptied, it seems, desires the opposite of what he suffers. Being emptied, he desires to be filled.

  PROTARCHUS: That is perfectly obvious.

  SOCRATES: But what about this problem? If someone is emptied for the first time, is there any way he could be in touch with filling, either through sensation or memory, since he has no experience of it, either in the present or ever in the past?

  PROTARCHUS: How should he?

  SOCRATES: But we do maintain that he who has a desire desires something? [b]

  PROTARCHUS: Naturally.

  SOCRATES: He does, then, not have a desire for what he in fact experiences. For he is thirsty, and this is a process of emptying. His desire is rather of filling.

  PROTARCHUS: Yes.

  SOCRATES: Something in the person who is thirsty must necessarily somehow be in contact with filling.

  PROTARCHUS: Necessarily.

  SOCRATES: But it is impossible that this should be the body, for the body is what is emptied out.

  PROTARCHUS: Yes.

  SOCRATES: The only option we are left with is that the soul makes contact with the filling, and it clearly must do so through memory. Or could it [c] make contact through anything else?

  PROTARCHUS: Clearly through nothing else.

  SOCRATES: Do we understand, then, what conclusions we have to draw from what has been said?

  PROTARCHUS: What are they?

  SOCRATES: Our argument forces us to conclude that desire is not a matter of the body.

  PROTARCHUS: Why is that?

  SOCRATES: Because it shows that every living creature always strives towards the opposite of its own experience.

  PROTARCHUS: And very much so.

  SOCRATES: This impulse, then, that drives it towards the opposite of its own state signifies that it has memory of that opposite state?

  PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

  [d] SOCRATES: By pointing out that it is this memory that directs it towards the objects of its desires, our argument has established that every impulse, and desire, and the rule over the whole animal is the domain of the soul.

  PROTARCHUS: Very much so.

  SOCRATES: Our argument will, then, never allow that it is our body that experiences thirst, hunger, or anything of that sort.

  PROTARCHUS: Absolutely not.

  SOCRATES: There is yet a further point we have to consider that is connected with these same conditions. For our discussion seems to me to indicate that there is a form of life that consists of these conditions.

  [e] PROTARCHUS: What does it consist of, and what form of life are you talking about?

  SOCRATES: It consists of filling and emptying and all such processes as are related to both the preservation and the destruction of animals. And when one of us is in either of the two conditions, he is in pain, or again he experiences pleasure, depending on the nature of these changes.

  PROTARCHUS: That is indeed what happens.

  SOCRATES: But what if someone finds himself in between these two affections?

  PROTARCHUS: What do you mean by “in between”?

  SOCRATES: When he is pained by his condition and remembers the pleasant things that would put an end to the pain, but is not yet being filled. [36] What about this situation? Should we claim that he is then in between these two affections, or not?

  PROTARCHUS: We should claim that.

  SOCRATES: And should we say that the person is altogether in pain or pleasure?

  PROTARCHUS: By heaven, he seems to me to be suffering a twofold pain; one consists in the body’s condition, the other in the soul’s desire caused by the expectation.

  SOCRATES: How do you mean that there is a twofold pain, Protarchus? Does it not sometimes happen that one of us is emptied at one particular [b] time, but is in clear hope of being filled, while at another time he is, on the contrary, without hope?

  PROTARCHUS: It certainly happens.

  SOCRATES: And don’t you think that he enjoys this hope for replenishment when he remembers, while he is simultaneously in pain because he has been emptied at that time?

  PROTARCHUS: Necessarily.

  SOCRATES: This is, then, the occasion when a human being and other animals are simultaneously undergoing pain and pleasure.

  PROTARCHUS: It seems so.

  SOCRATES: But what if he is without hope of attaining any replenishment when he is emptied? Is not that the situation where this twofold pain occurs, which you have just come across and simply taken to be twofold? [c]

  PROTARCHUS: That is quite undeniable, Socrates.

  SOCRATES: Now let us apply the results of our investigation of these affections to this purpose.

  PROTARCHUS: What is it?

  SOCRATES: Shall we say that these pains and pleasures are true or false, or rather that some of them are true, but not others?

  PROTARCHUS: But how could there be false pleasures or pains, Socrates?

  SOCRATES: Well, how could there be true or false fears, true or false expectations, true or false judgments, Protarchus?

  PROTARCHUS: For judgments I certainly would be ready to admit it, but [d] not for the other cases.

  SOCRATES: What is that you are saying? I am afraid we are stirring up a weighty controversy here.

  PROTARCHUS: You are right.

  SOCRATES: But if it is relevant to what we were discussing before, you worthy son of that man, it ought to be taken up.

  PROTARCHUS: Perhaps, in that case.

  SOCRATES: We have to for
ego any excursions here or any discussion of whatever side issues are not directly relevant to our topic.

  PROTARCHUS: Right.

  SOCRATES: But tell me this, for I have lived in continued perplexity about [e] the difficulty we have come across now. What is your view? Are there not false pleasures, as well as true ones?

  PROTARCHUS: How should there be?

  SOCRATES: Do you really want to claim that there is no one who, either in a dream or awake, either in madness or any other delusion, sometimes believes he is enjoying himself, while in reality he is not doing so, or believes he is in pain while he is not?

  PROTARCHUS: We all assume that this is indeed the case, Socrates.

  SOCRATES: But rightly so? Should we not rather take up the question whether or not this claim is justified?

  PROTARCHUS: We should take it up, as I at least would say.

  SOCRATES: Let us try to achieve more clarity about what we said concerning [37] pleasure and judgment. Is there something we call judging?

  PROTARCHUS: Yes.

  SOCRATES: And is there also taking pleasure?

  PROTARCHUS: Yes.

  SOCRATES: But there is also what the judgment is about?

  PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

  SOCRATES: And also what the pleasure is about?

  PROTARCHUS: Very much so.

  SOCRATES: But what makes a judgment, whether it judges rightly or not, cannot be deprived of really making a judgment.

  [b] PROTARCHUS: How should it?

  SOCRATES: And what takes pleasure, whether it is rightly pleased or not, can obviously never be deprived of really taking pleasure.

  PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is also the case.

  SOCRATES: But what we have to question is how it is that judgment is usually either true or false, while pleasure admits only truth, even though in both cases there is equally real judgment and real pleasure.

  PROTARCHUS: We have to question that.

  SOCRATES: Is it that judgment takes on the additional qualification of true [c] and false and is thus not simply judgment, but also has either one of these two qualities? Would you say that is a point we have to look into?

  PROTARCHUS: Yes.

  SOCRATES: And furthermore, whether quite generally certain things allow extra qualifications, while pleasure and pain are simply what they are and do not take on any qualifications. About that we also have to come to an agreement.

  PROTARCHUS: Obviously.

  SOCRATES: But at least it is not difficult to see that they, too, take on qualifications. For we said earlier that both of them, pleasures as well as pains, can be great and small, and also have intensity.

  [d] PROTARCHUS: We certainly did.

  SOCRATES: But if some bad state should attach itself to any of them, then we would say that the judgment becomes a bad one, and the pleasure becomes bad too, Protarchus?

  PROTARCHUS: Naturally, Socrates.

  SOCRATES: But what if some rightness or the opposite of rightness are added to something, would we not call the judgment right, if it were right, and the pleasure too?

  PROTARCHUS: Necessarily.

  [e] SOCRATES: And if a mistake is made about the object of judgment, then we say that the judgment that makes that mistake is not right and does not judge rightly?

  PROTARCHUS: How could it?

  SOCRATES: But what if we notice that a pain or pleasure is mistaken in what it is pleased or pained about, shall we then call it right or proper or give it other names of praise?

  PROTARCHUS: That would be impossible, if indeed pleasure should be mistaken.

  SOCRATES: As to pleasure, it certainly often seems to arise in us not with a right, but with a false, judgment.

  PROTARCHUS: Of course. But what we call false in this case at that point [38] is the judgment, Socrates; nobody would dream of calling the pleasure itself false.

  SOCRATES: You certainly put up a spirited defense for pleasure now, Protarchus!

  PROTARCHUS: Not at all; I only repeat what I hear.

  SOCRATES: Is there no difference between the pleasure that goes with right judgment and knowledge and the kind that often comes to any of us with false judgment and ignorance?

  PROTARCHUS: There’s probably no small difference. [b]

  SOCRATES: So let us turn to inspect the difference between them.

  PROTARCHUS: Lead on where you like.

  SOCRATES: I lead you this way.

  PROTARCHUS: What way?

  SOCRATES: Of our judgment we say that it is sometimes false, and sometimes true?

  PROTARCHUS: It is.

  SOCRATES: And as we said just now, these are often accompanied by pleasure and pain. I am talking of true and false judgment.

  PROTARCHUS: That’s right.

  SOCRATES: And is it not memory and perception that lead to judgment or the attempt to come to a definite judgment, as the case may be?

  PROTARCHUS: Indeed. [c]

  SOCRATES: Do we agree that the following must happen here?

  PROTARCHUS: What?

  SOCRATES: Wouldn’t you say that it often happens that someone who cannot get a clear view because he is looking from a distance wants to make up his mind about what he sees?

  PROTARCHUS: I would say so.

  SOCRATES: And might he then not again raise another question for himself?

  PROTARCHUS: What question?

  SOCRATES: “What could that be that appears to stand near that rock under a tree?”—Do you find it plausible that someone might say these words to [d] himself when he sets his eyes on such appearances?

  PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

  SOCRATES: And might he not afterwards, as an answer to his own question, say to himself, “It is a man,” and in so speaking, would get it right?

  PROTARCHUS: No doubt.

  SOCRATES: But he might also be mistaken and say that what he sees is a statue, the work of some herdsmen?

  PROTARCHUS: Very likely.

  SOCRATES: But if he were in company, he might actually say out loud to [e] his companion what he had told himself, and so what we earlier called judgment would turn into an assertion?

  PROTARCHUS: To be sure.

  SOCRATES: Whereas if he is alone, he entertains this thought by himself, and sometimes he may even resume his way for quite a long time with the thought in his mind?

  PROTARCHUS: No doubt.

  SOCRATES: But look, do you share my view on this?

  PROTARCHUS: What view?

  SOCRATES: That our soul in such a situation is comparable to a book?

  PROTARCHUS: How so?

  [39] SOCRATES: If memory and perceptions concur with other impressions at a particular occasion, then they seem to me to inscribe words in our soul, as it were. And if what is written is true, then we form a true judgment and a true account of the matter. But if what our scribe writes is false, then the result will be the opposite of the truth.

  [b] PROTARCHUS: I quite agree, and I accept this way of putting it.

  SOCRATES: Do you also accept that there is another craftsman at work in our soul at the same time?

  PROTARCHUS: What kind of craftsman?

  SOCRATES: A painter who follows the scribe and provides illustrations to his words in the soul.

  PROTARCHUS: How and when do we say he does this work?

  SOCRATES: When a person takes his judgments and assertions directly from sight or any other sense-perception and then views the images he [c] has formed inside himself, corresponding to those judgments and assertions. Or is it not something of this sort that is going on in us?

  PROTARCHUS: Quite definitely.

  SOCRATES: And are not the pictures of the true judgments and assertions true, and the pictures of the false ones false?

  PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

  SOCRATES: If we have been right with what we have said so far, let us in addition come to terms about this question.

  PROTARCHUS: What about?

  SOCRATES: Whether these experiences are necessarily confined to the past and the pres
ent, but are not extended into the future.

  PROTARCHUS: They should apply equally to all the tenses: past, present, and future.

  [d] SOCRATES: Now, did we not say before, about the pleasures and pains that belong to the soul alone, that they might precede those that go through the body? It would therefore be possible that we have anticipatory pleasures and pains about the future.

  PROTARCHUS: Undeniably.

  SOCRATES: And are those writings and pictures which come to be in us, [e] as we said earlier, concerned only with the past and the present, but not with the future?

  PROTARCHUS: Decidedly with the future.

  SOCRATES: If you say ‘decidedly’, is it because all of them are really hopes for future times, and we are forever brimful of hopes, throughout our lifetime?

  PROTARCHUS: Quite definitely.

  SOCRATES: Well, then, in addition to what has been said now, also answer this question.

  PROTARCHUS: Concerning what?

  SOCRATES: Is not a man who is just, pious, and good in all respects, also loved by the gods?

  PROTARCHUS: How could he fail to be?

  SOCRATES: But what about someone who is unjust and in all respects evil? Isn’t he that man’s opposite? [40]

  PROTARCHUS: Of course.

  SOCRATES: And is not everyone, as we just said, always full of many hopes?

  PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

  SOCRATES: There are, then, assertions in each of us that we call hopes?

  PROTARCHUS: Yes.

  SOCRATES: But there are also those painted images. And someone often envisages himself in the possession of an enormous amount of gold and of a lot of pleasures as a consequence. And in addition, he also sees, in this inner picture himself, that he is beside himself with delight.

  PROTARCHUS: What else! [b]

  SOCRATES: Now, do we want to say that in the case of good people these pictures are usually true, because they are dear to the gods, while quite the opposite usually holds in the case of wicked ones, or is this not what we ought to say?

  PROTARCHUS: That is just what we ought to say.

  SOCRATES: And wicked people nevertheless have pleasures painted in their minds, even though they are somehow false?

  PROTARCHUS: Right.

  SOCRATES: So wicked people as a rule enjoy false pleasures, but the good [c] among mankind true ones?

  PROTARCHUS: Quite necessarily so.

  SOCRATES: From what has now been said, it follows that there are false pleasures in human souls that are quite ridiculous imitations of true ones, and also such pains.