REPUBLIC 585B–D: ARGUMENT AND TEXT

Abstract

The so-called ‘Olympian’ proof in Plato's Republic contains one of the first explicit distinctions between the nature of intellectual and bodily pleasures. The argument for the superiority of the former rests on a) identifying pleasure and pain with certain kinds of filling and emptying (583b1–585a7), and b) differentiating between bodily and intellectual pleasures according to the kind of filling: (i)Bodily depletions differ from depletions of the soul in the kind of lack and, accordingly, in the kind of thing that fills the lack: hunger and thirst are bodily lacks which food and drink can cure, whereas ignorance and folly are cured by intelligence (585a8–b8).Thus, (ii), the kind of lack (belonging to the soul vs belonging to the body), together with the kind of filler (‘food’ for the soul vs food for the body), and derivatively the method of filling (eating vs learning) determine the kind of filling.(iii)Kinds of filling differ in truth: filling A is truer than filling B if and only if the kind of fillers used in A are more than the kind of fillers used in B and the kind of thing filled via A is more than the kind of thing filled via B (cf. 585d7–10).(iv)Fillers of the soul are more than bodily fillers (585b11–d4).(v)The soul is more than the body (585d5–6).Therefore, (vi), filling of the soul is truer than bodily filling, that is, filling of the soul is more really a filling (585d7–10).