Complete Works
Page 70
PROTARCHUS: Necessarily.
SOCRATES: Now, in all those cases where the mixture contains a surplus of pleasure, the small admixture of pain gives rise only to a tickle and a mild irritation, while the predominant part of pleasure causes contractions of the body to the point of leaping and kicking, color changes of all sorts, distortion of features, and wild palpitations; it finally drives the person totally out of his mind, so that he shouts aloud like a madman.
[b] PROTARCHUS: Very much so.
SOCRATES: And this state causes him and others to say of him that he is almost dying of these pleasures. And the more profligate and mindless he is, the more will he pursue them by any means possible, and he calls them supreme and considers as the happiest of all mortals whoever lives in continuous enjoyment of them, as much as that is possible.
PROTARCHUS: Your description fits exactly the preconceptions of the common run of people, Socrates.
[c] SOCRATES: Yes, as far as concerns the pleasures that arise when there is a mixture of the external and internal state of the body, Protarchus. But take now the cases where the soul’s contributions are opposed to the body’s: When there is pain over and against pleasures, or pleasure against pain, both are finally joined in a mixed state. We have talked about them earlier and agreed that in these cases it is the deprivation that gives rise to the desire for replenishment, and while the expectation is pleasant, the deprivation itself is painful. When we discussed this we did not make any [d] special mention, as we do now, of the fact that, in the vast number of cases where soul and body are not in agreement, the final result is a single mixture that combines pleasure and pain.
PROTARCHUS: I suspect that you are right.
SOCRATES: But here we are still left with one further kind of mixture of pleasure and pain.
PROTARCHUS: Tell me what it is.
SOCRATES: The case, a common one, where the mixture is the product of affections within the soul itself, as we said before.
PROTARCHUS: What was it again that we said?
SOCRATES: Take wrath, fear, longing, lamentations, love, jealousy, malice, [e] and other things like that; don’t you regard them as a kind of pain within the soul itself?
PROTARCHUS: I certainly do.
SOCRATES: And don’t we find that they are full of marvellous pleasures? Or do we need the famous lines as a reminder about wrath:
… That can embitter even the wise
… But much sweeter than soft-flowing honey …15
Similarly, in the case of lamentations and longing, aren’t there also pleasures [48] mixed in with the pain?
PROTARCHUS: No need for further reminders; in all these cases it must be just as you said.
SOCRATES: And the same happens in those who watch tragedies: There is laughter mixed with the weeping, if you remember.
PROTARCHUS: How could I forget?
SOCRATES: Now, look at our state of mind in comedy. Don’t you realize that it also involves a mixture of pleasure and pain?
PROTARCHUS: I don’t quite see that yet.
SOCRATES: It is indeed not quite so easy to see that this condition applies [b] under those circumstances.
PROTARCHUS: It certainly is not to me!
SOCRATES: Since it is such an obscure matter, let us be all the more careful. For this will help us to recognize more easily when there is a mixture of pain and pleasure in other cases as well.
PROTARCHUS: Please tell me.
SOCRATES: Since we just mentioned the word “malice”: Do you treat malice as a pain of the soul, or what?
PROTARCHUS: I do.
SOCRATES: On the other hand, will not the malicious person display pleasure at his neighbor’s misfortunes?
PROTARCHUS: Very much so. [c]
SOCRATES: Now, ignorance is a vice, and so is what we call stupidity?
PROTARCHUS: Decidedly!
SOCRATES: What conclusions do you draw from this about the nature of the ridiculous?
PROTARCHUS: You tell me.
SOCRATES: It is, in sum, a kind of vice that derives its name from a special disposition; it is, among all the vices, the one with a character16 that stands in direct opposition to the one recommended by the famous inscription in Delphi.
PROTARCHUS: You mean the one that says “Know thyself,” Socrates?
[d] SOCRATES: I do. The opposite recommendation would obviously be that we not know ourselves at all.17
PROTARCHUS: No doubt.
SOCRATES: Go on and make a subdivision of this disposition into three, Protarchus.
PROTARCHUS: What do you mean? I am afraid I don’t know how to.
SOCRATES: Are you saying that it is up to me to make this division now?
PROTARCHUS: That is indeed what I am saying, but in addition I beg you to do so.
SOCRATES: Are there not necessarily three ways in which it is possible not to know oneself?
PROTARCHUS: What are they?
[e] SOCRATES: The first way concerns money, if someone thinks himself richer than he in fact is.
PROTARCHUS: Many people certainly share that condition.
SOCRATES: Even more consider themselves taller and handsomer than they in fact are, and believe they have other such physical advantages.
PROTARCHUS: Definitely.
SOCRATES: But an overwhelming number are mistaken about the third kind, which belongs to the soul, namely virtue, and believe that they are superior in virtue, although they are not.
PROTARCHUS: Very much so.
[49] SOCRATES: And, again, among the virtues, is it not especially to wisdom that the largest number of people lay claim, puffing themselves up with quarrels and false pretensions to would-be knowledge?
PROTARCHUS: Undeniably so.
SOCRATES: It would therefore be quite justified to say that all these conditions are bad.
PROTARCHUS: Quite justified.
SOCRATES: So we must continue with our division of ignorance, Protarchus, if we want to find out what a strange mixture of pleasure and pain this comic malice is. How would you suggest that we should further [b] subdivide? In the case of all those who have such a false opinion about themselves, is it not most necessary, as it is for all mankind, that it be combined either with strength and power, or with its opposite?
PROTARCHUS: Necessarily.
SOCRATES: So make this the point of division. All those who combine this delusion with weakness and are unable to avenge themselves when they are laughed at, you are justified in calling ridiculous. But as for those who do have the power and strength to take revenge, if you call them dangerous and hateful, you are getting exactly the right conception about [c] them. For ignorance on the side of the strong and powerful is odious and ugly; it is harmful even for their neighbors, both the ignorance itself and its imitations, whatever they may be. Ignorance on the side of the weak, by contrast, deserves to be placed among the ridiculous in rank and nature.
PROTARCHUS: You are right about this division. But I am still not quite clear about where there is a mixture of pleasure and pain in these cases.
SOCRATES: So take first the nature of malice.
PROTARCHUS: Please explain.
SOCRATES: It contains a kind of unjust pain and pleasure. [d]
PROTARCHUS: Necessarily.
SOCRATES: Now, if you rejoice about evils that happen to your enemy, is there any injustice or malice in your pleasure?
PROTARCHUS: How should there be?
SOCRATES: But is there any occasion when it is not unjust to be pleased rather than pained to see bad things happen to your friends?
PROTARCHUS: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: But we just agreed that ignorance is bad for everyone?
PROTARCHUS: Right.
SOCRATES: Let us take now the ignorance of friends which we said came in three versions, would-be wisdom and would-be beauty, and the other [e] sort we just mentioned, each of which is ridiculous if weak, but odious if strong. Now, are we ready to affirm of our friends’ state what we just said, namely, that it is ridicul
ous if it is harmless to others?
PROTARCHUS: Very much so.
SOCRATES: But did we not agree that it is bad if it is ignorance?
PROTARCHUS: We certainly did.
SOCRATES: But if we laugh about it, are we pleased or pained by it?
PROTARCHUS: We are pleased, obviously. [50]
SOCRATES: But this pleasure in the face of the misfortunes of friends—did we not say that it was the product of malice?
PROTARCHUS: Necessarily.
SOCRATES: Our argument leads to the conclusion that if we laugh at what is ridiculous about our friends, by mixing pleasure with malice, we thereby mix pleasure with pain. For we had agreed earlier that malice is a pain in the soul, that laughing is a pleasure, and that both occur together on those occasions.
PROTARCHUS: True.
[b] SOCRATES: The upshot of our discussion, then, is that in lamentations as well as in tragedies and comedies, not only on stage but also in all of life’s tragedies and comedies, pleasures are mixed with pains, and so it is on infinitely other occasions.
PROTARCHUS: It would be impossible not to agree with this, even for the most ambitious defense of the opposite position, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Now, we had on our list of examples wrath, longing, lamentations, [c] fear, love, jealousy, malice, and whatever else, and we said that in these cases we would discern the mixture that we have already mentioned so frequently, right?
PROTARCHUS: Right.
SOCRATES: So we understand, then, that our whole explanation also applies to longing, malice, and wrath?
PROTARCHUS: How could we fail to understand that?
SOCRATES: And there are many other such cases to which it applies?
PROTARCHUS: A great many.
SOCRATES: Now, what precisely do you think was the purpose for which I pointed out to you this mixture in comedy? Don’t you see that it was [d] designed to make it easier to persuade you that there is such a mixture in fear and love and other cases? I hoped that once you had accepted this you would release me from a protracted discussion of the rest—once the main point was understood, that there exists the possibility, for the body without the soul, for the soul without the body, and for both of them in a joint affection, to contain a mixture of pleasure and pain.
Now, tell me whether you will let me go now or whether you will keep us up till midnight. One further remark will gain me my release, I [e] hope. I will gladly give you a full account of the rest tomorrow, but for now I want to steer towards the remaining points needed to make the decision Philebus demands of us.
PROTARCHUS: Well spoken, Socrates. Discuss the rest any way you like.
SOCRATES: It seems natural, somehow, that we must proceed from the mixed pleasures to the discussion of the unmixed ones.
[51] PROTARCHUS: A very good point.
SOCRATES: I will now try to explain them in turn. Although I am not really in agreement with those who hold that all pleasures are merely release from pain, I nevertheless treat them as witnesses, as I said before, to prove that there are certain kinds that only seem to be pleasures, but are not so in reality, and furthermore, that there are others that have the appearance of enormous size and great variety, but which are in truth commingled with pain or with respite from severe pains suffered by soul and body.
[b] PROTARCHUS: But, Socrates, what are the kinds of pleasures that one could rightly regard as true?
SOCRATES: Those that are related 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, while their fulfilllments are perceptible and pleasant.
PROTARCHUS: But really, Socrates, what are you talking about?
SOCRATES: What I am saying may not be entirely clear straightaway, but I’ll try to clarify it. By the beauty of a shape, I do not mean what the many [c] might presuppose, namely that of a living being or of a picture. What I mean, what the argument demands, is rather something straight or round and what is constructed out of these with a compass, rule, and square, such as plane figures and solids. Those things I take it are not beautiful in a relative sense, as others are, but are by their very nature forever beautiful by themselves. They provide their own specific pleasures that are not at all comparable to those of rubbing! And colors are beautiful in [d] an analogous way and import their own kinds of pleasures. Do we now understand it better, or how do you feel?
PROTARCHUS: I am really trying to understand, Socrates, but will you also try to say this more clearly?
SOCRATES: What I am saying is that those among the smooth and bright sounds that produce one pure note are not beautiful in relation to anything else but in and by themselves and that they are accompanied by their own pleasures, which belong to them by nature.
PROTARCHUS: That much is true.
SOCRATES: Then there is also the less divine tribe of pleasures connected [e] with smells. But because there is no inevitable pain mixed with them, in whatever way or wherever we may come by them, for this reason I regard them as the counterpart to those others. So, if you get my point, we will then treat those as two species of the kinds of pleasures we are looking for.
PROTARCHUS: I do get your point.
SOCRATES: Then let us also add to these the pleasures of learning, if indeed we are agreed that there is no such thing as hunger for learning connected [52] with them, nor any pains that have their source in a hunger for learning.
PROTARCHUS: Here, too, I agree with you.
SOCRATES: Well, then, if after such filling with knowledge, people lose it again through forgetting, do you notice any kinds of pain?
PROTARCHUS: None that could be called inherent by nature, but in our reflections on this loss when we need it, we experience it as a painful loss. [b]
SOCRATES: But, my dear, we are here concerned only with the natural affections themselves, apart from reflection on them.
PROTARCHUS: Then you are right in saying that the lapse of knowledge never causes us any pain.
SOCRATES: Then we may say that the pleasures of learning are unmixed with pain and belong, not to the masses, but only to a very few?
PROTARCHUS: How could one fail to agree?
SOCRATES: But now that we have properly separated the pure pleasures [c] and those that can rightly be called impure, let’s add to our account the attribution of immoderation to the violent pleasures, but moderation, in contrast, to the others. That is to say, we will assign those pleasures which display high intensity and violence, no matter whether frequently or rarely, to the class of the unlimited, the more and less, which affects both body and soul. [d] The other kinds of pleasures we will assign to the class of things that possess measurement.
PROTARCHUS: Quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But we have also to look into the following question about them.
PROTARCHUS: What question?
SOCRATES: The question of their relation to truth. What is closer to it: the pure, unadulterated, and sufficient18 or the violent, multiform, and enormous?
PROTARCHUS: Just what are you after in asking this question, Socrates?
[e] SOCRATES: I want to omit nothing in the investigation of both pleasure and knowledge. I want to ask if one part of them is pure, another impure, so that both of them may come to trial in their pure form, and so make it easier for you and me and all those present to come to a verdict in this trial.
PROTARCHUS: Quite right.
SOCRATES: Then let us go on and see whether all items that belong in the pure kind display the following qualification. But let us first pick out one of them and study it.
[53] PROTARCHUS: Which one shall we choose?
SOCRATES: Let us take whiteness first, if you have no objection.
PROTARCHUS: That is fine with me.
SOCRATES: Now, how can there be purity in the case of whiteness, and what sort of thing is it? Is it the greatest quantity or amount, or is it rather the complete lack of any admixture, that is, where there is not the slig
htest part of any other kind contained in this color?
PROTARCHUS: It will obviously be the perfectly unadulterated color.
SOCRATES: Right. But shall we not also agree that this is the truest and [b] the most beautiful of all instances of white, rather than what is greatest in quantity or amount?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: So we are perfectly justified if we say that a small portion of pure white is to be regarded as whiter than a larger quantity of an impure whiteness, and at the same time more beautiful and possessed of more truth?
PROTARCHUS: Perfectly justified.
SOCRATES: Well, now, we don’t need to run through many more examples to justify our account of pleasure, but this example suffices to prove that [c] in the case of pleasure, too, every small and insignificant pleasure that is unadulterated by pain will turn out to be pleasanter, truer, and more beautiful than a greater quantity and amount of the impure kind.
PROTARCHUS: Quite definitely so, and the example is sufficient.
SOCRATES: But what about the following point? Have we not been told that pleasure is always a process of becoming, and that there is no being at all of pleasure? There are some subtle thinkers who have tried to pass on this doctrine to us, and we ought to be grateful to them.
PROTARCHUS: What does it mean?
SOCRATES: I will indeed try to explain it to you, my friend Protarchus, by resuming my questioning. [d]
PROTARCHUS: You have only to keep on asking.
SOCRATES: Suppose there are two kinds of things, one kind sufficient to itself, the other in need of something else.
PROTARCHUS: How and what sort of things do you mean?
SOCRATES: The one kind by nature possesses supreme dignity; the other is inferior to it.
PROTARCHUS: Express this more clearly, please.
SOCRATES: We must have met handsome and noble youths, together with their courageous lovers.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Now, try to think of another set of two items that corresponds to this pair in all the relevant features that we just mentioned. [e]
PROTARCHUS: Do I have to repeat my request for the third time? Please express more clearly what it is you want to say, Socrates!