The Good Life According to Plato
What would you give to hear perhaps the world’s greatest philosopher share his personal recipe for the good life?
This is exactly what we get in Plato’s The Philebus, one of his final works and his ultimate say on the question of how an individual can live a good life. This dialogue, unfortunately, has a reputation for its difficulty, so my aim here is to present the ideas as simply as possible.
Is knowledge or pleasure more responsible for the good life?
When the The Philebus begins, the characters Socrates and Philebus have already come to a stalemate in their debate about whether knowledge or pleasure is most responsible for the good life. Socrates favors knowledge and Philebus favors pleasure. Philebus, however, has already grown bored of the conversation and quickly drops out. His friend Protarchus jumps in and along with Socrates becomes the main character for the remainder of the dialogue.
The lives of pleasure without knowledge and knowledge without pleasure
To further pursue the question of whether knowledge or pleasure is most responsible for the good life, Socrates and Protarchus explore what it would look like to live a life of pleasure without knowledge and a life of knowledge without pleasure.
The life of pleasure without knowledge
They find that a life of pleasure without knowledge would essentially be reduced to that of a mollusk or jellyfish: one would have no ability to remember past pleasures, to be aware of current pleasures, or to anticipate future pleasures. One would just simply ‘float along’, albeit in a pleasant state. The catch, though, is that without any capacity for self-knowledge, one wouldn’t know one was in a pleasant state. This, they both agree, is insufficient.
The life of knowledge without pleasure
Then they explore a life of knowledge without pleasure, a life in which one has perfect awareness and recall, along with perfect understanding, but doesn’t experiences the faintest trace of good feeling. They find this to be insufficient, too.
The mixed life
This leads them to agree that a ‘mixed life’ of knowledge and pleasure is preferable to either of the above alternatives.
With this point settled, the question becomes: what sorts of knowledge and pleasure should be mixed together for the best result?
Pure and impure knowledge
They identify two types of knowledge; that which is pure and that which is impure. Pure knowledge is theoretical, while impure knowledge is practical.
Theoretical knowledge is “pure” because it has the capacity for absolute precision which cannot be matched by practical knowledge. For example, theoretical knowledge includes the knowledge of a perfect circle, which is something that cannot exist in the physical world – every circle someone draws in the physical world will be at least slightly imperfect in some way. So, theoretical knowledge is pure in the sense that it is ideal. Practical knowledge is impure in the sense that it will inevitably include imperfection.
They find an analog to pure and impure knowledge in pleasure. To understand this analogy, we must briefly review Plato’s general theory of pleasure.
Pleasure as replenishment and pain as deterioration
Plato’s general theory of pleasure is as follows: Human health is the natural condition in which all parts of the body and mind are in harmony. When this harmony is disrupted, we experience pain, and when this harmony is restored, we feel pleasure. For example, if we become thirsty, then the pain of thirst has disrupted the harmonious state of our health. As a result, we feel pain. When we drink water, we restore our body to its harmonious state and feel pleasure. These pleasures are “impure” because they are preceded by pain, which is pleasure’s opposite. In fact, the larger the preceding pain, the larger the pleasure. For example, intense thirst or hunger will result in an intense pleasure of restoration.
As physical beings, we are never able to reach a theoretical state of perfect health, for the same reason that we cannot draw a perfect circle – ideals cannot be attained in the physical world. So, our health is constantly in flux as our bodies experience various disruptions and restorations. However, many of these disruptions and restorations are so small that they fall below our conscious awareness. We simply don’t notice that we are thirsty, or hungry, etc., until these disruptions reach a certain threshold of intensity that draws our attention to them.
Pure pleasures are unmixed with pain
There are, however, many things that can benefit us even when we don’t know we are lacking in them. For example, we might learn some great piece of wisdom from a song lyric we have never heard before.
For this reason, there will be times when we can feel a pleasure of a restoration without first experiencing a noticeable pain of disruption. When this happens, we feel a “pure pleasure,” or a pleasure that has not been preceded by or accompanied with a noticeable pain, as long as these experiences are not preceded by a “hunger” of sorts (whether this is a literal hunger or a figurative hunger for information, experience, and the like).
Often, pure pleasures are intellectual in nature – they include the pleasures of learning, of creating, of practicing, and the like. Pure pleasures can also include the pleasures of sense perceptions, such as enjoying a nice fragrance, or the sounds and beauty of the natural world, etc. They can also include aesthetic pleasures, such as those that arise from participation in or enjoyment of the arts.
The recipe for the good life: deciding the mixture
With the main possible ingredients identified – pure and impure knowledge, and pure and impure pleasure, Socrates and Protarchus are ready to begin creating their recipe for the good life. Socrates employs the metaphor of a drink mixer whose task is to determine the right combination of water (knowledge) and honey (pleasure).
The good life, they agree, is a life according to which anyone who has it and has no fear of losing it has everything they need and will not desire anything else.
All knowledge is good
They first admit pure or theoretical knowledge, but then quickly decide to ‘open the door’ to all knowledge, pure and impure. This includes all of the arts and the sciences. To live a good life, we need theoretical knowledge, which is necessary for understanding the world around us. Theoretical knowledge is knowledge that things are a certain way (e.g. that fire is hot, that gravity pulls things downward, etc).
But we also need practical knowledge to get by day-to-day. Practical or impure knowledge is what allows us to build a house, make a shopping list, learn a musical instrument, etc. It is, in a word, know-how.
Some pleasures are better than others
With all knowledge admitted into the good life, Socrates and Protarchus then turn to the question of what to do about pleasure. They quickly allow all pure pleasures into the good life, but pause at the impure pleasures. After some deliberation they admit a select few classes of impure pleasures: the necessary pleasures (e.g. the pleasures of eating, drinking, and sexual reproduction), and the pleasures that accompany acts of virtue (e.g. pleasures of temperance, prudence, courage, and justice).
And then they toss out the rest.
Why are some pleasures rejected?
The question as to why pleasures — aside from the pure, necessary, and virtuous — are rejected is complex. Socrates suggests that pleasure is inherently unlimited. It tends to be transient, unstable, or subject to flux. Further, it is addictive. After we get a taste of pleasure, we tend to crave more and more of it. So, we need to impose some sort of limit on our desire for it.
Necessary pleasures can be included in the good life to the extent to which they support our overall health, because we can use health itself as the standard or limit that helps us to regulate our pursuit of it. This means necessary pleasures are good for us insofar as they support our mental and physical health, and bad for us insofar as they don’t. In the case of necessary pleasures, we therefore apply the limit to pleasure that it lacks in itself, and in so doing, we make it good.
So, it seems that Socrates and Protarchus would agree that, for example, the pleasures of gaining wealth and honors would also be good for us insofar as these pleasures legitimately support our mental and physical well-being. But the pleasures of pursuing these things without reference to such a standard, e.g., the pleasures of ‘getting as rich and famous as possible’ are unlimited and unhealthy. There’s no limit to more, and therefore a life devoted to the pursuit of more without end will be unregulated.
The good life
With that, they’ve finished their recipe: the good life is like a glass of water (knowledge) with a few drops of honey (pleasure) in it.
The mixture itself, and not its individual elements, proves to be the most important aspect of the good life. The tools that allow for creation of the mixture — that is, our reasoning faculties — prove to be more responsible for the good life than is pleasure, yet pleasure remains an indispensable part of the good life all the same.
Photo Credits:
Photo of water by Anda Ambrosini on Unsplash
Photo of mollusk by Dustin Humes on Unsplash
