Thoughts on Philebus

There are questions that haunt you and keep you up at night or at least they should. At any rate they do that for me. The question confronted in Plato’s dialogue Philebus is one of those questions. What is the good life? How should we live? I’m reminded of the 2006 Russian film Ostrov (The Island). The answer given there by the holy fool for Christ is, “Live however you can, just try not to sin too much.” This answer seems to be grounded in the Blessed Augustine’s words, “Love, and do what you will” found in his 7^th homily on 1 Jn 4:4-12. Pretty good advice coming from a real source of authority. But should we unpack this more? How exactly can we be sure we are being truly loving and not just under the illusions of prelest and self-centeredness? We humans are awfully good at rationalizing our evil and deceiving ourselves. Plato, in this dialogue offers us a more concrete yet not overly deterministic path on how to make sure we assimilate ourselves to God as he urges us in Theaetetus. Even if not the most interesting, this is probably the most important and urgent question in philosophy. I, in fact, think it is THE question that is the reason why philosophy exists. Those who are passionately seeking the truth are doing so, in part, for the beauty of knowledge alone but I also believe a significant motivation is this urge to want to live the best life possible. Let us see what Plato thinks that looks like.

Right off the bat it seems like we are dealing with a mutually exclusive dichotomy – either the best life is one of pure hedonistic, blissful pleasure devoid of anything remotely similar to rationality or it is one of the most disinterested, apathetic flexing of the intellect. Right away Socrates hints that these two options may not be exhaustive. He never really gives an argument that I saw for why a life of pure equanimous apatheia pursuing intellectual knowledge is not the absolute best—just says it obviously couldn’t be. I agree with that, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a rigorous argument for that. He does give a few arguments as to why unadulterated pleasure is not the best type of life. Firstly, it appears that pleasures differ so widely that some even seem to be polar opposites to one another. Do we really think the pleasure a meth addict feels when getting high or the murderer gets during a kill is the exact same as that of the person who feels good from giving money or aid to the poor and disenfranchised? The good can never be opposite itself, so if pleasure can be opposite itself then it can’t be the good. This is not the case for intellect, since no object of the intellect is opposed to intellect, but it still isn’t the highest good. Secondly, Socrates brings up another aspect of the good. Not only can it never be opposite itself, but it can also never need anything to complete itself. It is “the most perfect of all things” (20d). When something is good, it is just good, it doesn’t need something else besides goodness to make it good. Therefore, a life of unalloyed pleasure with absolutely no semblance of intellect, reason, memory, knowledge, or judgment should be juxtaposed against a life of pure intellect with no pleasure or pain. A life of total pleasure sans intellect doesn’t fare well. How exactly would you know you were even enjoying pleasure without reason? How would you remember it without memory? It would be chaotic hedonism. There seems to be nothing wrong with a life of pure intelligence, in fact Socrates later says it of all lives is the most godlike (33b).

Socrates hints at the answer to what is greater than both of these early on and fully unpacks it later. What’s better than either a life of pleasure or wisdom? A god revealed it to Socrates in a half-remembered dream that it is a mixture of both (22a)! I was actually pleasantly surprised at this, as I’ve always heard how pagan Platonists and monks hate the body and are world-deniers, etc. Plato evidently was more well-rounded than many believe. In fact, Socrates severely criticizes those who hold a grim and dour view of life, hating all pleasure (44c-d). After this introduction to the problem and a foretaste of the answer, Plato decides to saddle us with some pretty heavy metaphysics. He plunges right into the problem of the One and the Many and relates it masterfully to his dialectical method of analysis. There is a trivial sense in which all things consist of a one and a many, which isn’t really a big deal, or so Socrates says. This is seen in the fact that I am one person but have many different parts like bones, cells, molecules, senses, mental states, etc. There is the much more difficult sense involving eternal Forms – do these exist as separate monads? How is it possible for something which isn’t subject to decay or generation to come to be in an infinite multitude of things? How can a unity at the same time be a plurality (15c)? Plato offers no answer here, he just accurately states the problem. Perhaps he deals with it later.

At any rate, since every created thing consists of a one and a many they must also, by their very nature, have a conjunction of Limit and Limitlessness. The shrewd dialectician embarks on a two-step process in order to understand and become an expert in something. First, the unity or common essence must be found behind the many seemingly disparate parts. Once that is done the unity needs to be broken down into however many constituent parts it has. Each of these parts is also a one and a many and so we keep repeating this loop of finding the common essence in the thing which makes all its properties similar and then breaking it down into smaller parts until we have gotten to rock bottom. What we will notice then is that the one we started with is not only one and a seemingly infinite many – but that there is an exact number of intermediaries. Being an expert in something lies precisely in this exact knowledge of how many intermediaries there are between the one and the many and what their nature is. This makes the difference between a charlatan and a philosopher and thus makes all the difference in the world. This is all pretty abstract, so Plato wisely insists that examples can help us here. Let us consider the budding musician. A song is “one” in the fact that it is one song and not two or three etc. It is also a “many” since it has tons of parts within itself such as notes, rests, harmony, rhythm, melody, pitch and many of these change many times over in even the simplest songs. If all you know about music is that songs make many different sounds you don’t know much – this shows you know that it is one and many, that it is limited to one song and unlimited to a great multitude of parts. If you are more knowledgeable you will be able to identify and understand the nature of the different pitches involved, the notes, etc. An expert is someone who not only recognizes the limited one and the unlimited many but knows exactly how many and of what nature are all the intermediaries in between the one and the many. In our example that would mean they would know exactly how many notes, types of rhythm, melody, pitch, etc. are possible in any possible song , understands their nature like the back of their hand, and can effortlessly identify them in any song and be able to explain them.

The main way people get off track from becoming experts in any art is due to laziness as expressed in impatience and procrastination. We don’t bother to sit down and do the work to understand and learn all these intermediaries and figure out exactly how many they are – we just rush unthinkingly towards the goal when we aren’t ready. Protarchus, the main interlocutor in this dialogue, demands to know how all this is relevant. It seems Plato was cognizant of the fact that the preceding was a heavy burden, but ultimately worth it. This is relevant so that Socrates can dissect different views of ethics and we will be able to follow along, understanding his method of analysis, so it is critical to understand it. He begins by dividing all things into 5 classes: the Limited, the Unlimited, the mixture of both, the cause of this mixing, and the cause of the separation. Words indicative of the Unlimited are vague and indefinite like more, less, hotter, colder, slightly, strongly, very, a lot, quicker, etc. Words that imply definite quantity belong to the Limited—like equal, double, triple, 45.367 (exact numbers), etc. Being a modern man I would’ve assumed Limit is worse than the Unlimited since we don’t like being limited – but Plato describes it as being superior since it puts an end to conflict and brings harmony and balance to all things (25e). Whereas most modern Americans believe that unlimited pleasure is the way to live – Plato correctly sees that it leads to lawlessness and wickedness – limit is needed to preserve peace. Any person who works diligently to perfect some art, whether it be an athlete, musician, scholar, writer, scientist, farmer, hunter, etc. knows that the key to doing well is denying yourself short-term pleasures in order to see longer term gains. Limit is more valuable to a good life than Limitlessness.

The Unlimited cannot be the unalloyed good since it contains opposites like pain and pleasure. Next, we learn that the cause of the mixing of Limit and Unlimited is none other than reason. “For all the wise agree, thereby glorifying themselves in earnest, that in reason we have the king of heaven and earth” (28c). It was obvious to the ancients (and to any sane person) that the universe isn’t governed by blind, irrational chance but by a careful intelligence. He then examines pleasure, pain, and desire in greater depth. Pain seems to be when our natural state is disturbed, and pleasure is when that natural state is restored. Being extremely hot is unnatural and thus painful and cooling off to our normal body temperature is pleasurable. Desire occurs when we are in an unnatural state and yearn to be back into our normal state. Thus, desire must entirely belong to the soul and not the body since, by definition, you desire the opposite of what your body is currently experiencing. The body feels hot and the soul desires for the body to be cool. The pleasures and pains of the soul are more far-reaching than those of the body as anyone who has felt depression or excitement at a pivotal life event knows. If we didn’t know better, we’d think that people in good bodily health would experience greater pleasure than sick people, but due to the aforementioned, this is exactly backwards. The desire of a sick person to be healed is greater than a healthy person and this desire belongs to the soul and things of the soul carry more weight than things of the body. Similarly, more extreme pleasure is found in a wanton existence than in a moderate and measured one. “The temperate man, surely, is regularly restrained by the proverbial warning, ‘Never too much,’ and heeds it, whereas the senseless profligate is mastered by his extreme pleasure, which ultimately drives him insane and makes him the talk of the town” (45e). The conclusion that we are reaching is that the most intense pleasures (and pains) occur when the soul and body are in a BAD and not a good condition. Therefore, intense pleasure and pain should be avoided.

We then come to Socrates’ idea that we can classify pleasures as true or false, just like an opinion can be true or false. Protarchus is a bit dumbfounded at this assertion, as most readers will be. Surely pleasure can be bad, but how can it be false? Socrates defines a true pleasure as one that gives enjoyment from a well of absolute and innate beauty untainted by any pain – pure. Purity is based on quality, not quantity. A million gallons of water where 50% is tainted with arsenic may in the end have 500,000 gallons of water untainted, but it will never be as pure as a single gallon of 99% water. True pleasures are also always characterized by moderation whereas impure and false pleasures are privy to extremes.  We also see that pleasure is something that comes to be rather than something that just is. If you put all your hope in pleasure you are placing your hope in something that is inherently unstable – it cycles incessantly through the processes of decay and generation and as such we can never find enduring satisfaction in it. It is a means to an end and that end is the Good. Being is always superior to becoming, just as shipbuilding exists for the sake of the ships and not the other way around. Every religious sage throughout the ages has come to this most important of affirmations – that satisfaction is never to be found in contingent changing things, but in things that eternally and absolutely ARE. A final reason why pleasure can’t be the good is that we would have to accept the absurd and ugly conclusion that a man who dies for the love of another is not as good as a selfish hedonist who never helps anyone since the man who dies isn’t having fun and the hedonist is.

After spending all this time on examining pleasure, Socrates then turns his gaze towards knowledge. Here he finds that precise and accurate measurements are the key to knowledge as any carpenter knows. As such, Plato holds those arts in higher regard that require greater precision. For him, the one that requires the most precision and is thus the purest and best art is that of dialectic. “The cognition of that which is, that which exists in reality ever unchanged, is held, I cannot doubt, by all people who have the smallest endowment of reason to be far and away truer than any other” (58a). As we see, the difference between dialectic and other arts is that it is dedicated to studying the eternal, absolute, and unchanging. Gorgias was definitely wrong when he thought that persuasion was the greatest of arts – Plato agrees it is useful, but it doesn’t always express truth and is not always precise. Even science, though admirable, studies things that constantly change and it is impossible to speak as precisely of things that change as you can of things that never change. You cannot get a permanent grasp on impermanent things. “We find fixity, purity, truth, and what we have called perfect clarity, either in those things that are always, unchanged, unaltered, and free of all admixture, or in what is most akin to them; everything else must be called inferior and of secondary importance” (59c). Reason and intellect are closer to the eternal truth than pleasure, though they aren’t quite as unchanging. At any rate, they command far more respect than pleasure does.

Plato reiterates that the Good needs absolutely nothing else besides itself to make it good and that our ultimate good is found in a thoroughly mixed life (61b). What exactly is the best mixture? As mentioned, before we should focus on quality and not quantity, so it doesn’t matter how much pleasure or intellect is in the good life but how pure that pleasure or intellect is. Socrates sees no harm in allowing the less pure forms of knowledge that deal with things that come to be (like science and music) into the mixed good life alongside the pure pleasure of learning and dialectic. At the very worst these lesser forms of knowledge are harmless and at best they can be useful and a source of pleasure, a pastime we needn’t repent of as Plato remarks in Timaeus. What about pleasures? According to the preceding discussion we should probably tread more softly here. We should only allow the pure, true pleasures and completely avoid the false, impure pleasures. How can we tell apart false and true pleasures? False pleasures hurt our health, virtue, and temperance. Extremely intense pleasures should be avoided at all costs – they disturb our peace and destroy reason in us, even if temporarily and reason is the king of heaven and earth as we learned earlier; we shouldn’t destroy it. True pleasures to be pursued are those that aid us in good health, being more moderate, and becoming more virtuous. Another idea that should guide us in our path is that the incorporeal should always govern the corporeal – we should always choose what is good for our soul over what is good for our body. The three main ingredients in this mixture are truth, proportion, and beauty. Intellect is closer to truth than pleasure is. Intellect is closer to proportion also. Intellect is never ugly and so is actually closer to beauty than pleasure is as well. Also, when people are experiencing extreme pleasures, they can look either ridiculous or ugly and if we catch them in such a state, we are ashamed at their behavior. This never happens if we catch someone deep in thought – so intellect is more akin to beauty than pleasure.

All this goes to show that reason should have a greater part in the mixture of our lives than pleasure, even though true pleasures can and should be present as well – by far the greater part should be constituted of activities that engage the mind. However, Plato does say that the most important element in the entire mixture is proportion – it is what makes things beautiful and excellent, after all. Socrates identifies the hierarchy of elements in the mixed life. Most important is proportion. Next, is beauty followed by reason. The fourth most important ingredient is knowledge of changing things, the arts, etc. and the least important element is found in true pleasures. So, we see that reason is far more valuable to a human life than pleasure ever will be. This is exactly backwards from how our current society seems to be operating and we will pay the price for that. We are very short-sighted and focus the most on base, earthly, physical extreme pleasures that only last a short while. We are swimming in a roiling sea of pornography, drugs, crappy fast food, get rich quick schemes, casual sexual relationships, social media platforms, fads and trends that change faster than Oklahoma weather patterns, and other things designed to give us quick dopamine spikes. All of these things thwart peace because they don’t promote stability. They also inflame our passions and teach us to try to find the good life in the most fleeting and lowest of things rather than helping us to attain to the heights of heaven.

In conclusion, it seems like the best life is one that is a mix of wisdom and pleasure where the overwhelming majority of our life should be focused on gaining wisdom and far less on seeking pleasure and even then those pleasures should mainly come from the delights of the intellect. We should completely shut immoderate, extremely intense and sudden pleasures that damage health and virtue out of our lives. We should only include true pleasures that are free of all pain and promote bodily and psychological health, moderation, and increase our virtue although these should take the backseat to learning and growing in love and wisdom. We should prioritize the contemplation of eternal realities that never change because they alone are capable of satisfying us and giving us lasting peace and joy. I think this is an excellent view of ethics and if our society followed its suggestions, we would be much better off. Plato also manages to deftly avoid being either too narrow or too wide – he doesn’t tell us exactly how much of our life needs to be dedicated to either pleasure or wisdom – he just offers basic guidelines that are grounded in Truth. We are still left with innumerable questions. What exactly is moderation? Evagrius also taught moderation but died from malnutrition at 50 because he only ate a tiny amount of bread and raw vegetables a day. St. Isaac the Syrian too preached moderation and he went blind from reading too much. What exactly are the good and bad pleasures? Isn’t moderation relative and therefore belongs to the Unlimited which is inferior to the Limited? He also doesn’t bring up other things I would think are important to the good life such as worshipping God, giving to the poor, caring for others, etc. But we must understand that it was a short 60-page dialogue that dealt specifically with the topic of wisdom vs. pleasure as they relate to the good life. It was never meant to be exhaustive of the topic.  It is up to each one of us to find and pursue that perfect balance with the help and wisdom of those who know more than us and by praying to God for help, as Socrates always does. I believe following this outline can help us love more and sin less as the sources in the introduction urged us. If they do, then this dialogue was not written in vain.