False Pleasures Research Articles

False Pleasures and Plato's Philebus

In the Republic and the Philebus, Plato allows that some pleasures have a place in a good life, at least for people, if not for gods. He maintains, however, that some pleasures have no place in a good human life. They have neither intrinsic nor instrumental value. This means that the value or goodness of the pleasures which do have a place in a good life must consist of something more, or other than, their pleasantness, for the pleasures which have no place in a good human life share the property of pleasantness. In Book IX of the Republic, Plato attempts to distinguish good pleasures from bad. Apparently dissatisfied with this effort, Plato undertakes in the Philebus to restate his overall moral theory and its distinction between good and bad pleasures. In the Philebus, Plato argues that some pleasures are false, and that false pleasures have no place in a good life. Notwithstanding significant scholarly attention, Plato’s Philebus continues to generate significant interpretive and analytic dissensus at three levels. The first concerns the extent to which it provides a coherent and unified general account of pleasure. 1 The second concerns the extent to which it provides a coherent, unified, and normatively significant account of false pleasures. 2 The third concerns the extent to which its account of false pleasures coheres with its general account of pleasure, and with the account of true pleasures given in Book IX of the Republic. I will make an initial case for the coherence, unity, and normative significance of the account of false pleasures given in the Philebus. I will also suggest a reading of the Philebus which minimizes conflict between its general account of pleasure and its more specific account of false pleasures, while preserving a high degree of continuity between the Philebus and the Republic, especially Book IX.

XII—True and False Pleasures

Journal Article XII—True and False Pleasures Get access Sabina Lovibond Sabina Lovibond Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 90, Issue 1, 1 June 1990, Pages 213–230, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/90.1.213 Published: 09 September 2015

Can Pleasures Be False? (Philebus 36C-41B)

Socrates maintains, in Plato's Philebus , that besides ordinary pains and pleasures which occur in an organism when its natural harmonies are disturbed or restored, there are also certain anticipatory pleasures or pains, the pleasant, confident feeling of anticipation that precedes a pleasure, and apprehensive, distressful feeling that precedes a pain. 32C1-3)1 He observes that these anticipatory pleasures and pains involve a mental element, apprehension through memory of a condition opposed to one agent presently has. ( 3537-^2) This seems plausible enough. However, at 36C6-8 Socrates makes yet another proposal: Shall we say that these pains and pleasures are true or false? Or that some are true, and others not? Protarchus, interlocutor, resists this suggestion, and Socrates finds it necessary to go to considerable lengths (36c-4ib) in order to make sense of ascription of 'true' and 'false' to anticipatory pleasures and pains. Evidently attempt is successful, for by 40C8 he has Protarchus agreeing that false pleasures exist. The passage from 36C6 to 40C8 presents Plato's reader with two problems: What sense does it make to apply 'true' and 'false' to anticipatory pleasures and pains? And why does Plato have Socrates raise this issue at this stage of dialogue? In regard to first question, Socrates is mainly concerned with establishing that pleasures and pains can be false, although his argument is supposed to support thesis that they can be true as well. Again, Socrates is primarily interested in showing that pleasures can be false, although, in case of anticipatory pleasures and pains, same argument is supposed to work for proposition that pains can be false. To bring problem into sharper focus, let us consider two senses of 'false' in which it would be true, albeit uninteresting, to say that pleasures and pains are false, but neither of which is sense in which Socrates is proposing that anticipatory pleasures and pains are

Mixed and False Pleasure in the Philebus: A Reply

Mixed and False Pleasure in the Philebus: A Reply Get access James C. Dybikowski James C. Dybikowski University of British Columbia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 20, Issue 80, July 1970, Pages 244–247, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218397 Published: 01 July 1970

False Anticipatory Pleasures: Philebus 36a 3-41 a 6

n the first section of this paper, I try to set out a minimum of complication the philosophical considerations which bear upon the interpretation I offer in section II of Plato's account of false anticipatory pleasures. In the case of the uses of the words for belief, with and in, the order of exposition reverses the order of discovery: it was by noticing Plato's use of these words that I came to the philosophical points I make about them in section I of the paper. I am not here offering any general account of other kinds of false pleasures considered by Plato.

False Pleasure and the Philebus

The philosophical suggestiveness of Plato's discussion of false pleasure has been noted in some contemporary analyses of the concept of pleasure.' But the interpretation of Plato's account of how it is that these pleasures are false is still in doubt. J. C. Gosling and A. Kenny have debated this issue, centering their attention on the passage extending from 35 c to 41 b.2 In this paper I attempt to isolate an issue on which the debate has been inconclusive and move on from there to make some further suggestions for the interpretation of this controversial passage. WVhat I shall argue is that Plato does indeed make a mistake in his defence of the concept of false pleasure. But it will be my further claim that the mistake is not such a consequential one because the concept can be defended on other grounds. And, finally, I shall maintain that the concept is not only of considerable importance to the philosophy of mind owing to the analysis of pleasure which grounds it, but that it is of importance to moral philosophy as well and of greater importance than Plato insists upon in the Philebus.

Father Kenny on False Pleasures

IN PHRONESIS vol. 5 no i. Fr. Kenny produces some objections to an article of mine in the preceding number on the discussion of false pleasure in the Philebus (36c-4ib), and offers an alternative interpretation. On one point I think he may be right, and that is where he objects to the way I connected the first type of false pleasure with the second or third. I am not sure about this. The fact that Socrates allows his analysis (44a4 seq) to apply to present pleasures does not show that his concern is not with anticipatory ones, (as witness 39c); and the passage at 44a4 is part of a discussion whose points are to be used of people who, in great pain, consider release from it a pleasure. It must be admitted, however, that while there is mention of anticipation in that passage Socrates has become more interested in the concomitance of pain and pleasure and there is an almost imperceptible slide from talk of false to talk of mixed pleasures. For the rest, I think Fr. Kenny is largely wrong. I cannot treat of all his arguments, so I shall first make a few points about the analogy of pleasure and belief, then some on the importance of the Mcypoipo;, and finally bring out an important underlying issue on Plato's general theory of pleasure which, I think, predisposes each of us to his own interpretation. This last issue I shall not argue, but merely show its importance.

True and False Pleasures

True and False Pleasures

False Pleasures in the PHILEBUS: A Reply to Mr Gosling

IN PHRONESIS 4 (i959), 44-54., Mr. J. Gosling puts forward an interpretation of one section of Plato's discussion of false pleasures in the Philebus (36c-4ib). I wish to challenge certain points in his interpretation, and to suggest an alternative account which, I believe, attributes rather less confusion of thought to Plato. In his first paragraph, Mr. Gosling suggests that all false pleasures of the three types discussed by Plato are pleasures of anticipation. This is surely a mistake. The third type of false pleasure listed by Plato is pleasure which in reality is nothing but the absence of pain, which is misclassified by certain philosophers as pleasure. It is surely clear that present absence of pain could be so misclassified no less than future absence. That this type of false pleasure is in fact a contemporary, and not an anticipated, pleasure is suggested by Plato's language at 44a4f, where he is describing how its peculiar type of falsity arises. (EQ. H6oTpov oNv XaL X0Lp?Lv oZovTxLt t6r 6txv U1) XUT7ro L; HPQ.. pca' yoi3v.) Further, Plato makes a distinction between the false pleasures of the first type, which are +euae Zv e'V 'oclqrv oVOpC0iTcoV kuXctc Bovox (4oc ), and the false pleasures of the third type which are Bov ..'... rV T0OZ 4X064 (42c6). In the context, 'pleasures in men's souls' are pleasures of anticipation (cf. the argument of 32a-36c, and especially 39d2), and it is surely not accidental that a different phrase is used to refer to pleasures of the third kind. Mr. Gosling seems therefore mistaken in believing that it is only to pleasures of anticipation that Plato is prepared to attribute falseness.' He may have been led into this mistake through thinking that Socrates agrees with Protarchus' assertion (36es-Io) that in no circumstances does a man ever think that he is enjoying himself when he is not. It is not clear from his article whether Mr. Gosling really thinks this; but one might well be led into thinking it because in the section under discussion Socrates twice insists that a pleasure's being false does not imply that it is not really a pleasure any more than a belief's being false implies that it is not really a belief (37b2, 4od7). However, both Socrates'

False Pleasures : Philebus 35c-41 b

A MONG the various problems concerning Plato's attribution of falsity to pleasures I shall not merely confine myself to those that arise in the Philebus, but wvithin the Philebus to the question of the first type of 'false pleasure.' It is, however, worth noting that there are three types there treated and how they are distinguislhed. The passage on the falsity of pleasures may roughly be divided as follows: I.3 2a-36c: Socrates examines pleasures of anticipation in general, how they arise from a present lack, and the connection of desire with perception and memory. ii. 36c-37: the question of the falsity of such pleasures is introduced in a general way. iii. 37-4ib: the attribution of falsity is defended with regard to the first type. iv. 4ib-42c: the second type is described. v. 42C seq.: the third type is described.