Aristoteles Por

THE PLEASURES OF REASON IN PLATO,
ARISTOTLE, AND THE HELLENISTIC

HEDONISTS
Human lives are full of pleasures and pains. And humans are creatures
that are able to think: to learn, understand, remember and recall, plan
and anticipate. Ancient philosophers were interested in both of these
facts and, what is more, were interested in how these two facts are
related to one another. There appear to be, after all, pleasures and
pains associated with learning and inquiring, recollecting and antici-
pating. We enjoy finding something out. We are pained to discover
that a belief we hold is false. We can think back and enjoy or be upset
by recalling past events. And we can plan for and enjoy imagining
pleasures yet to come. This book is about what Plato, Aristotle, the
Epicureans, and the Cyrenaics had to say about these relationships
between pleasure and reason.
james warren is a Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of

Cambridge and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is the author of
Epicurus and Democritean Ethics (2002), Facing Death: Epicurus and his
Critics (2004), and Presocratics (2007), and the editor of The Cambridge
Companion to Epicureanism (2009) and, with Frisbee Sheffield, The
Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy (2014). He has published
articles on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy.
THE PLEASURES OF REASON
IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE,
AND THE HELLENISTIC
HEDONISTS
JAMES WARREN
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© James Warren 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Warren, James, 1974–
The pleasures of reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic hedonists / James Warren.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-107-02544-8
1. Plato. 2. Aristotle. 3. Epicureans (Greek
philosophy) 4. Pleasure. 5. Reason. 6. Learning. I. Title.
b398.p56w37 2014
180–dc23
2014018779
isbn 978-1-107-02544-8 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
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For Dad, in memory of Mum
ἡδὺ πανταχόθεν ἡ φίλου μνήμη τεθνηκότος.

Epicurus in Plutarch, Non Posse 1105e
Contents
Acknowledgements page ix
List of abbreviations x
1 Introduction: the pleasures of reason 1

Pleasure and logismos 1
Knowing and learning 4
Planning ahead 6
Remembering and anticipating 7
Reason and emotion 9
What the lion anticipates 11
Damascius and the donkey 19
2 Plato on the pleasures and pains of knowing 21

Pleasures and pains of learning in the Philebus 23
The pleasures and pains of the cave 29
Coming-to-know and continuing to know 32
Resolving the difficulty 37
A proposal 46
Philebus 55a: pleasure, thought, and the divine life 50
3 Aristotle on the pleasures of learning and knowing 52

A natural desire to know 53
Pleasures of thought in the Nicomachean Ethics 57
Learning and pleasure in Rhetoric 1.11 67
Learning and pleasure in Poetics 4 71
Conclusions 77
4 Epicurus and Plutarch on pleasure and human nature 79

Epicureans on the pleasures of learning and knowing 79
Epicureans against Plato, Platonists against Epicurus 83
Plutarch’s Platonist attack on Epicurean pleasures 86
Plutarch and the pleasures of reason 95
Conclusions 102
vii
viii Contents
5 Measuring future pleasures in Plato’s Protagoras and Philebus 104
Weighing and measuring 105
Measurement, illusion, and prudentialism 111
The salvation of life 116
Philebus 41e–42c 119
Conclusions 127
6 Anticipation, character, and piety in Plato’s Philebus 129

Anticipation and false pleasure 129
True and false pleasures and piety 136
The unity of a life 140
Character and false pleasure 145
Protagorean hedonism and consistency 151
Conclusions 154
7 Aristotle on the pleasures and pains of memory 157

Memory, character, and pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics 157
Memory and phantasia 163
The memories of Eumaeus 168
8 Epicureans and Cyrenaics on anticipating and recollecting

pleasures 175
Epicurean prudential reasoning 175
The limits of prudential reasoning 186
Epicureans and their critics on memory, anticipation, and pleasure 196
Cyrenaic recommendations 201
The pleasures of confident expectation 204
Conclusions 207
9 Epilogue 210
References 213
Index locorum 225
Subject index 233
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for comments on earlier versions
of these chapters: Jenny Bryan, Victor Caston, Sylvain Delcomminette,
Nicholas Denyer, Mehmet Erginel, Benjamin Harriman, Dhananjay
Jagannathan, Georgia Moroutsou, Olivier Renaut, Malcolm Schofield,
David Sedley, Oliver Thomas, Voula Tsouna, Junyi Zhao, and the anon-
ymous readers for Cambridge University Press. I would also like to thank
Michael Sharp at Cambridge University Press and Jan Chapman for her
keen-eyed copy-editing.
Parts of this work have been presented to audiences in Cambridge,
London, Oxford, and Paris. The reactions of the audiences on these occasions
have been invaluable.
Parts of this book are based on work published elsewhere as parts of
Warren 2001a, 2010, 2011a, and forthcoming b. I thank the respective pub-
lishers and editors for their permission to reuse this material. Translations of
ancient texts are my own except where a translator is named.
I would like to thank my colleagues in the Faculty of Classics at the
University of Cambridge and Corpus Christi College for their encourage-
ment and advice and for covering my teaching and administrative duties
during my sabbatical leave for the academic year 2012–13, particularly the
members of the B Caucus in the Faculty and Marina Frasca-Spada, Thomas
Land, and Emma Wilson at Corpus Christi.
I also thank my family and, most of all, Sara Owen.
ix
Abbreviations
Arist. Aristotle
APo. Posterior Analytics
De An. De Anima (On the Soul)
De Insom. De Insomniis (On Dreams)
De Mem. On Memory
EE Eudemian Ethics
GA On the Generation of Animals
HA Historia Animalium
MA On the Motion of Animals
Metaph. Metaphysics
NE Nicomachean Ethics
PA De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts of Animals)
Phys. Physics
Poet. Poetics
Rhet. Rhetoric
Sens. De Sensu (On Perception)
Top. Topics
Aul. Gell. Aulus Gellius
Noct. Att. Attic Nights
Cic. Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Fin. De Finibus
Tusc. Tusculan Disputations
Clement of Alexandria
Strom. Miscellanies
Damascius
In Phileb. Lectures on Plato’s Philebus
DK H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
6th edition (Berlin, 1952)
DL Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
x
List of abbreviations xi
Epic. Epicurus
Ep. Hdt. Letter to Herodotus
Ep. Men. Letter to Menoeceus
Ep. Pyth. Letter to Pythocles
KD Kyriai Doxai
Nat. On Nature
SV Sententiae Vaticanae (Vatican Sayings)
Eur. Euripides
Or. Orestes
Euseb. Eusebius
PE Praeparatio Evangelica
Hom. Homer
Il. Iliad
Od. Odyssey
Iambl. Iamblichus
Prot. Protrepticus
Lucr. Lucretius
DRN De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
PHerc. Herculaneum papyrus
Plat. Plato
Gorg. Gorgias
Phaed. Phaedo
Phdr. Phaedrus
Phileb. Philebus
Prot. Protagoras
Rep. Republic
Symp. Symposium
Theaet. Theaetetus
Tim. Timaeus
Plut. Plutarch
Adv. Col. Against Colotes
An Seni On Whether an Old Man Should Be a Ruler
De Adul. On Flattery
De An. Procr. in Tim. On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus
De Aud. Poet. On How to Listen to Poets
De Soll. An. On the Cleverness of Animals
De Stoic. Repug. On Stoic Self-contradictions
Lat. Viv. On the Maxim ‘Live Unknown’
xii List of abbreviations
Non Posse On the Fact That It Is Impossible to Live
Pleasantly Following Epicurus
Quaest. Conv. Dinner-party Questions
Quaest. Plat. Platonic Questions
Virt. Mor. On Moral Virtue
Polyst. Polystratus
De irrat. cont. On Irrational Contempt for Common Opinions
(PHerc. 336/1150)
Procl. Proclus
In Plat. Rem Pub. Commentary on Plato’s Republic
Sen. Seneca (the Younger)
Ep. Mor. Moral Letters
Sext. Emp. Sextus Empiricus
PH Pyrrōneioi Hypotupōseis (Outlines of
Pyrrhonism)
SSR G. Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum
Reliquiae (Naples, 1990)
Suda Greek Lexicon formerly known as Suidas
Thuc. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Usener H. Usener, Epicurea (Leipzig, 1887)
Xen. Xenophon
Mem. Memorabilia
chapter 1
Introduction: the pleasures of reason
Human lives are full of pleasures and pains. And humans are creatures that
are able to think: to learn, understand, remember and recall, plan and
anticipate. Ancient philosophers were interested in both of these facts
and, what is more, were interested in how these two facts are related to
one another. There appear to be, after all, pleasures and pains associated
with learning and inquiring, recollecting and anticipating. We enjoy finding
something out. We are pained to discover that a belief we hold is false. We
can think back and enjoy or be upset by recalling past events. And we can
plan for and enjoy imagining pleasures yet to come. This book is about what
Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, and the Cyrenaics had to say about these
relationships between pleasure and reason. It focusses on Plato, Aristotle,
and these two Hellenistic schools because, as I hope will emerge from the
chapters to follow, we find there some of the richest material on the topic.
There are also thematic and dialectical links between these philosophers, so
when we consider them together an ancient philosophical conversation
arises about the pleasures of reason.
Pleasure and logismos

Early in Plato’s Philebus, Socrates and his interlocutor, Protarchus, come to
agree that a human life must involve not only experiences of pleasure and
pain but also various activities that they classify as falling under the umbrella
term ‘reasoning’ (logismos). At the very opening of the dialogue Socrates
gives a list of the activities he has in mind when he first introduces to
Protarchus the dispute between himself and Philebus:
Φίληβος μὲν τοίνυν ἀγαθὸν εἶναί φησι τὸ χαίρειν πᾶσι ζῴοις καὶ τὴν ἡδονὴν
καὶ τέρψιν, καὶ ὅσα τοῦ γένους ἐστὶ τούτου σύμφωνα· τὸ δὲ παρ’ ἡμῶν
ἀμφισβήτημά ἐστι μὴ ταῦτα, ἀλλὰ τὸ φρονεῖν καὶ τὸ νοεῖν καὶ μεμνῆσθαι καὶ
τὰ τούτων αὖ συγγενῆ, δόξαν τε ὀρθὴν καὶ ἀληθεῖς λογισμούς, τῆς γε
ἡδονῆς ἀμείνω καὶ λῴω γίγνεσθαι σύμπασιν ὅσαπερ αὐτῶν δυνατὰ
1
2 Introduction: the pleasures of reason
μεταλαβεῖν· δυνατοῖς δὲ μετασχεῖν ὠφελιμώτατον ἁπάντων εἶναι πᾶσι τοῖς
οὖσί τε καὶ ἐσομένοις. (Phileb. 11b4–c2)
So Philebus here says that for all animals what is good is enjoyment, pleasure,
delight, and everything consonant with this. My position, in disagreement
with his, is that these are not good but that being wise, understanding,
remembering and things like that, and correct belief and true reasoning, are
better than pleasure and more desirable for all things that can have a share in
them. Sharing in them is the most advantageous thing of all for all those who
can do so, both now and in the future.
A little later, when Socrates and Protarchus consider in turn a life of just those
things that Philebus thinks are good and a life of just those things that Socrates
prefers, we find a similar list of cognitive capacities (21a14–d1). Socrates sets
aside being wise (to phronein), understanding (to noein), reasoning (to logi-
zesthai), memory (mnēmē), knowledge (epistēmē), and opinion (doxa).
Socrates sums up a life without any of these capacities as a life deprived of
logismos (21c5).
Socrates and Protarchus soon agree that a choice-worthy human life
cannot be deprived either of thinking or of pleasure. A good human life
will be a mixture that combines these activities of reason with pleasures,
perhaps ideally only pleasures of a certain kind, to produce a harmonious
and ordered result. That claim leaves a lot still to be worked out and many of
the details of Socrates’ eventual and considered proposals are unclear. What
is clear, however, is that these activities of logismos have a series of complex
relationships with pleasures and pains; certainly, Socrates does not think of a
good human life as simply a collection of a set of experiences of pleasure and
pain on the one hand and then, on the other hand, a set of activities of
reasoning. Rather, human reasoning gives rise to pleasures and pains of its
own: there are pleasures of thinking, believing, learning, remembering, and
so on. And this gives rise to another of Socrates’ concerns since he also insists
that there are some such pleasures that should and others that should not be
part of the eventual mixture of a good human life. Pleasures can be false, he
notoriously maintains, and such false pleasures should not be part of a good
human life. The falsehood of these false pleasures is itself not a simple thing
to understand, but it is certainly connected with these pleasures being
intimately involved with, or stemming from, or arising out of, certain
human capacities for reasoning. To put it very crudely, the same capacity
for forming true beliefs will also allow us to form false beliefs. And, in so far
as pleasures may similarly arise from our taking the world to be a certain
way, Socrates thinks that those pleasures themselves may also be thought of
as true or false. The precise understanding of the claim that there are false
Pleasure and logismos 3
and true pleasures will return later in my discussion. For now, it is men-
tioned just to signal the simple point that, for Socrates in the Philebus, and
indeed for many of the ancient philosophers, pleasures and pains can have a
subtle but important relationship with our reasoning capacities: we can
enjoy or be distressed by things we believe or know or calculate or remem-
ber or anticipate. And just as we can be correct or mistaken in our beliefs
and calculations and expectations, there might be something similar to be
said about the relevant pleasures too.
In some ways ‘the pleasures of reason’ might appear to refer to a narrower
subject matter than in fact I go on to discuss. The choice of the title is
determined to some extent by an attempt to respect a widespread ancient
psychological presumption that humans differ from all other animals by
possessing a certain rational capacity. But that might make it reasonable to
question why ‘the pleasures of reason’ in this sense can include pleasures of
remembering and anticipating. After all, memory and anticipation of a sort are
agreed by Plato and Aristotle to be psychological capacities present not only in
humans and therefore they are not capacities whose presence is dependent
on the presence of a rational part of the soul. On the other hand, ‘the pleasures
of cognition’ threatens to make the field too broad: it would include the
pleasures of all forms of perception in so far as our ancient philosophers tend
to think of the activity of our senses as a form of cognition. ‘The pleasures of
thinking’ might have been a compromise between these two. I emphasise
‘reason’ rather than ‘thinking’, however, since these philosophers agreed that
there is a distinctively human faculty of reason and my topic is their account of
the pleasures and pains that occur in human lives because we are animals with
that capacity of reason.1 If some of what is said turns out also to be applicable to
other animals because they too are in fact capable of some of the relevant
psychological functions then that will not diminish the relevance of those same
accounts for us humans. Besides, even granted that some of these are capacities
we share with other animals, it seems to me that, for those of the ancient
thinkers whose views on the matter we can reconstruct, this distinctively
human rational capacity is what is ultimately responsible in humans for our
being able to learn about and understand the world in the way that we do. It is
also, furthermore, responsible for the way in which we humans can remember
and anticipate, and plan ahead. Even if other animals have memories and can
1
Aristotle makes the possession of understanding (nous), thought (dianoia), or logismos the criterion for
differentiating humans from non-human animals (at least non-divine ones): De An. 2.3 414b16–18,
415a7–12. See Johansen 2012, 221–6.
perhaps in some sense think ahead, they do not do either of these in quite the
same way that humans do.
In any case, it is a plausible idea that the pleasures and pains we humans
experience through sense perception are also affected by our being rational
creatures. Plato and Aristotle, for example, would happily say that we humans
can enjoy seeing things that are well proportioned or listening to music that is
harmonious and ordered.2 Our capacity for reason makes a significant differ-
ence to how we perceive things and therefore to the pleasures and pains we
experience from those perceptions. Such pleasures and pains will play only a
minor role in what follows since my interest is in the main focussed on the
range of activities that Socrates in the Philebus assigned to logismos. But they
are perhaps worth bearing in mind as showing what the next step would be in
tracing the effect that our reasoning capacities have on our experience of
pleasure and pain generally.
This is merely an initial sketch of the subject matter. We can now turn to
set out in some more detail the three broad categories of pleasures and pains
to be discussed and outline some of the ways in which they are related to one
another. Those categories are: (1) pleasures and pains of learning, knowing,
and understanding; (2) pleasures and pains involved in planning and
prudential reasoning; (3) pleasures and pains from anticipating and
remembering.
Knowing and learning

The clearest examples of the pleasures that might be associated with this
human capacity for reasoning are the pleasures that arise from our learning,
discovering, and knowing something. In Plato’s Protagoras, Prodicus notes
that there are pleasures of learning as well as those concerned with bodily
experiences and explains that, in his opinion, we ought to mark this distinc-
tion linguistically.
ἡμεῖς τ’ αὖ οἱ ἀκούοντες μάλιστ’ ἂν οὕτως εὐφραινοίμεθα, οὐχ ἡδοίμεσθα –
εὐφραίνεσθαι μὲν γὰρ ἔστιν μανθάνοντά τι καὶ φρονήσεως μεταλαμβάνοντα
αὐτῇ τῇ διανοίᾳ, ἥδεσθαι δὲ ἐσθίοντά τι ἢ ἄλλο ἡδὺ πάσχοντα αὐτῷ τῷ
σώματι. (Prot. 337c1–4)3
2
See e.g. Arist. EE 3.2 1230b38–1231a5.
3
Denyer 2008, 141–2, notes that this distinction is in tension with the argument at the end of the
dialogue, which appears to treat all pleasures as homogeneous or, at least, commensurable. (At 358a7–
b2 Socrates explicitly comments that he will ignore Prodicus’ distinctions.) On Prodicus’ distinctions
see also Arist. Top. 2.6 112b21–6 and compare the vocabulary for pleasure used in the report of
Knowing and learning 5
Let those of us who are listening be cheered, not pleased. For ‘being cheered’
is what happens when one learns something or shares in understanding
through thinking itself, while ‘being pleased’ is what happens when one
eats something or experiences some other pleasure with the body itself.
It is sometimes pleasant to discover a new truth; it is sometimes pleasant to
acquire a belief. It can also be painful to learn things or to come to believe
things. All these pleasures and pains are such that they seem to be available
to us humans and not to other animals in virtue of our possession of a
certain kind of intellectual or rational capacity. This will be the first kind of
‘affective thinking’: pleasures and pains brought about by learning, discov-
ering, and knowing. Examples of this kind of affective thinking are the pain
Oedipus experiences when he discovers his true ancestry and the pleasure
the philosopher-ruler of Plato’s Republic is supposed to experience when he
or she comes to know the Good.
These capacities for learning and knowing involve the use of memory and
recollection in various ways. Learning has an obvious connection with
memory, both in the sense of learning skills and learning facts. Plato, at
least in some of his dialogues, offers the most radical connection between
learning and remembering by simply identifying the two. At Meno 81d4–5
Socrates asserts that ‘inquiry and learning, as a whole, are recollection
(anamnēsis)’. And he means by recollection here the retrieval of what a
person’s immortal soul has learned prior to entering into a body (81c5–d5).
Of course, this need not mean that everything a living person can be said to
know in any reasonable sense of the word ‘know’ is somehow recalled from a
prior non-corporeal existence, but Socrates is sure that some forms of
learning and knowledge are to be explained in that way. Others follow his
lead in exploring the role of memory in learning and inquiry in more
mundane ways. Aristotle is interested in the relation of memory to experi-
ence, skill, and the acquisition of knowledge, most obviously in APo. 2.19
and Metaph. A.1. And the Epicureans are interested in the role that mem-
orising the central tenets of their philosophy can play in assuring a good and
pleasant life. Having available a stock of important lessons and arguments is
important for equipping the Epicurean with ready material to counter any
novel anxieties or challenging situations. It is perhaps best to treat memory
of this kind as part of the general mechanism of learning and retrieving
Prodicus’ story of the choice of Heracles: Xen. Mem. 2.1.23–4. Wolfsdorf 2011 discusses all the evidence
and argues that this passage from the Protagoras does not faithfully report Prodicus’ view. Timaeus
distinguishes between hēdonē and euphrosynē at Tim. 80b5–8, noting that harmonious music produces
the former in fools and the latter in the wise because only the wise appreciate how these mortal
movements imitate divine harmony.
learned information. This is distinct from ‘autobiographical memory’,
which I shall introduce below.
Planning ahead
Humans also possess the ability to think about, evaluate, plan, and delib-
erate about different possible future courses of action. This capacity is
relevant to the present study in two ways. First, there are discussions of
the use of reason to plan ahead and maximise pleasures and minimise pains.
In this way our rational capacity is considered prominently in Plato’s
Protagoras in connection with a specifically hedonist axiology and Socrates
there famously develops an account of a hedonic calculus, recommending
ways in which we might better plan and evaluate future outcomes in terms
of the pleasures and pains involved and thereby maximise our pleasures and
minimise our pains over the course of a life. The afterlife of this account of
hedonist prudential reasoning and its use in more recent accounts of con-
sequentialist reasoning might itself warrant our considering the Protagoras in
this study. Epicurus, for example, takes up something like this model of
hedonist calculation and recommends it as part of a good and pleasant life.
But there is another connection that is rather more important, in part because
it is relevant for considerations of practical reasoning that are not themselves
committed to a hedonist account of value.
The account in the Protagoras does not consider the use of our reasoning
capacities in the evaluative procedure it recommends to be potentially pleas-
ant or painful itself. But in the Philebus Plato notes that planning of this kind
can produce pleasures and pains because it involves some kind of anticipatory
consideration of the various goods and bads (including pleasures and pains)
on offer and such anticipation can be pleasant or painful. He also notes that
such pleasures and pains can be termed ‘false’ if they are produced by
inaccurate estimations of the future experience. Aristotle does not pursue
the idea of false pleasures, but he does recognise in rational creatures the
faculty of deliberative imagination (phantasia bouleutikē), which involves
some kind of measuring by a single standard (De An. 3.11 434a5–10; he does
not there discuss whether in the process of such imagination there might also
be experienced pleasures and pains but it is reasonable to think that he would
agree that there might). Epicurus notes that ideally such a procedure will not
only ensure pleasure in the future but will also generate a pleasant confidence
in the present. These accounts of the affective aspect of thinking ahead to
future experiences are best considered in tandem with a similar discussion of
the affective aspects of remembering past experiences.
Remembering and anticipating 7
Remembering and anticipating
In addition to the general capacity for memory that is part of the mechanism
of learning and the general capacity for anticipating the future, we humans
are also able deliberatively and reflectively to look backwards to recall our
own past experiences and to look forwards to anticipate possible future
experiences. This ability allows us to stitch our lives together across time and
also to have some kind of access in the present to temporally remote parts of
our lives. Memory and anticipation in the sense I mean here are to be
distinguished from a more general ability to think about the past and the
future. Rather, in this particular sense, they are involved in a person’s
thinking about his or her own past and own future.4 By ‘memory’ therefore
I mean what is variously called ‘personal memory’, ‘autobiographical mem-
ory’, ‘recollective memory’, ‘episodic memory’, ‘experiential memory’, or
‘introversive memory’.5 By ‘anticipation’ here I mean just the counterpart of
this sense of memory: not the ability to look forward into the future
generally and wonder what might or might not happen, but an agent’s
ability to consider, bring to mind, or think over what he or she might do and
experience in the future. We can call it ‘introversive anticipation’.
This might be thought to be a limited activity of a more general ability
since memory in this sense is restricted to a person’s thinking of past events
in his or her own life. However, memory and anticipation in this sense are
also richer than the bare ability to think about the past and future. They
allow us to do things such as remember pains and pleasures or anticipate joy
and sadness. Our ability to think about our own past and future affective
experiences also allows us to plan and consider how best to maximise our
pleasures by thinking in a useful way about different possible future
experiences. It allows us to draw on our past experiences to learn and benefit
from them. And perhaps most intriguing of all, the ability to look forward
and backward to our future and past experiences allows us to generate
further affective responses in the present. We can remember and anticipate
with pleasure or with pain. We can remember our pleasures with pleasure
and be pained when we anticipate pains.
I will not offer my own account of what precisely is involved when we
remember an experience with pleasure or look forward to an experience
4
This is what makes memory interesting to people who are trying to offer an account of the criteria for
the persistence of a person over time. It also makes it unclear whether memory can serve as such a
criterion or, rather, is itself dependent on there being some persistent subject to prior parts of whose
life memory then may give access.
5
Cf. Annas 1992, 299–300; Bernecker 2010, 11–45.
with trepidation.6 Nevertheless, that we do engage in both of these kinds of
introspective thinking and are affected as we do so is itself not a trivial
observation and it attracted the attention of thoughtful ancient writers too.
In Chapters 6, 7, and 8 I explore some of what they had to say about it. There
are two important themes that deserve to be briefly noted here. First, there is
in these thinkers’ discussions a strong emphasis on the connection between
memory, anticipation, and the agent’s character over time. Autobiographical
memory and the affective aspects of autobiographical memory, for example,
are related to how the agent’s character changes or remains constant over time.
In brief, they tend to think that a person of good and stable character ought to
take pleasure in and be pained by the same things now as in the past. This is
also supposed to hold, mutatis mutandis, for an agent’s affective responses to
considerations of future experiences. Second, I suggest that we might distin-
guish in these thinkers two broad ways of thinking about the fact that we can
take pleasure and pain in our memories and in our anticipations.
On the first model, anticipating and recalling are thought to be means of,
so to speak, reaching out to the past or future and hauling some temporally
remote experience from there into our present. Within this model, we can
distinguish two further ideas. The first idea is that this ability to set together
a present with a non-present affective state allows an agent to arrange some
kind of comparison between the present affective state (pleased, pained,
neither pleased nor pained) and the anticipated or recollected state (pleased,
pained, neither pleased nor pained). The comparison between the two is
then noted and used to draw various further conclusions, for example about
the nature of pleasure and pain themselves, or this particular person’s
consistency of character and the like. The second idea is that the recollected
or anticipated pleasure can be used to help to improve one’s state in the
present by allowing us to ‘relive’ or ‘pre-live’ a pleasure. For example, the
Epicureans claim that recollecting and thereby reliving a past pleasant
experience is useful in producing a balance against a present pain.
The second model is a less common approach and is perhaps best
illustrated by contrast with the dominant form. In brief, unlike its counter-
part, this model does not assume that an experience that was painful to us in
the past will always be painful when we remember it. Sometimes a past
painful experience can be recalled with pleasure. What is more, the pleasure
we may feel in recalling that past painful experience is not simply because,
6
Such an account would need to build a story about affective content into a general account of
introversive memory or anticipation. The analysis in Bernecker 2010, ch. 8, offers some helpful steps in
this direction.
Reason and emotion 9
when placed in comparison with our present situation, that past experience
is merely revealed not to have been as bad as we once thought. Rather, we
can recall even with pleasure something that was genuinely painful at the
time. While this picture is less common in the ancient texts, we can detect
signs of it in Aristotle’s discussion of pleasure and memory in Rhet. 1.11.
Reason and emotion

In some cases it is less clear whether, in the view of these ancient philosophers,
the cognitive capacities involved in the relevant affective experience belong
exclusively to humans – and are therefore candidates for being ‘pleasures of
reason’ – or may also belong to non-human animals. I have already men-
tioned the pleasures and pains of perception. Another class of pleasures and
pains that might be approached in a similar fashion are those associated with
emotions or, as the ancient Greeks would describe them ‘affections’: pathē.
These will not form a major part of my discussion, but it is worth dwelling on
them just briefly. In humans emotions such as anger or fear are certainly
accompanied by pleasures and pains. And in humans emotions might be
thought to involve some kind of cognitive component since they seem to
involve ‘taking things to be’ in a certain fashion. Fear, for example, might
involve an agent in taking there to be some impending danger or harm and
therefore involve some cognitive input besides what is plausibly given by
sensory perception alone. Anger, for example, often seems to involve the
angry person in having a belief such as that some undeserved slight has been
suffered. On the other hand, it is also common both nowadays and in our
ancient sources to ascribe emotions such as fear and anger to non-human
animals that are incapable of reasoning or of forming beliefs.
The moral psychology of the pathē is a large and difficult topic which
would demand a different treatment for each of the various ancient philoso-
phers and schools.7 For the Stoics, for example, the answer is relatively clear
because they take an extreme view of the nature of emotions. For the Stoics,
non-human animals are not able to experience emotions and their relevant
pleasures and pains since emotions – pathē – are attendant upon if not
identical to a belief of some kind (e.g. the belief that someone has illegit-
imately wronged you). For a Stoic, a dog cannot, properly speaking, experi-
ence the emotion of anger since it cannot form such a judgement.8 For Plato,
7
For a good introduction see Price 2009.
8
It also follows that all emotions are based on false judgement since they take things to be good or bad
that are neither good nor bad; virtue is the only good and vice the only bad.
things are more complicated. We should probably say that different dialogues
offer different accounts of the emotions since they offer different general
accounts of the soul. Some seem to envisage the human soul as exclusively a
reasoning soul; others famously divide the embodied human soul into distinct
parts only one of which is identified as the rational soul and between which
there can be conflict as well as harmony. The analysis of the emotions will
depend upon these more general accounts which determine which activities
are psychic activities and which psychic activities are activities of the rational
or non-rational parts of the soul.
The case of Aristotle is perhaps more complicated still. Some commen-
tators argue that Aristotle’s account of the emotions does not see a necessary
role for rational capacities in every experience of a pathos.9 Aristotle some-
times talks about emotions arising when we come to believe something, for
example that something terrifying is present (e.g. De An. 3.3 427b21–4). But
he also sometimes talks about emotions being triggered just because things
‘appear’ to us a certain way, despite a belief to the contrary or in the absence
of a relevant belief.10 We can feel fear, for example, even in the absence of
the belief that things are as they currently appear to us (e.g. De Insom.
2 459b32–460a27). We may not act always on the basis of such an appear-
ance when there is a belief to the contrary but in the absence of such a belief
we will instead act and be moved, as non-human animals act and are moved,
simply on the basis of how things appear to us. We might therefore also be
subject to various emotions just on the basis of how things appear to us.11
The pleasures and pains that are associated with emotions are not necess-
arily, in that case, to be connected with our human rational capacities. Any
animal capable of perceiving or equipped with phantasia has the requisite
psychological equipment for experiencing emotions and the pleasures and
pains they involve.12 The alternative, and now perhaps the less common,
interpretation of Aristotle’s view of the emotions holds that the references to
the human agent ‘being appeared to’ in a certain way in cases of emotion is
9
For a clear introduction to the debate see Moss 2012a, 69–71, and see the remainder of the chapter for
her own view.
10
Cf. NE 7.6 1149a32–b1: either logos or phantasia can ‘make clear’ to a person that he has been slighted,
after which spirit (thumos) ‘as if having reasoned it out’ (ὥσπερ συλλογισάμενος) becomes enraged.
Aristotle argues that phantasia and opinion must be distinct capacities because the sun ‘appears’ to be
about a foot in diameter even to people who believe that it is vastly larger than Earth (De An. 3.3
428b2–4; cf. De Insom. 2 460b18–20).
11
For interpretations of Aristotle’s account of the emotions on these lines see Cooper 1996 and Striker
1996a. See also Moss 2009 and 2012a, 100–33, who builds on such a view to interpret Aristotle’s
account of akrasia.
12
The discussion in Sihvola 1996 makes good use of references to animal emotions in the biological
works.
sufficient for us to infer that in those cases too there must be some involve-
ment of our rational capacities.13
It is worth noting that there is a case for seeing Aristotle’s account of the
pleasures and pains of the pathē in human lives as related to our reasoning
capacities even if he is sometimes inclined to account for them as caused by
perception or phantasia, capacities which he does not restrict only to human
animals. Lions see things; they have a capacity for memory, some ability to
foresee consequences, form desires, and so on. Nevertheless, given that
humans are rational creatures, Aristotle will hold that our cognitive grasp
of the world around us is different from that of non-rational creatures. This
difference lies not only in the sense that we are able to form beliefs and non-
rational creatures are not. We also perceive the world differently in virtue of
the possession of reason. We can perceive something as a tree, or a threat, or
an insult. Hence, we remember or envisage things in ways that non-human
animals cannot. We humans are not, in other words, just non-human
animals with a reasoning capacity bolted on. The presence of that reasoning
capacity transforms the cognitive capacities that we possess and that are also
possessed by other animals and will therefore affect any pleasures and pains
arising from the pathē that these shared capacities produce.14
What the lion anticipates

Considering Aristotle’s view a little further will illustrate how even when we
do find examples in his writings of relevant pleasures that are experienced by
both human and non-human animals – for example, the pleasure involved
in anticipating some future experience – there is nevertheless often a
distinction to be drawn between the experiences of human and non-
human animals that is explained by the presence in humans alone of certain
rational capacities. There are similar points that might be made about the
other philosophers’ attitude to non-human animal psychology but Aristotle
is perhaps the most interesting case because we have quite a lot of evidence
for his view and also because his view has been subjected to more recent
interpretative scrutiny.15
13
A recent defence of the view that emotions must involve some kind of opinion can be found in Dow
2009 (cf. Dow 2011). This involves reading references to ‘being appeared to’ in accounts of the
emotions – especially in the Rhetoric – as references to how the agent believes things to be and not to
the activities of phantasia as attributed to some non-human animals.
14
See Heath 2009, 53–7; cf. Moss 2012a, 22–47, esp. 40, 64–6, 88–9.
15
For the Epicureans, for example, it seems that other animals do not experience emotions as humans
do even though they do experience the pathē of pleasure and pain and may as a result be said to
experience something like an instinctive fear of imminent danger. See Konstan 2008, 18–22. There is
The details of Aristotle’s account of human and animal psychology are
often controversial. Some things, however, are clear. He says that humans
have a certain capacity for reason while non-human animals do not (De An.
3.3 428a23–4).16 Some non-human animals are nevertheless able to exercise a
capacity for memory and, like humans, also to possess the capacity for
‘imagination’ (phantasia) (De An. 3.3 428a19–24). There are differences
between kinds of non-human animals. Some of them are only just capable
of perception and are incapable of self-motion. Not all of them have the
capacity of memory (Metaph. A.1 980a27–9; cf. APo. 2.19 99b34–100a3). Not
all of them have the capacity of phantasia.17 The psychological landscape is
varied; levels of psychological abilities vary between different species of animal
and not only between humans and all other animals.18
So there are some things that humans can do that might be captured by
the broad category of ‘thinking’ that non-human animals cannot do and
there are other things that we might capture in the broad category of
‘thinking’ that both human and some non-human animals share.19 From
Aristotle’s perspective, the capacities that Socrates used to gloss the notion
of logismos at Phileb. 21c1–d1 do not map neatly and exclusively on to the
psychological capacities that belong only to human animals. There are, in
fact, signs also in the Philebus that Socrates recognises important continu-
ities between the types of cognition available to human and some non-
human animals. A simple mollusc will be an extreme contrasting case with a
rational human but other animals might share some important capacities
with us.20 Nevertheless, Socrates and Protarchus are guided in their dis-
cussion by the principal concern of outlining the nature of a good human
life. Something similar is also the case for Aristotle. His inquiry into human
eudaimonia in the ethical works requires him to think principally about
human psychology. His inquiry into the nature of the soul in his physical
works has a different focus and will include also accounts of the psychology
certainly evidence for the Epicureans thinking that other animals cannot anticipate or recollect their
own past experiences. See Polyst. De Irrat. Cont. (PHerc. 336/1150) I–IV Indelli 1978 and Warren
2002a, 137–8.
16
Some texts bracket these lines for deletion.
17
See De An. 3.3 428a10–11: ants, bees, and grubs do not have phantasia. (The text here is debated but
certainly some animals are denied this capacity. This is one of the premises in Aristotle’s argument for
the conclusion that perception and phantasia are distinct.) Compare De An. 3.10 433a12–13: Aristotle
refers to ‘the other animals’ that have the capacity phantasia but not understanding (noēsis) or
calculation (logismos). Cf. De An. 3.10 433b27–30.
18
Osborne 2007, 87–94, stresses the continuities of psychological capacities between humans and non-
human animals. See also Coles 1997. Cf. Sorabji 1993, 12–20; Heath 2009, 52–8.
19
The class of ‘non-human animals’ I have in mind here excludes divine living things, which both Plato
and Aristotle are inclined to think of as possessing rational capacities.
20
See e.g. Phileb. 35c9–10 and 36b8–9; this is emphasised by Lorenz 2006a, 102.
of non-human living things. His inquiries into animals in the biological
works will also have a different focus and, sometimes, explanations of non-
human animal behaviour will involve attributing to them some means of
foresight or understanding.
Even once we recognise that there are psychological continuities between
human and non-human animals, we might qualify the sense in which
humans and animals have some of the same capacities. For Aristotle, even
those capacities that are shared by other animals – for example, memory –
are not the same in a lion as in a human. It is clear that dogs have an ability
to retain in some way a memory of past experiences. At least, their behaviour
suggests that they are able to remember their owners, know that the post
arrives in the morning, and so on.21 In the wild, some animals’ hunting
behaviour also suggests that they have an ability to anticipate events in some
way. However, it is much less plausible to imagine that a dog sitting by the
fire in the evening is able deliberately to reminisce about the fun he had
playing in the park that afternoon or to think ahead to what fun he might
have the next day. (That dogs might dream of such things – indeed enjoy
dreaming of such things – is a different matter since dreams too are not
voluntary.) Humans can deliberately reminisce and anticipate and we can
experience pleasures and pains as we do so.22
There is a well-known passage, however, which suggests that Aristotle
holds not only that non-human animals anticipate pleasures and pains but
also that they can take pleasure in the anticipation of a future pleasure.
οὐκ ἔστι δὲ οὐδ’ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῴοις κατὰ ταύτας τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἡδονὴ πλὴν
κατὰ συμβεβηκός. οὐδὲ γὰρ ταῖς ὀσμαῖς τῶν λαγωῶν αἱ κύνες χαίρουσιν
ἀλλὰ τῇ βρώσει, τὴν δ’ αἴσθησιν ἡ ὀσμὴ ἐποίησεν· οὐδ’ ὁ λέων τῇ φωνῇ τοῦ
βοὸς ἀλλὰ τῇ ἐδωδῇ· ὅτι δ’ ἐγγύς ἐστι, διὰ τῆς φωνῆς ᾔσθετο, καὶ χαίρειν δὴ
ταύτῃ φαίνεται· ὁμοίως δ’ οὐδ’ ἰδὼν “ἢ [εὑρὼν] ἔλαφον ἢ ἄγριον αἶγα,” ἀλλ’
ὅτι βορὰν ἕξει. περὶ τὰς τοιαύτας δ’ ἡδονὰς ἡ σωφροσύνη καὶ ἡ ἀκολασία
ἐστὶν ὧν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ζῷα κοινωνεῖ, ὅθεν ἀνδραποδώδεις καὶ θηριώδεις
φαίνονται· αὗται δ’ εἰσὶν ἁφὴ καὶ γεῦσις. (NE 3.10 1118a16–26)
Nor is it the case in other animals that there is even any pleasure from these
senses [sc. sight, smell, and hearing] except incidentally. For it is not the case
21
Consider the case of Argus, Odysseus’ dog, who waits for years for his master’s return and then
recognises him just by his scent (since Odysseus is in disguise): Hom. Od. 17.290–327, esp. 301.
22
De An. 3.3 427b14–26; phantasia is ‘up to us whenever we wish’. Aristotle also distinguishes between
animals that also use phantasia for deliberation and those that do not. The former are those that are
also able to reason. De An. 3.11 434a5–10: aisthētikē phantasia is present in other animals too but
bouleutikē phantasia is only in those with logismos. Cf. Nussbaum 1978, 263–4: not every phantasia of a
rational creature will be a rational phantasia.
that hunting dogs take pleasure in the scents of hares; rather, they take
pleasure only in eating them (though the smell made the dogs notice the
hares). Nor does the lion take pleasure in the sound of the ox; rather, it enjoys
devouring it. The lion perceived that the ox was close through its lowing and
merely appears to take pleasure in the sound. Similarly, the lion is not pleased
by the sight of ‘a dear or a fierce goat’, but because it will have food. Those are
the sorts of pleasures with which self-control and wantonness are concerned
and which the other animals share, as a result of which they are revealed as
slavish and bestial: the ones to do with touch and taste.
The immediate aim of this passage is to bolster Aristotle’s assertion that self-
control and wantonness (sōphrosynē and akolasia) concern only the pleasures
of touch and taste and not those of the other senses. These pleasures are
shared by non-human animals and are therefore rightly sometimes termed
‘bestial’.23 In passing, Aristotle offers some brief comments on non-human
animals that might suggest that they too are capable of taking pleasure in
imagining some future pleasant experience. For example, it might be
claimed that this passage suggests that the lion takes pleasure in the prospect
of eating in the sense that it enjoys ‘envisaging the prospect’ of the meal.
The quotation at 1118a22–3 is from Homer, Il. 3.21–9 and is part of a
description of Menelaus, who has seen Paris in the Trojan ranks and, like
a lion spotting prey in the distance, feels great joy (ἐχάρη, 3.23, 27).
Menelaus is pleased not simply by the sight of Paris but also by the
anticipation of killing the man who stole away his wife. Similarly, the lion
does not take pleasure in the mere sound of the stag nor does a dog take
pleasure in the mere scent of a rabbit. But nevertheless the sound or smell of
nearby prey might occasion the predator to be pleased that it will get a meal.
It is certainly true that a predator is provoked into action when it perceives
the sound or scent or even the visual image of a prey animal. And its actions do
appear to be goal-directed in the sense that the lion, for example, will take
certain steps to hide until it is ready to pounce, will move downwind of the
23
See Pearson 2012, 92–100, who also notes that 3.10 1118a27–32 shows that in so far as taste is primarily
a discriminatory sense then it too, strictly speaking, is not something that can provoke self-
indulgence. The parallel discussion at EE 3.2 1231a6–12 does not use the example of the hungry
lion although it does affirm again that non-human animals do not take pleasure in odours per se. This
is also true of us humans. When we take pleasure in the smell of dinner cooking on the stove, we are
not taking pleasure in the smell per se but in our expectation or memory of food or drink. We can
however take pleasure per se in the scent of a flower (ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ὀσμῶν ταύταις χαίρουσιν ὅσαι
κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς εὐφραίνουσιν, ἀλλὰ μὴ καθ’ αὑτάς. λέγω δὲ <μὴ> καθ’ αὑτάς, αἷς ἢ ἐλπίζοντες
χαίρομεν ἢ μεμνημένοι, οἷον ὄψων καὶ ποτῶν (δι’ ἑτέραν γὰρ ἡδονὴν ταύταις χαίρομεν, τὴν τοῦ
φαγεῖν ἢ πιεῖν), καθ’ αὑτὰς δὲ οἷον αἱ τῶν ἀνθῶν εἰσίν). We can call wanton someone who really
enjoys fancy perfumes and condiments, but only because they are ways of triggering recollections of
objects of epithumia (3.10 1118a9–13).
prey so as not to be detected, and so on. The motivation for these actions is
surely the goal of eating the prey and it is reasonable to think that eating its
natural prey is a pleasant experience for the lion. Aristotle specifies that the lion
is pleased ‘because it will get food’ (ὅτι βορὰν ἕξει, 1118a23). There is therefore a
pleasant affective aspect to the lion’s reaction to the sound of the stag which is
related to the lion’s goal of eating the stag.24 The lion is, in some sense, pleased
at anticipating the meal.
Although Aristotle does not mention the psychological capacity of imag-
ination (phantasia) here in NE 3.10, given what he says elsewhere about
desire in general and non-human animal psychology in cases of purposive
action, phantasia must be the psychological capacity that is involved when
the lion is pleased that it will get a meal: an ‘image’ (phantasma) is provoked
by the sound of the stag and generated from the lion’s memories. This
phantasma is pleasant because it is generated from memories of past pleasant
perceptions. This phantasma is involved in the lion’s desire to eat the stag
and in its actions to achieve the object of that desire. Aristotle says that an
object of desire moves the animal by being thought of or imagined and,
since the lion cannot think, it must be imagining the object of its desire.
Consider a dog that is provoked by a feeling of thirst into desiring a drink in
the absence of a direct external perceptual stimulus. It cannot see or smell a
bowl of water but its capacity of phantasia allows it to bring to its mind the
bowl of water in the next room. (It has perceived the bowl there before.) It
says to itself (as it were): ‘This is something to drink’ and off it goes; there is
an obvious role for phantasia to supply the otherwise imperceptible object of
desire. The complication in the case of the lion is that the lion does after all
perceive the stag; it can hear it. However, we are told that the lion does not
take pleasure in the sound but only in what the sound leads it to expect.
Aristotle here presumably thinks that imagination is required in order for
the lion to recognise the sounds as coming from something pleasant to eat.
If so, some combination of the perception of the sound and the imagination
anticipating the pleasant meal is needed.25
However, the precise specification of the content of what the lion
envisages is not a simple matter. It is not clear whether phantasia in
24
On desire as involving envisaging prospects see Pearson 2012, 41–7. Cf. Lorenz 2006a, 128–37.
25
See Schofield 2011, 124–5 on MA 7 701a32–3 and esp. 124 n. 14. There has been a lot of recent
discussion of the roles of perception and phantasia in animal desire and animal locomotion. The
general view is that phantasia is always involved in animals that move as a whole (unlike animals such
as anemones, which are stationary but which can move parts of their bodies in reaction to pleasant and
painful perceptions) and that pursue something not immediately available to perception. See for the
most recent contributions to the debate: Moss 2012a, 61–3; Corcilius 2011, 137; Pearson 2012, 51–60;
Johansen 2012, 210–18.
non-human animals is able to do anything as complex as ‘envisage pros-
pects’ or, perhaps better, it is unclear what sense of ‘prospect’ it would be
right to think that these animals can envisage. It must be something
provided by the lion’s phantasia drawing on its past leonine perceptions
and memories. But then we will need to wonder about the range and
richness of things that a lion’s phantasia might be able to provide and
this, in turn, will depend upon the way in which a lion perceives the
world and remembers past perceptions. On a generous view, phantasia
allows the lion to envisage the prospect ‘that it will get food’: when a hungry
lion perceives the stag it forms a desire to eat the stag, which involves
envisaging ‘the prospect of stag-eating’.26 The generous view will make the
content of the phantasma cognitively rich: the lion envisages ‘a meal’ or
‘stag-eating’. This would seem to require that the lion perceive things as
‘stag’ or at least ‘prey’. A more parsimonious view is that what the lion
enjoys is the phantasma of the pleasant experience of tasting something it
needs to satisfy its hunger. Phantasia reproduces the content of past per-
ceptions and, furthermore, past perceptions of taste will suffice to explain
the lion’s motivation just as present perceptions are at other times motiva-
tionally sufficient.27 The generous view would make the lion’s behaviour
closer to what humans can do when they form desires for things or take
pleasure in anticipating some future state of affairs since the content of what
phantasia can conjure for humans is cognitively rich. The parsimonious
view holds that simple perceptions and the reproduction of just those simple
perceptions are sufficient to explain non-human behaviour.28
This passage does confirm Aristotle’s idea that we should explain some
non-human animals’ behaviour in terms of their being able, on the basis of
some present stimulus, to look ahead to achieving some object of desire.
Some human actions, no doubt, should also be explained in this same way.
26
Lorenz 2006a, 131–7, argues that the lion enjoys envisaging the prospect of ‘stag-eating’.
27
See e.g. Moss 2012a, 38: ‘Creatures who cannot recognise predators as such can experience fear (a
species of pain) at the sight of a proper perceptible, and thus will flee. Thus animals can discriminate
the beneficial from the harmful without recourse to sophisticated forms of cognition: simple
perception even of proper perceptibles will suffice, by being pleasurable or painful.’ Moss 2012a,
55–7 and esp. 56 n. 23 takes issue with Lorenz’s interpretation of the example of the lion in NE 3.10.
28
The Homeric quotation does not help us very much. In the Homeric simile the lion is said to take
pleasure in devouring the carcass of a deer or goat that it has simply chanced upon (Il. 3.23–5); the
hungry animal is not envisaging the prospect of a meal but is taking pleasure right now in the present
satisfaction of its desire. This contrasts with Menelaus, who takes similar pleasure at the mere sight of
his enemy and, we presume, at the thought of killing Paris that this perception provokes. And this is
precisely the distinction between humans and other animals that Aristotle wishes to draw. For
Aristotle is here insisting that the lion will not take pleasure in the mere sound of the ox as
Menelaus takes pleasure at the mere sight of Paris. Contrast: Lorenz 2006a, 132 n. 23.
But although Aristotle does think that a lion might experience some
pleasure as it goes about trying to bring down its prey, there is nevertheless
room to find important distinctions between even that rich account of non-
human anticipation and what we humans are capable of doing. Even
granted the richest interpretation of the cognitive resources of the lion in
this example, there are two differences between it and humans. First, the
lion experiences the anticipatory pleasure as a result of a direct and present
perceptual stimulus. It is implausible to imagine that it would be able to take
pleasure in the thought of its next meal as it lies under a tree with no prey in
the vicinity. It cannot deliberately and voluntarily turn its thoughts to its next
meal and simply enjoy the prospect without such an immediate perceptual
stimulus. Humans can. Second, humans can anticipate pleasures and have
desires for things as pleasant in a way that requires reason to conceive of the
specific end in question. The dog desires the pleasure of drinking the water
but it cannot form a desire for the drink on the grounds that it believes that
the water is healthy; humans can. Nor can the dog desire a particular brand of
mineral water. Humans can.29 In short, dogs and lions do not deliberately
think back and take pleasure just in recalling a particularly tasty meal or a
particularly pleasant drink, let alone a thoroughly enjoyable weekend in the
mountains or a joyful reunion with a friend. Nor do they take pleasure simply
in looking forward to such things. But humans do.
To be sure, at NE 6.7 Aristotle notes that just as a person can be said to be
practically wise (phronimos) because of the way in which he deals with his own
particular affairs, so too, ‘they say’, some non-human animals are also wise
(phronima) in this way because they appear to have a capacity for foresight
over their lives.30 But he has perhaps instructively chosen to present this
merely as an opinion held by some unnamed others and does not explicitly
endorse this view. But elsewhere he is less guarded. Often in the zoological
works Aristotle appears to attribute relatively high-grade cognitive powers to
non-human animals. He describes their characters as courageous or timid and
notes that some behave intelligently or are phronimoi. This is perhaps just a
loose, traditional, or anthropomorphising way of talking: animals behave ‘as
if’ they are intelligent and able to plan; for example, he describes how the
29
See Pearson 2012, 190–5. Aristotle also comments that non-human animals cannot be subject to
akrasia since they act only on the basis of phantasia or memory of particulars and therefore there can
be no conflict between acting on the basis of an evaluative cognition from phantasia and an alternative
action that knowledge or belief would recommend: NE 7.3 1147a35–b5; cf. De An. 3.3 429a4–8. Cf.
Moss 2012a, 127.
30
NE 6.7 1146a26–8: διὸ καὶ τῶν θηρίων ἔνια φρόνιμά φασιν εἶναι, ὅσα περὶ τὸν αὑτῶν βίον ἔχοντα
φαίνεται δύναμιν προνοητικήν.
panther has ‘realised’ that other animals like its scent and therefore conceals
the scent while it is hunting.31 But even in the zoological works in which he is
most relaxed about describing non-human animals in such a fashion, Aristotle
also denies that they are properly capable of deliberation or of deliberate
recollection (anamnēsis).
βουλευτικὸν δὲ μόνον ἄνθρωπός ἐστι τῶν ζῴων. καὶ μνήμης μὲν καὶ διδαχῆς
πολλὰ κοινωνεῖ, ἀναμιμνήσκεσθαι δ’ οὐδὲν ἄλλο δύναται πλὴν ἄνθρωπος.
(HA 1.1 488b24–6)
Of all the animals, only humans are capable of deliberation. And while many
of them share in memory and learning, only humans are able to recollect.
Therefore, although when he is being a keen empirical zoologist Aristotle
is prepared to describe non-human animal behaviour in terms that often
use the vocabulary of intelligent rational behaviour, he never goes so far as
to deny that there is a significant psychological distinction between
humans and all other animals. True, animals that perceive share in an
intelligence of a sort (gnōsis tis), since perception is knowledge of a sort (GA
1.23 731a31–b4). But when he is being more scrupulous Aristotle insists that
what we find in the other animals are just resemblances of understanding
or thought and behaviour analogous to human craft and wisdom (HA 8.1
588a18–31).32
Aristotle is clear that deliberate recollection is an activity of reasoning and
therefore a capacity restricted to humans. The point we have already seen
made in HA 1.1 is restated at De Mem. 2 453a6–11: Aristotle explains that is the
case because deliberate recollection is a kind of inference or reasoning
(syllogismos tis) and inquiry (zētēsis). It is therefore legitimate to talk of a
specifically human capacity for the deliberate recollection and anticipation
of past and future experiences such as is involved, for example, in Eumaeus’
reminiscences discussed in Rhet. 1.11.33 Aristotle does occasionally talk of non-
rational animals as having forward-looking capacities and, as we saw, is
prepared to say, for example, that a lion takes pleasure in the appearance
that he will eat the nearby stag (NE 3.10 1118a20–3). But he also says at PA 3.6
669a19–21 that only humans have hope (elpis) or expectation for the future
31
HA 9.6 612a12–15: the verb is κατανοέω. This example is preceded, perhaps instructively, by the
comment that ‘people say’ (λέγουσι) that the panther does this.
32
On this general topic see Cole 1992, 45–51. Coles 1997 also provides an excellent catalogue of the
ascriptions of intelligent behaviour and phronēsis to non-human animals in Aristotle’s works and some
strong arguments in favour of interpreting them as sincere attributions. Compare Lloyd 1983, 18–26.
33
This passage is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7 below.
Damascius and the donkey 19
(prosdokia); this is why only humans experience their heart ‘jumping’.34 We
can characterise the sense of ‘hoping’ or anticipating here as the counterpart of
recollection (see e.g. Rhet. 1.11 1370a27–30). Anticipation in this sense will also
involve some kind of deliberate inference or reasoning and is therefore also
restricted to humans.
It is legitimate in that case to investigate the pleasures and pains of such
‘autobiographical’ anticipation or recollection as revealing an aspect of the
affective lives we humans live. They will be the focus of my Chapters 6, 7,
and 8.
Damascius and the donkey

Let us finally take a brief look at a much later ancient text that appears to be
still grappling with the question of how to distinguish human affective
expectation from what non-human animals experience. Damascius, in his
lectures on Plato’s Philebus, contrasts the sort of expectation that it is
appropriate to attribute to a non-human animal with those appropriate
only for a human animal capable of reasoning.35
ὅτι τριττὴ ἡ ἐλπίς, ἡ μὲν μόνου τοῦ λόγου, ἡ δὲ μόνου τοῦ ἀλόγου· τούτου
μὲν γὰρ παράδειγμα ὁ πρὸ τῆς πόλεως θᾶττον ἐπιτρέχων ὄνος ἐλπίδι τοῦ
μεταλήψεσθαι τροφῆς, ἐκείνου δὲ φανερὸν τὸ παράδειγμα· ἡ δέ ἐστιν ἐλπὶς
τοῦ συναμφοτέρου, ὅταν δοκιμάζοντος τοῦ λόγου τροφὴν προσενεχθῆναι
ἅμα καὶ τὸ ζῷον ἐνδεὲς ᾖ καὶ ἐλπίζωσιν ἅμα παρέσεσθαί τι τῶν πρὸς τὴν
χρείαν. (In Phileb. §178)
Expectation comes in three kinds. One belongs to reason alone; another to
the non-rational alone. Of the latter, an example is the ass that quickens its
pace as it nears the city in expectation that it will be fed. Of the former there
is an obvious example. There is also expectation that belongs to both
together, whenever reason thinks that food should be acquired at the same
time as the animal is in need. And simultaneously they expect that something
will be present to satisfy this need.
Damascius goes on to claim that it is expectation of this third kind that
Socrates has in mind at Phileb. 40a and distinguishes between such expect-
ations in pious and good and in impious and wicked people. This is a little
puzzling since the example he gives here seems to be of a simple case of
34
Aristotle also discusses hope (elpis) as the future-directed counterpart of memory at De Mem. 1
449b25–8. He then discusses the role of phantasia in memory in such a way that we can assume it plays
a role in hope too.
35
For more on Damascius’ interpretation of the psychology of the Philebus see Van Riel 2000, 142–54,
and 2012.
desire in which a bodily need is combined with reason looking forward to a
relevant object whose acquisition will satisfy that need, while the example
Socrates gives at 40a seems not to involve any bodily need. But, for now, we
should notice that Damascius too, no doubt quite rightly, identifies a sense
in which even a donkey can be said to have a pleasant expectation.36 It is
unfortunate that he thinks examples of the other unmixed kind of expect-
ation – that of reason alone – are so obvious that it is not worth mentioning
any. He cannot have in mind any expectation that would fit into the third
category and involve both rational expectation and some kind of bodily
need. Later (§§206–7), Damascius gives as examples of pure pleasures
seeing the evening star or a fine pasture and, as an example of a pure
pleasure belonging just to the soul, contemplation of and grasping some-
thing intelligible (compare the ‘pleasure in gnōsis’ mentioned at §13). We
can therefore imagine two animals walking home to the city: the ass which
takes pleasure in expecting a meal when it reaches the city and the philos-
opher quickening his pace as he heads home in the pleasant expectation of
an evening thinking about intelligible reality. The most basic point, how-
ever, is that here too in one of the latest ancient authors there is the
recognition of both a continuity and a distinction between the ways in
which rational and non-rational animals are capable of expectation and,
therefore, of taking pleasure in expectation. The ass can manage with only
the expectation that belongs to what is without reason (to alogon). We
humans might sometimes act on just this basis but we also have two other
kinds of expectation. There is the expectation that belongs to reason all by
itself and there is also a third kind of expectation: the mixed expectation that
belongs to reason and the irrational working together. These are, I suppose,
human embodied desires and hopes and they too are important parts of our
human lives that are not shared by animals that do not possess reason.
36
Westerink 1959 ad loc. notes that the donkey might represent epithumia: see Plat. Phaed. 81e6–82a2.
chapter 2
Plato on the pleasures and pains of knowing
Plato often assures us that it is pleasant to acquire knowledge. In the

Republic a philosopher is said to live the most pleasant life because only a
philosopher experiences the true and pure pleasures to be had from acquir-
ing knowledge of the special intelligible objects that are the Forms. In the
Phaedo Socrates’ attention is focussed particularly on the damaging effects
on the soul of the pleasures and pains of the body. But even here he
mentions other pleasures – the ‘pleasures of learning’ (114e3–4) – that are
the concern of the philosopher. Similarly, Socrates claims in the Philebus
that the pleasure of learning is a good example of a pure pleasure: a pleasure
that is neither preceded nor followed by pain. Nevertheless, Plato is also well
aware of the fact that neither the process of coming-to-know something nor
the final acquisition of knowledge will always be entirely pleasant. Indeed,
in matters that would seem to be for Plato of the utmost importance, he is
quite clear that our progress towards knowledge can be accompanied by a
variety of affective experiences and it can often be difficult and painful.
For example, in the Laches Nicias explains how participating in a dis-
cussion with Socrates can be challenging but, with luck, can also result in
important benefits. It can even be pleasant. But many people find it
difficult.
οὔ μοι δοκεῖς εἰδέναι ὅτι ὃς ἂν ἐγγύτατα Σωκράτους ᾖ καὶ πλησιάζῃ
διαλεγόμενος, ἀνάγκη αὐτῷ, ἐὰν ἄρα καὶ περὶ ἄλλου του πρότερον
ἄρξηται διαλέγεσθαι, μὴ παύεσθαι ὑπὸ τούτου περιαγόμενον τῷ λόγῳ,
πρὶν <ἂν> ἐμπέσῃ εἰς τὸ διδόναι περὶ αὑτοῦ λόγον, ὅντινα τρόπον νῦν τε ζῇ
καὶ ὅντινα τὸν παρεληλυθότα βίον βεβίωκεν· ἐπειδὰν δ’ ἐμπέσῃ, ὅτι οὐ
πρότερον αὐτὸν ἀφήσει Σωκράτης, πρὶν ἂν βασανίσῃ ταῦτα εὖ τε καὶ καλῶς
ἅπαντα. ἐγὼ δὲ συνήθης τέ εἰμι τῷδε καὶ οἶδ’ ὅτι ἀνάγκη ὑπὸ τούτου
πάσχειν ταῦτα, καὶ ἔτι γε αὐτὸς ὅτι πείσομαι ταῦτα εὖ οἶδα· χαίρω γάρ, ὦ
Λυσίμαχε, τῷ ἀνδρὶ πλησιάζων, καὶ οὐδὲν οἶμαι κακὸν εἶναι τὸ
ὑπομιμνῄσκεσθαι ὅτι μὴ καλῶς ἢ πεποιήκαμεν ἢ ποιοῦμεν. (Laches 187e6–
188b1)
21
22 Plato on the pleasures and pains of knowing
I don’t think you understand that whoever is closest to Socrates and
encounters him in discussion is forced, whatever the original topic of the
conversation, not to be released from being spun round in argument until
he manages to give an account of himself, of his manner of life and the life he
has led previously. Then, if he manages this, Socrates will not let him go
before testing whether all these things are fine and good. I’m used to him and
I know that you have to undergo these things and I know full well that I will
undergo them as well. For, Lysimachus, I take pleasure from this man’s
company and I think it no bad thing to be reminded that we have acted and
do act poorly.
Nicias goes on to explain that he considers the potential benefits of
submitting to Socrates’ question to be worth the effort and that as far as
he is concerned there is nothing unusual or unpleasant about the procedure
(οὐδὲν ἄηθες οὐδ’ αὖ ἀηδές, 188b5). However, it is clear that some people
might find such self-examination difficult and troubling, even painful, no
matter what potentially life-changing benefits it could bring. Nicias does
after all compare Socrates’ questioning with being subject to a kind of
testing (basanizesthai) which has connotations even of torture and admits
that he has prior experience in talking with Socrates on which he can base
his confidence. The implication is that for others – for novices or perhaps
people less open to Socrates’ methods – this can be a painful experience.1
And there are examples in the dialogues of people who complain that
Socrates is not doing them any good at all.
In the light of such reasonable concerns about the difficulties of submit-
ting to Socrates’ brand of philosophy, the claim in book 9 of the Republic
that the philosopher’s life is the most pleasant possible has often been
thought to be problematic, not least because of the various passages in
that dialogue which appear to depict the philosophical life and philosoph-
ical education as painful.2 But Socrates’ proposal can be illuminated first by
considering a stretch of argument at Phileb. 51e–52b, in which he tries to
give an account of the nature of the pleasures of learning and which includes
a specification of the conditions under which certain kinds of learning
might be painful or a mixture of pleasure and pain. Teasing out the precise
implications of what is said there will allow us to reconsider the pleasures
1
Roberts and Wood 2007, 100–1, discuss this passage and insist that Nicias recognises that the
procedure will be beneficial but painful. In fact, Nicias denies that the procedure is painful, at least
for him. But the description of the procedure gestures towards the fact that other people might think it
painful and perhaps that it was indeed painful for Nicias before he became fully acquainted with
Socrates and his methods.
2
Note also Rep. 539e6–540a1: before being finally allowed to rule, the student philosophers must be
tested in difficult circumstances (βασανιστέοι).
and pains of the philosopher’s life outlined in the Republic, since Protarchus’
suggestion of the conditions under which learning might not be a pure
pleasure but will instead be a relief from pain turns out to be directly
applicable to the experience of the prisoner released from the cave in the
allegory in the seventh book of the Republic. However, there remain
some important obstacles in the way of producing a fully satisfying account
of the hedonic life of the philosopher. One of these problems stems from an
objection sometimes raised against the portrayal in book 9. This objection
holds that the understanding of the nature of pleasure presumed in that
argument should force Socrates to claim that only the acquisition of new
philosophical knowledge and not the continued possession and exercise of
philosophical knowledge is wonderfully pleasant. I canvass some possible
answers to this problem and conclude that the analysis of various pleasures
of learning in the Philebus can usefully be brought to bear on this question.
Pleasures and pains of learning in the Philebus

In the Philebus Socrates and Protarchus discuss the pleasures associated with
learning and try to give an account of their nature.
ΣΩ . ἔτι δὴ τοίνυν τούτοις προσθῶμεν τὰς περὶ τὰ μαθήματα ἡδονάς, εἰ ἄρα
δοκοῦσιν ἡμῖν αὗται πείνας μὲν μὴ ἔχειν τοῦ μανθάνειν μηδὲ διὰ
μαθημάτων πείνην ἀλγηδόνας ἐξ ἀρχῆς γιγνομένας.
ΠΡΩ . ἀλλ’ οὕτω συνδοκεῖ.
ΣΩ . τί δέ; μαθημάτων πληρωθεῖσιν ἐὰν ὕστερον ἀποβολαὶ διὰ τῆς λήθης
γίγνωνται, καθορᾷς τινας ἐν αὐταῖς ἀλγηδόνας;
ΠΡΩ . οὔ τι φύσει γε, ἀλλ’ ἔν τισι λογισμοῖς τοῦ παθήματος, ὅταν τις στερηθεὶς
λυπηθῇ διὰ τὴν χρείαν.
ΣΩ . καὶ μήν, ὦ μακάριε, νῦν γε ἡμεῖς αὐτὰ τὰ τῆς φύσεως μόνον παθήματα χωρὶς
τοῦ λογισμοῦ διαπεραίνομεν.
ΠΡΩ . ἀληθῆ τοίνυν λέγεις ὅτι χωρὶς λύπης ἡμῖν λήθη γίγνεται ἑκάστοτε ἐν τοῖς
μαθήμασιν.
ΣΩ . ταύτας τοίνυν τὰς τῶν μαθημάτων ἡδονὰς ἀμείκτους τε εἶναι λύπαις ῥητέον
καὶ οὐδαμῶς τῶν πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀλλὰ τῶν σφόδρα ὀλίγων.
ΠΡΩ . πῶς γὰρ οὐ ῥητέον; (Phileb. 51e7–52b9)
soc.: So let us therefore add in the pleasures to do with learning, if in fact we do

think that these have no associated hunger for learning and that there are no
pains that come about from and have as their origin a hunger for learning.
prot.: That seems right to me too.
soc.: What, then? If at a later time there should come about for those who have
been filled with knowledge the loss of it through forgetting, do you discern
any pains from that loss?
prot.: None by nature, at any rate. But perhaps there are in our thinking about
what we have undergone, whenever someone who has been so deprived is
pained because of the usefulness of what has been lost.
soc.: But, my friend, for now we are dealing with only the nature of those
experiences themselves, distinct from our thinking about them.
prot.: Then you are correct that each time we forget something we have learned
this occurs without pain.
soc.: So we should say that the pleasures of learning are unmixed with pains and
never belong to the majority of people but only to the very few.
prot.: How could we not say that?
Socrates is looking for another example of a pure pleasure: a pleasure which
is neither necessarily preceded nor necessarily followed by a pain. His first
example was the pleasure of smell. The pleasure of learning is the second
example. It too, Socrates thinks, is a process and the filling of a lack but since
simply not-knowing-X is not painful and having-forgotten-X is not painful
then the pleasure of learning X is a pure pleasure.
A brief comment a few lines later specifies that these pleasures of learning
that are unmixed with pains belong to ‘the few and not the many’ (52b7–8),
and this suggests that Socrates has in mind here cases of learning that are not
mundane examples of simply coming-to-know something. Most probably,
the sort of learning Socrates has in mind is to be connected with the
dialogue’s later discussions of the various special epistēmai.3 There are, of
course, important differences between how the Philebus and the Republic
conceive of epistēmē and its objects. Nevertheless, in both dialogues there is
an evident commitment to the idea that certain kinds of special cognitive
achievements are to be associated with a particular and superior form of
pleasure. Furthermore, in both cases the dominant model for understand-
ing the pleasure of this form of achievement is the filling of some kind of
lack which may or may not be recognised or painful.
However, it seems quite implausible to think that a philosopher’s cog-
nitive progress is unaccompanied by pains, frustrations, and the like which
are essentially connected with the fact that there is a conscious desire to
know or understand something as yet un-grasped.4 Plato himself is acutely
aware that philosophical understanding is often hard-won. In fact, the
Philebus passage is very careful to clarify the precise sense in which the
pleasures of learning are unmixed with pain. Protarchus voices an important
qualification at 52a5–7 when he notes that, although the simple fact of
forgetting is not itself painful, the fact of having forgotten can perhaps be said
3 4
Cf. Delcomminette 2006, 470. Cf. Frede 1997, 301, and Delcomminette 2006, 471 and 476–7.
to be painful just in cases when a person comes to reflect upon his lack of
previous knowledge and on occasions when that knowledge is needed.
Socrates swiftly brushes aside Protarchus’ concern as irrelevant to the precise
point he wishes to make. As he reminds Protarchus, what they want to grasp
is precisely the nature of these experiences themselves, shorn of any further
complicating factors. Socrates is right. There are lots of things I do not know
and am entirely indifferent about not knowing; the fact of my not knowing
them causes me no distress. There are also lots of things I did know and no
longer know and am entirely indifferent about no longer knowing. To be
sure, if I think that something I do not know (or used to know) is something
that I ought to know or ought still to know then that secondary thought
might be something that causes me distress. But the first order fact of simply
not knowing is not painful. So learning something need not be a relief from
something painful.
And yet, Protarchus has pointed to something important. He has given
an important set of conditions under which a lack of knowledge (whether
the result of forgetting something previously known or, we might add, the
simple lack of a piece of knowledge never previously possessed) might
rightly be thought to be painful. The conditions are twofold: (i) the lack of
knowledge must be noticed or reflected upon and (ii) the knowledge that
is lacking must be recognised as needed or necessary in some way. Each of
the two is necessary but insufficient for the state to be painful: I might
recognise I do not know something but feel no pain at that realisation so
long as I think I have no need to know what I realise I do not know.
Similarly, I might believe I need to know some important truths for my
life to be good and worthwhile. But, so long as I do not recognise that in
fact I do not currently possess such knowledge, then I will not feel any
pain at its absence. When combined, however, the two conditions will be
sufficient to generate pain attendant upon a desire to know. While the first
of these conditions is often noted, the second is often missed.5 Yet both are
obviously necessary since it is the second which is required to generate in
the person concerned a desire to know whatever it is that he does not know
and it is crucial for the presence of some kind of negative affective
response.6
5
E.g. Delcomminette 2006, 471: ‘En effet, pour qu’il ait désir, il faut qu’il y ait non seulement manque,
mais encore manque conscient, si du moins le désir doit avoir une direction, un object.’
6
Vogt 2012, 25–50, offers a detailed account of some of Plato’s discussions of forms of ignorance,
including Phileb. 48c2–49e8, and emphasises the sense in which unnoticed ignorance may be morally
reprehensible even if it is not painful to the ignorant person himself. These cases of ignorance often
The full psychological commitments of Protarchus’ comment at 52a8–b1
are worth further thought. Clearly, he is distinguishing between an ‘affec-
tion’ (pathēma), which we can presume is what is later glossed as a kind of
deprivation (tis sterētheis) – the state of lacking some piece of knowledge –
and something else which we have already identified as a necessary con-
dition for this affection to be painful. Protarchus refers to this additional
factor as our thinking about the affection (our ‘logismoi’).7 The Philebus
provides a satisfying account of what logismos amounts to in this context in
its initial stipulation that the best human life must consist in some kind of
combination of both pleasure and reason (20e–22e). Socrates and
Protarchus consider two extreme cases: on the one hand, a life which
contains pleasure but is devoid of any cognitive capacities such as memory,
knowledge, opinion, and wisdom – a life, Socrates explains, of a mollusc or
some other such sea creature – and, on the other hand, a life which retains
all those capacities but is without even the least experience of pleasure.
Neither alternative seems to them to be choiceworthy and the remainder of
the dialogue proceeds with this conclusion taken as its basis.
From Socrates’ account of the ‘mollusc life’ at 21c4–8 and, in particular,
his account of what it will lack as a result of the absence of reasoning
(logismos), it seems that logismos is, first of all, something that is an essential
prerequisite for living a recognisable human life and, more specifically, is
related to what we might call a capacity for self-awareness and for
considering one’s wellbeing or hedonic state at non-present times. Such a
capacity might not exhaust the range of what logismos may do, but it is the
important characteristic for present purposes.8
In Protarchus’ proposal at 52a–b too an important condition of feeling
the pain of an absence of understanding is the human capacity to reflect
upon or notice that condition and perhaps also compare it with some
previous or hoped-for future state. It is possible, in that case, to give an
account of the conditions under which an absence of knowledge is painful
by making use of a distinction between first- and second-order knowledge,
according to which the presence or absence of the first-order knowledge can
be the object of a second-order form of knowledge and in which this
second-order knowledge will be the exercise of the human capacity here
referred to as logismos. Take a case in which I come to know that I do not
involve falsely inflated beliefs about one’s own self, one’s abilities and ethical worth. Many of Socrates’
interlocutors are ignorant in this sense: they have a falsely inflated conception of their own grasp of a
topic of ethical importance.
7
The plural form is clearly not significant since Socrates’ immediate reply replaces it with the singular
logismos (b3) with no apology, and the replacement does not seem to bother Protarchus.
8
Compare 11b4–c2. I return to discuss 21c in Chapter 6.
know X. Imagine also that coming-to-know that I do not know X is painful
to me. It remains true that I do not know X, of course, so what I have
acquired in coming-to-know that I do not know is a different truth. I know
more than I did when I simply did not know X and did not know that I did
not know X. We noted, remember, that for such a second-order knowledge
of an absence of first-order knowledge to be registered as painful there
would need in addition to be some awareness that the first-order knowledge
that is lacking is something worth having. There must, in other words, be a
recognised need for that first-order knowledge. The Philebus’ analysis of
human psychological capacities can also supply that additional requirement,
once again by referring to the capacity of logismos.
The prospective and retrospective faculties associated with logismos at
21c are not only stressed as essential characteristics of human psychology;
they are both also involved in desire. Later in the dialogue Socrates states
clearly that he thinks all desires and impulses which initiate a drive for the
removal or replenishment involve some sort of memory (35c–d).
Specifically, the memory involved in desire is a memory of the opposite
state to that in which the agent currently finds himself. This memory then
provides a representation of the object of the forward-looking desire and
the agent anticipates that desired state. Socrates then distinguishes two
cases involving a person who is in pain but can remember the pleasant
things he lacks. In the first, the person has a ‘clear hope or expectation’ of
attaining what he lacks and the memory provides pleasure while he is also
experiencing pain (36a–b). In the second, he is both in pain and also aware
that there is no hope of replenishment. In that case he suffers both from
the recognised lack and also from the despair of fulfilling that lack in the
future (36b–c). We shall return to this account in a later chapter when we
come to consider the Philebus’ account of memory and anticipation in
more detail.9 But for now we should note that hopes and desires all involve
some activity of memory, since it is memory which provides the store of
experiences which can be drawn upon to generate the appropriate objects
of pursuit in any given situation and which allows the animal to bring to
mind some state (which it has experienced in the past) which is the
opposite of its present condition.10
9
Below, Chapter 6.
10
See Frede 1985, 164–5; Russell 2005, 175–6. Delcomminette 2006, 470–6, has a good account of the
sense in which philosophy itself in the Philebus is imagined as a kind of desire (see 58d4–5, 67b4–7);
this is an image familiar from other dialogues such as the Symposium or Phaedrus but present also in
the Republic.
We can now offer a full account of the painful cases of coming-to-
know which Protarchus mentions at 52a–b: these are cases in which an
example of first-order ignorance is recognised as a result of second-order
reflection on a person’s own cognitive state. This ignorance might be
simply something that the person has never known or it might be
the result of a loss of memory. In the latter case, the agent may recall
the prior state of knowing without recalling the content of what was
known; this might generate a desire to remember. The same capacity
for second-order reflection that can recognise present ignorance is also
responsible for the person’s being able either to reflect upon a prior
state of knowledge or to imagine a future state of comprehension and,
in cases where the possession of the relevant piece of knowledge would
serve some recognised end, this will generate a desire to know. That
desire can be painful. Indeed, if it is to motivate the person sufficiently
then its painful nature might itself be something instrumentally useful.
In such a way we can imagine that knowledge can cause pain. This is a
possibility which might be initially surprising but on reflection it is
something that is only to be expected, particularly when the knowledge
concerned is of a certain sort, namely the knowledge of an important
personal failing.
Before we turn to the Republic we might compare, briefly, perhaps the
best-known case in the dialogues of someone being brought to recognise an
important lack of knowledge. Meno begins his discussion with Socrates
certain that he knows what virtue is (71e1–72a5). Only a few pages later,
when Socrates asks again what virtue is, Meno confesses that he now has no
idea and compares his state to that of someone paralysed by a stingray
(79a7–80b7). It is not clear whether this is a painful state to be in; the
paralysis need not be a state of numbness or lack of feeling but is rather an
inability to speak or act (80a8–b2). But Meno is certainly not pleased to be
in this position.11 Later, Socrates brings a slave to the very same state when
he is puzzling over a geometrical problem. At the outset the slave did not
know the answer but thought that he did. Then, at 84a3–b1, Socrates notes
that the slave still does not know the answer but at least now knows that he
does not know. Rather than inducing a form of paralysis, however, it
engenders a new desire to discover the answer, ‘for now he would be pleased
to inquire (ζητήσειεν ἂν ἡδέως), though he does not know’ (84b10–11). It is
perhaps not surprising, given the generally protreptic aim of Socrates’
demonstration, that there is no reference to this newly recognised ignorance
11
See Scott 2006, 69–74.
being painful. Instead, Socrates stresses how the slave has a new longing to
find the answer he realises he lacks (84c6), in contrast to Meno’s disgruntled
complaints of paralysis, and that the inquiry is something the slave will
enjoy, perhaps because in the slave’s case there is a confident expectation of
success. But we find here too an interest in second-order knowledge and, in
the implied analysis of the nature of the slave’s desire to find the answer, an
interest in the affective aspects of discovering one’s own ignorance.
The pleasures and pains of the cave

Book 9 of the Republic contains the longest sustained account of the pleasure
associated with a life of philosophy and also presents the most difficult
problems for anyone trying to claim that the life of a fully-fledged philosopher
is pleasant while holding firm to the analysis of pleasure – including intellec-
tual pleasure – as the process of filling some kind of lack. Before we apply to
this problem the analysis in the Philebus of the pleasures of learning and the
pain of some kinds of ignorance, we should first consider the most famous
Platonic account of the experience of radical and transformative cognitive
progress, namely the story of the prisoner’s release from bondage and ascent
from the cave into the sunlight at the beginning of book 7.12 The description
of the ascent from the cave emphasises not the pleasures of discovery and the
satisfaction of intellectual lack but quite the opposite: the dizzying and
startling effect produced by the taxing and disorienting acquisition of a new
perspective on reality and value. Indeed, Socrates repeatedly notes the pain
and discomfort felt by the student on his way up out of the cave as the bright
light and the journey take their toll (algoi, 515c8; algein, 515e1; odunasthai,
515e7).13
We might also relate his experience to the analysis offered by Protarchus.
The release of the prisoner from his bonds and his ignorance (aphrosynē,
515c5) is painful perhaps because it makes that ignorance obvious to him.
The first stage of his education reveals to him the fact that although he
previously thought that he was viewing real objects, in fact he was viewing
only shadows cast by the light behind the puppeteers. Such a realisation is
hard to endure and the prisoner may well prefer his previous comfortable
acceptance of mere shadows. Indeed, the prisoner will be confused if he is
told that, despite his struggles to cope with the glaring light, his eyesight is in
12
See Frede 1997, 300–2.
13
There is a helpful account of the experience of the freed prisoner in Schofield 2007, 225–8, which does
not, however, ask specifically why it is painful.
fact now working better (515d2–7). Socrates notes that when presented with
new and more real objects for consideration the prisoner will become
confused or at a loss and will perhaps even initially refuse to consider
them, preferring instead to turn back towards the objects with which he is
more familiar. A degree of compulsion is needed to force him to persist
through the uncomfortable – indeed, painful – initial transition. The freed
prisoner feels pain not only when he emerges into the light outside but also
when he first turns round and looks away from the shadows to the fire
within the cave. In that case, if the first stage of the conversion might
plausibly be likened to the unsettling effects of a Socratic elenchus and the
undermining of the passive acceptance of mere cultural norms, then this
too – as well as the eventual first encounter with the dazzling realities of
genuinely intelligible objects – is said to be a painful process. The prisoner is
confronted with his own ignorance about things which he previously
thought that he knew and also acquires a need or desire to know something
of which he now realises he is ignorant: just the two conditions noted by
Protarchus as sufficient to make a case of acquiring knowledge only a mixed
pleasure.14
The overall portrayal of the prisoner’s experience might therefore pose a
problem for what Socrates will eventually claim for the great intellectual
pleasures of philosophical enlightenment. The budding philosopher-ruler
will certainly turn his gaze towards new and more knowable objects and he
too might have to come to realise his prior ignorance. In some passages any
pleasures that the philosopher will eventually experience from finally
acquiring the truth does indeed seem to be connected to a kind of pain,
presumably closely linked to the philosopher’s tremendous desire to
acquire the truth.15 Socrates refers to the philosopher’s ‘birth pangs’ as
he struggles to grasp each thing’s nature (490a–b) and, once the philos-
opher has achieved the goal of his intellectual desire, Socrates says that he
then:
γνοίη τε καὶ ἀληθῶς ζῴη καὶ τρέφοιτο καὶ οὕτω λήγοι ὠδῖνος. (Rep. 490b6–7)
would understand and truly live and be nourished and, in this way, be
relieved of his pain.
14
A similar phenomenon is illustrated by the case of what Socrates calls ‘summoners’ of thought
(παρακαλοῦντα, 523b9; cf. παρακλητικά, 524d2). Faced with conflicting appearances, the soul is
forced into an aporia and is compelled to find a resolution to its lack of understanding (524e2–525a3).
15
Gibbs 2001, 20, comments: ‘In Bk 9 Socrates appears to have forgotten his own warnings about the
toils and pains and hardships involved in becoming a philosopher and living the philosophical life.’ I
see no reason to think there is an inconsistency.
Such comments invite us to think that the pleasure involved is mixed
rather than pure. Perhaps the student’s intense desire to know that is
often associated with the life of a philosopher, coupled with the
realisation that there are some terribly important things that he does
not know, will always make philosophical progress a rather mixed affair
in hedonic terms; the final hoped-for understanding will be experienced
as a great pleasure, but also as a kind of relief. In that case there might
appear to be a tension between these passages and the optimism of
book 9.
Such concerns can be set aside, fortunately, once we understand properly
the reasons for the prisoner’s pain. The prisoner is pained at being forced
suddenly to view objects of increasing brightness. We can distinguish three
aspects here: (i) the glare of the new objects of his sight, (ii) the fact of his
being forced to view them, and (iii) the fact of this being a sudden turn from
familiar to unfamiliar objects. The first aspect is presumably part of
Socrates’ demonstration that the prisoner is being asked to turn his
cognitive apparatus to objects that are more and more real – that is, have
a greater share of ‘being’, are more purely ‘just’, ‘beautiful’, and so on – and
are therefore more and more knowable (cf. 477a2–4). The cognitive appa-
ratus, the ‘eye of the soul’, that had previously been dealing only with the
dimmest objects is now being presented with objects that activate its powers
of cognition more and more. But such things take some getting used to,
particularly when they occur by compulsion: it is difficult to adjust when
moving from a dark room out into the light even though it is true to say that
out in the daylight is where a person’s powers of sight work best.16 It is not
therefore simply the fact of being faced with these more knowable objects
that generates the pain; rather, the prisoner is pained at being compelled all
of a sudden to turn from his previous and familiar objects of attention – the
shadows – and being forced to keep his gaze on these new and surprising
things.
A life of philosophical progress and understanding is not per se painful,
but it is so in the case of the prisoner in the cave because of the necessary
compulsion and the shocking revelation involved in effecting a rapid
transition from the prisoner’s dreadful initial state. When Socrates goes
on to describe the education of the budding philosophers, on the other
hand, he makes clear that they have to undergo a lengthy process of careful
preparation that begins very early in life (see e.g. 519a–b). We can therefore
16
For more discussion of Plato’s use of imagery and metaphor in describing the philosophical life see
Nightingale 2004, 94–138.
be more optimistic about the experience of philosophical students in the
ideal city, since there is a significant difference between the tremendous
involuntary cognitive upheavals experienced by someone plucked out of
the cave and dragged into the light and the altogether less horrific expe-
rience of a young person educated in the ideally organised city and led
willingly and carefully through a programme of philosophical education
which has an assured, if far from universal, level of success. As the Philebus
notes, there is also a great difference between cases in which a desire is
coupled with the realisation that its satisfaction is extremely unlikely and a
desire accompanied by the assurance that it will be fulfilled (36a–c).
Philosophical progress may never be entirely straightforward but we
should be able to grant to Socrates the concession that under ideal
circumstances the pain involved will be significantly lessened. And, in
any case, elsewhere in the dialogue Socrates is often upbeat about the
pleasures of intellectual discovery. Consider, for example, his description
of the ‘philosophical natures’ beginning at 485a, especially 485d10–e1.17
These fortunate people, fitted with all the traits of character necessary to
allow them to be potential philosopher-rulers desire ‘the pleasure of the
soul itself by itself’ (τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἡδονὴν αὐτῆς καθ’ αὑτήν), a descrip-
tion very reminiscent of book 9’s characterisation of the pure and true
pleasures at 585b–e. There is no mention here that the ‘pleasure of the soul
by itself’ is always accompanied by pain.
Coming-to-know and continuing to know

There are also, no doubt, distinctions to be drawn between the experiences
of someone progressing towards philosophical understanding and a fully
qualified philosopher-ruler, and those distinctions will be important in
what follows. Still, Socrates is clearly interested in explaining the affective
aspects of the philosophical life as a whole and is also interested in explain-
ing them in part by reference to the specific kinds of knowledge and
ignorance – including knowing that one is ignorant and knowing that
one knows – that are involved in acquiring and possessing philosophical
understanding. We can now approach directly the most significant
difficulty which has been raised both for the characterisation of the pleasures
of learning in the Philebus and also for the account of the philosophers’
pleasures in the Republic. In both works, the emphasis is squarely on the
pleasures of the process of coming-to-know something previously unknown
17
On this passage see Lane 2007, esp. 50–9.
or previously known but now forgotten. In that case it might remain
mysterious how the philosopher might be said to continue to live a
pleasant life once the necessary and previously lacking knowledge has
been acquired. The case of the Republic is perhaps the most pressing
since there Socrates is most intent on insisting that the philosophical life,
a life dedicated to the pursuit and then retention of knowledge, is the
most pleasant life a human can live.
The difficulty begins with the closest Socrates comes in the dialogue to an
explicit statement of what he thinks pleasure and pain are. In the course of
an argument intended to secure the conclusion that pleasure and pain are
both to be distinguished from an intermediate state of calm or rest
(hēsukhia), he clearly states that pleasure and pain are both changes or
motions (kinēseis: 583e9–10). That comment is left without further expan-
sion until he comes some two pages later to give a more elaborate account of
the different pleasures of the body and the soul. At Rep. 585a Socrates begins
a new argument for the superiority of the philosopher’s life by offering two
premises. They deal with first the body and then the soul and assert an
analogous relationship between their respective states of need.
(i) Hunger, thirst, and the like are ‘emptyings’ (κενώσεις) of the state
(ἕξις) of the body (585a8–b1).
(ii) Ignorance (ἄγνοια) and foolishness (ἀφρονύνη) are ‘emptyings’ of the
state of the soul (585b3–4).
He then infers:
(iii) Someone taking in nutrition (ὁ τῆς τροφῆς μεταλαβάνων) and some-
one having understanding (ὁ νοῦν ἴσχων) would be filled (585b6–7).
By this, he presumably means that the ingestion of food and drink would
remove the ‘emptying’ identified in (i) and the acquisition of understanding
would remove that in (ii).18 One of the fundamental problems in interpret-
ing this argument is the question whether Socrates exploits an ambiguity in
the terms ‘emptying’ (κένωσις) and the associated ‘fulfilment’ (πλήρωσις)
since they can both refer both to a state (of being empty, of being fulfilled)
and to a process (of emptying, of fulfilling). From what we have seen of the
argument so far, it is difficult to think that anything other than the state of
18
Pappas 1995, 168–9, mistakenly detects an inconsistency here: ‘[W]hereas the first half of the argu-
ment shrank from praising any pleasure that follows from the relief of pain, the second half endorses
the relief from ignorance as though it could raise a person higher than the middle state of calm (586a).
Nothing in the argument prepares for this claim, which feels like a gratuitous insistence on the
pleasure of philosophy.’ The inconsistency disappears when we note that Socrates nowhere claims
that ignorance is itself painful. Rather, it is a painless lack and so the pleasure of learning is not
necessarily preceded by pain. It is therefore analogous to the ‘pure’ pleasures of smell described earlier.
‘being empty’ is intended in (i) and (ii). Certainly, it is not easy to imagine
that the ignorance in (ii) is meant to be only a process of becoming less
knowledgeable. On the other hand, the present participle μεταλαμβάνων in
(iii) might suggest a process of ingestion rather than a state of being free
from hunger, for example, whereas ἴσχων might rightly be thought to
suggest a continued possession of understanding. The most satisfying over-
all interpretation remains one in which the states of ignorance or hunger are
painful but the processes of eating or learning are pleasant.
The question whether pleasures are always kinēseis becomes acute, of
course, when we glance forward to the intended conclusion of the
argument, which holds that the philosopher is the one most truly fulfilled
since he grasps objects which are themselves most pure and true and ‘are’
without qualification. If this refers merely to the process of acquiring
understanding then we might agree that the process of becoming a philo-
sopher is exquisitely pleasant but think that the resulting state of under-
standing is not (much as we might think that the process of eating when
hungry is present while the state of feeling no hunger is not). Socrates does
offer some more information about how he understands the pleasures of
the philosophical life, but regarding the specific question whether these
pleasures are associated entirely with the process of acquiring knowledge or
may also include pleasures associated with the possession of knowledge,
there is unfortunately only limited help to be found in the immediate
context of this argument.
A survey of the various references in the surrounding discussion to the
sorts of pleasures said to characterise the philosophical life proves to be
frustrating. In the description of the discussion between three spokesmen
for the three kinds of life, each dedicated to the cultivation of one of the
three parts of the soul, Socrates has various ways of describing the pleasures
characteristic of the life of the lover of wisdom. Sometimes these expressions
point in the direction suggested by the argument thus far: intellectual
pleasures are associated with the process of acquiring knowledge, that is to
say, with learning. For example, when Socrates imagines the attitude of the
other two sorts of people – the profit-lover and the victory-lover – to the
philosopher’s life he often puts it emphatically in terms of their attitude to
the pleasures of learning (e.g. 581d2: manthanein; d6: manthanein; e1:
manthanonta). This lends support to the conception of the philosophical
pleasures as primarily – and perhaps exclusively – the pleasures of coming-
to-know special objects. But this manner of expression is not applied
consistently. Elsewhere, Socrates is prepared to talk about the pleasures of
knowing (582a10: τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ εἰδέναι ἡδονῆς) or about the pleasures of
contemplating what is (582c7–8: τῆς δὲ τοῦ ὄντος θέας, οἵαν ἡδονὴν ἔχει).
There are also occasions on which Socrates refers in the same sentence
both to the pleasures of learning and to the pleasure of knowing. For
example, at 581d9–e1, he wonders how the philosopher will think of other
pleasures in relation to his own preferred intellectual pleasures. He com-
pares the other pleasures with the pleasure ‘of knowing how the truth
stands’ (τὴν τοῦ εἰδέναι τἀληθὲς ὅπῃ ἔχει) and ‘always being in such a
state [sc. of pleasure] when learning’ (καὶ ἐν τοιούτῳ τινὶ ἀεὶ εἶναι
μανθάνοντα).19 It is hard to be sure whether Socrates means in this case to
refer to two different kinds of pleasure that the philosopher may experience
and to contrast both with the pleasures of the spirit or the appetites and it is
unclear whether the adverb ‘always’ is supposed to show that the philoso-
pher is always learning or that he is always experiencing pleasure when he
learns. But it certainly suggests that there is pleasure associated with know-
ing the truth, of having acquired knowledge, whatever it may or may not
then claim about that state.
In short, the problem is that much of the argument so far is plausible only
on the understanding that pleasure is the replenishing of a desire or lack. On
the other hand, Socrates is apparently happy to talk as if there are also
pleasures to be had from knowing, rather than learning, the special objects
of the philosophers’ expertise. To be sure, we might understand ignorance
as a state of cognitive lack much as hunger is a state of bodily lack, but if
pleasure is associated with the process of replenishing that lack, there seems
no other conclusion possible than that the pleasures of replenishing the
soul – exquisite and intense though they might be since they are trained on
pure and true objects – will be experienced only while the philosopher is
acquiring knowledge. What pleasures can be left for the philosopher once
he has the understanding he requires?20 It is essential for the overall political
project of the Republic that the ruling philosophers take up their role in the
possession of a kind of knowledge that makes them experts in the areas
relevant for political decision making. Readers of the Republic are familiar
with the concern that as soon as the philosophers have acquired the required
expertise they may be made to live a worse life by being forced to give up
19
The phrasing echoes an earlier description of the special characteristic of the rational part of the soul,
being that ‘with which we learn and which quite evidently is entirely focussed upon knowing how the
truth lies (πρὸς τὸ εἰδέναι τὴν ἀλήθειαν ὅπῃ ἔχει πᾶν ἀεὶ τέταται) and is least of all of them concerned
with money and reputation’ (581b5–7).
20
If pleasure ceases when the process of replenishing ends, then ‘the more successful a philosopher is,
the sooner his life will cease to be pleasant’: Gosling and Taylor 1982, 122–3.
their intellectual pursuits and descend back into the cave and rule. The present
worry is that the fully fledged philosophers may also be made to live a less
pleasant life simply because the ascent out of the cave comes to an end.21
We have already seen that the Republic contains a complex and varied
story of the affective aspects of intellectual advancement, beyond the argu-
ments concerning pleasure in book 9. And we have seen indications that
Socrates wants to say that even the accomplished philosopher’s intellectual
life will display a similarly complex affective aspect. Such considerations
might alleviate some of the worries about the hedonic life of the
philosopher-rulers or, less charitably, they might be taken merely to dem-
onstrate a contradiction between what Socrates evidently wishes to claim
about their pleasant lives and the inadequacy of the model of pleasure in
Republic book 9 to support that view. It would be preferable if we could
construct an account that will allow this expanded sense in which the
philosopher, even once he or she has attained the knowledge required for
being a ruler, will continue to live a life characterised by great intellectual
pleasures and which also remains consistent with Socrates’ explicitly pro-
fessed account of the nature of those intellectual pleasures in terms of a
process of satisfying some kind of cognitive lack. But we are hampered in
the construction of such an account by the fact that although Socrates
spends rather a lot of time on describing the various epistemological and
psychological, not to mention ethical, aspects of someone’s progress
towards philosophical understanding and the comprehension of the Good
itself, what that person’s life might be like after that point is left relatively
underexplored.22 Perhaps this is excusable in the sense that Socrates’ major
task is to persuade us that such an understanding is possible for a human to
acquire and that, once properly installed as the rulers of a city, such rulers
would set things up so as to be the best they could possibly be. Quite what it
would be like to be such a ruler is not such a pressing concern. We are told,
of course, that they will desire and endeavour to enact whatever is good and
just and we can extrapolate something about their having no desire for
certain things the rest of us might hanker after – money, fame, familiar
familial relationships, and the like – but that is about it.
21
See also Taylor 1998, 69, who objects to Socrates’ argument on the grounds that ‘no doubt a truth
once discovered does not have to be rediscovered, but a meal once eaten does not have to be eaten
again, and an intellectual life will require repeated acts of thought (whether new discoveries or the
recapitulation of truths already known) no less than a life of bodily satisfactions will require repeated
episodes of bodily pleasure’. See also Gibbs 2001, 28–30; Russell 2005, 128 n. 45.
22
For a good discussion of the various psychological, epistemological, and ethical aspects of dialectic, see
McCabe 2006.
Resolving the difficulty
A recent attempt by Sylvain Delcomminette to resolve the problem seems to
me to be ultimately unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, it deserves serious consid-
eration since it helpfully points the way to what I think is a more promising
solution. Delcomminette’s overall interpretation aims to show that for Plato
knowing (‘connaissance’) and learning (‘apprentisage’) are regularly held to
be one and the same or, perhaps better, that for Plato human knowledge
always consists in the regular re-learning of previously known things.23
Delcomminette’s principal piece of textual evidence comes from the imme-
diate context of Republic book 9. He notes the following questions from
earlier in Socrates’ defence of the superior pleasures of the philosopher’s life
which we have already considered briefly above:
τὸν δὲ φιλόσοφον, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, τί οἰώμεθα τὰς ἄλλας ἡδονὰς νομίζειν πρὸς τὴν
τοῦ εἰδέναι τἀληθὲς ὅπῃ ἔχει καὶ ἐν τοιούτῳ τινὶ ἀεὶ εἶναι μανθάνοντα; οὐ
πάνυ πόρρω; (Rep. 581d9–e1)
‘What’, I said, ‘are we to think that the philosopher will think of the other
pleasures in relation to the pleasure of knowing how the truth is and always
being in such a state when learning? Won’t he think they fall far short?’
Delcomminette argues that Socrates here refers to the pleasure of ‘knowing
the truth and being always in such a state of learning’.24 If that is indeed how
the second half of the sentence must be understood then it would appear to
lend explicit support to his proposal that the philosopher’s life is best
understood as a kind of ‘apprentisage permanent’. He further supports
this interpretation by appealing to the Symposium’s famous account of
human psychological flux, in which Diotima claims that not only in respect
of our various character traits and emotional states but also in respect of our
knowledge we are constantly in a state of change. Knowledge comes and
goes and we are never the same with respect to what we know from one
moment to another.
ὃ γὰρ καλεῖται μελετᾶν, ὡς ἐξιούσης ἐστὶ τῆς ἐπιστήμης· λήθη γὰρ
ἐπιστήμης ἔξοδος, μελέτη δὲ πάλιν καινὴν ἐμποιοῦσα ἀντὶ τῆς ἀπιούσης
μνήμην σῴζει τὴν ἐπιστήμην, ὥστε τὴν αὐτὴν δοκεῖν εἶναι. (Symp. 208a3–7)
23
Delcomminette 2006, 477: ‘En réalité, tant dans la République que dans le Philèbe, le plaisir pur
résulte bien du processus d’apprentissage, main en tant précisément qu’il est identique à la connaissance’
(original emphasis).
24
Delcomminette 2006, 477: ‘[Le] plaisir de connaître le vrai tel qu’il est et d’être toujours dans un tel
état en apprenant.’
What is called studying happens because knowledge is departing. For
forgetting is the departure of knowledge and studying puts back new
memory in place of what has left and preserves knowledge in such a way as
to make it seem the same.
I have already noted that the passage at Rep. 518d9–e1 is not entirely clear in
its commitments. The text itself is debated and it is therefore understand-
able that different translators render the sentence differently.25 In that
case, it is prudent not to rely heavily on a particular interpretation of a
controversial passage. In addition, the reference to the Symposium’s notion
of psychological flux is not consistent with the most plausible interpretation
of the contrast between the pleasures of the body and those of the soul as
outlined in the Republic. To make clear that inconsistency it is necessary to
return to the argument we left at 585b with Socrates having set out an initial
analogy between fillings and emptyings of the body and the soul. With a full
account of Socrates’ conception of the nature of the philosophers’ pleasures,
we might then be able to give an informed answer to the question of the
pleasures of a philosopher’s life after he has come to know the Forms.
Socrates continues:
(iv) A filling with what ‘is’ to a greater degree is truer / more truly a filling
than a filling with what ‘is’ to a lesser degree (πλήρωσις δὲ ἀληθεστέρα
τοῦ ἧττον ἢ τοῦ μᾶλλον ὄντος; δῆλον ὅτι τοῦ μᾶλλον, 585b9–10).
The central difficulty here is in making good sense of the notion of degrees
of being and then applying it to the intended analogue of degrees of filling.26
Socrates himself helps only a little with the first of these problems, since he
merely reminds Glaucon in a brisk fashion of a previously agreed distinction
between things which share in ‘pure being’ and those which do not. Even
so, there is enough spelled out in these lines for us to be fairly confident
about Socrates’ view. The general contrast he invokes is between bodily
nutrition and the means of caring for the soul (585d1–3); the former
25
J. Adam 1902 devotes Appendix III of his commentary on book 9 to the discussion of how to construe
these lines and, in particular, whether they contain one or two questions. I have cited them, following
Slings’ Oxford text, with two questions. Burnet punctuates similarly, bracketing τῆς ἡδονῆς, which
appears in some manuscripts after μανθάνοντα. Adam retains τῆς ἡδονῆς to read: ‘. . .καὶ ἐν τοιούτῳ
τινὶ ἀεὶ εἶναι μανθάνοντα τῆς ἡδονῆς; οὐ πάνυ πόρρω καὶ καλεῖν. . .’, translating: ‘. . . compared with
that [pleasure] of knowing how the truth stands and always enjoying a kindred sort of pleasure while
he learns? Will he not think them very far away and . . .?’
26
Cf. Rosen 2005, 344–6. Annas 1981, 312–13, is also unhappy with this section. She wonders (312) ‘how
what is changeless can come about in what is changeless’ and also is concerned because (313) ‘it is not
clear how this passage should be related to claims elsewhere about the Forms. For the contrast drawn
here is not one between Forms and other things, since it has as much application to soul and body as
to other things (585d), and the soul is not a Form.’ There is a helpful discussion in Wolfsdorf 2013a,
70–4; cf. Erginel 2011.
obviously includes food, drink, and the like, while the latter includes true
opinion, knowledge, understanding, and every virtue (585c1–2). The ques-
tion of degrees or categories of ‘what is’ is then explained by a contrast
between two kinds of filling – their objects, and their proper location –
which is spelled out in the next few exchanges between Socrates and
Glaucon. The contrast is complex but worth exploring carefully because it
holds the key to the remaining argument. There is both a kind of filling
related to what is always the same, what is immortal, and the truth, which is
itself of such a kind and comes to be in such a thing and, in contrast, another
kind of filling which is related to what is never the same and mortal, is itself
of such a kind and comes to be in such a thing. It emerges, therefore, that
there are three variables in play in the complex set of associations which
Socrates wishes to use. They are what we might call: (a) the thing to be
filled, (b) the method of filling, and (c) the object of filling.
Learning, for example, is a method of filling which is taken to be a means
of seeing to the care of the soul, and knowledge is necessarily related to
objects which are changeless and true. Eating, on the other hand, is a means
of seeing to the care of the body but it is related to objects which are
changeable and inconsistent. Socrates insists that the character of the kind
of filling is determined by the character of its object, so learning itself is of a
kind with its objects. He also insists that the kind of filling comes to be in
something which is also of such a kind as it and its objects, so knowledge –
which is stable and unchanging – comes to be in a soul which is also
immortal and, in important ways, unchanging. The fulfilment of the
body’s needs, in contrast, has as its objects perceptible items, bits of food,
and so on, is itself only temporary – because it has to be constantly repeated
using always new items – and comes to be in something equally temporary
and changeable, namely the body.
A chain of explanation is set in place. The important determining factor
is the nature of the ultimate object in each case. The nature of the object
then determines the nature of the filling, which must in turn be related to an
appropriate subject. It remains only for Socrates to spell out the distinctions
between the two sets of relations and to rank them. Unfortunately, the text
of 585c8 has been transmitted in a corrupt state, so it is not easy to see how
the argument begins.27 The conclusion, however, at 585d1–3 is what we
might have expected, namely that the forms of care for the body have a lesser
27
Slings comments in the Oxford Classical Text ad loc.: ‘locus desperatus’. See Adam 1902 ad loc. and
his Appendix VI to book 9 for further discussion and for his own preferred solution. Cf. Ferrari 2002;
Erginel 2011, 518–20.
share in being and truth than do the forms of care of the soul. And at 585d5 it
is added that the body differs from the soul in the same way, because the
body shares less in being and truth than does the soul. Something that is
always the same shares more in being and truth than something which is not
always the same. And if that is the case for the objects of the fillings, then it
must also be the case for the fillings themselves.
It should be clear why the thrust of this argument sits poorly with the idea
that Socrates here holds the view that the philosopher’s soul is in a state of
permanent learning of the kind suggested by Diotima at Symp. 207e–208a.
The argument as a whole rests on the assumption that the filling appropriate
for the soul is the filling of something that is always alike, immortal, and
true with something that shares those characteristics. The central contrast is
between the stability and permanence of the filling appropriate to the soul
and the impermanence and changeability of the body and the objects in
which it takes pleasure. The upshot of this argument in book 9 is that filling
a bodily need is less truly a filling than filling a psychic need.28 The subject
being filled (the body), the means of filling (eating), and the items used for
the filling (food), are all changeable and inconstant. Hunger is sated only
temporarily. The body and the food used to feed it are such that the filling
cannot be permanent and is at best only ever partial. As Socrates later
comments, those who are trying to satisfy their bodily desires fail to do so
because they are filling something ‘which neither is, nor is watertight, with
things which are not’ (586b3–4). He tellingly compares their state to that of
the Danaids, who were condemned to toil fruitlessly trying to fill a leaky
vessel by carrying water in a sieve, reusing an image he exploits to good
effect in his conversation with Callicles at Gorg. 493a1–c7.29 It would be very
surprising – not to say unhelpful to his argument – if Socrates were to hold
simultaneously that the intellectual pleasures he is praising for the stability
of their objects and the stability and permanence of the soul which they
fulfil in fact also display a similar kind of impermanence. And Socrates
stipulated back at 485c–d that a philosophical nature would have to display
an excellent memory. It is therefore very unlikely that the kind of psycho-
logical fluidity emphasised in the Symposium is something we are invited to
bring to bear on the understanding of intellectual pleasures in the Republic.
28
Annas 1988, 312, complains of an illegitimate slide from ‘being filled with what really/truly is’ to ‘being
really/truly filled’; cf. Erginel 2011; Wolfsdorf 2013b, 119–29.
29
Cf. Gosling and Taylor 1982, 128: ‘the thought seems to be that a firm lasting container filled with
firm lasting contents can truly be said to be filled, whereas when one has a non-stable container and
volatile contents it is only in a dubious sense to be called a filling at all: can one fill a hair-sieve with
liquid?’; see also Bobonich 2002, 55–6.
As the discussion progresses there are more reasons offered in support of
the view that the intellectual pleasures are thought of as being provoked by a
change that is permanent and, moreover, that they are associated with that
part of us that is also permanent and unchanging. At 585d11 Socrates finally
brings all of the complicated discussion about different kinds of filling of
different kinds of vessel with different kinds of object to bear on the
question of pleasure.
(v) Fulfilment by what is appropriate to our nature is pleasant (585d11).
(vi) That which is to a greater degree filled really and with things that are
generates to a greater degree the enjoyment of true pleasure really and
more truly. That which receives things that are to a lesser degree
would be filled less truly and securely and would receive more
untrustworthy and less true pleasure (585e1–5).
Critical attention has focussed on (vi), but premise (v) is undoubtedly just as
important. When Socrates considers the pleasures enjoyed by those who are
focussed on bodily delights, it is not coincidental that he casts such people
and their pleasures in decidedly bestial terms. They are ‘like cattle, always
looking down and bent over towards the ground, feeding at the table,
growing fat and mounting one another’ (586a6–7). The metaphor of rutting
herd animals continues as these people are described as butting one another
with ‘iron horns and weapons’ (586b2). Clearly, Socrates is encouraging us
to disown such behaviour as not appropriate to our proper, human and
rational, nature. It is a mere bestial nature which such pleasures fulfil, to the
extent to which they can fulfil anything at all.30 The strong implication is
that this vignette sketches the state of people who are focussed on enjoying
the pleasures produced when they try to satisfy the desires of the appetitive
part of the soul. They have become misled by these impure and false
pleasures and have created for themselves a misinformed conception of
the good life. Tragically, the subsequent constant pandering to the desires of
the appetitive part of the soul merely compounds their misfortune and
further distorts their conceptions of value.31 Socrates goes on to refer
explicitly to the elements familiar from the tripartition of the soul when
he turns at 586c7 to consider the pleasures of the spirited, money- and
victory-loving part of the soul. The discussion of pleasure is, after all, part of
a much more extensive discussion of the relative happiness of different
30
Gibbs 2001, 31, cannot be correct in reading this passage as merely rhetorical.
31
See 439b3–6, 588b10–e1 and Lorenz 2006a, esp. 31. There are important continuities between this
view and the claims about false and impure pleasures made in the Philebus. See e.g. Cooper 1999a,
157–8.
character types, an inquiry which has taken up much of this and the
previous book and in which Socrates has made extensive use of the three
parts of the soul to explain the origin and nature of various ways of living.32
The question of the precise account of our human nature offered by
Socrates in the Republic is complicated and controversial. But, in general
terms, Socrates appears to be committed to an account of our nature which
encourages us to identify ourselves, first and foremost, with the rational part
of our soul, which should take care of and guide the other two parts.33 That
is the overall message of the concluding sections of book 9 and their
depiction of a person as composed of a human, a lion, and a many-headed
beast (see 589a–92b). The fulfilment of the needs of the rational soul is what
best fulfils the best part of our nature and produces the most and finest
pleasure. (It is impossible, at least while the soul is incarnated, to rid
ourselves entirely of the desires and influence of the appetites and of spirit,
but they ought at least to be controlled and reined in as far as possible: 571b–
572b.) Such an identification with the rational part of the soul is necessary
for the proper harmony of the soul’s parts and also, apparently, for the
proper functioning of each individual part of the soul. Certainly, in the coda
to this argument, which once again surveys the various character types
distinguished by the prominence of each one of the three parts of the
soul, Socrates notes that in the absence of proper guidance by reason even
the pleasures of the spirited or appetitive parts are not maximised. Only the
philosophical and just soul, ruled by reason, properly enjoys the pleasures of
the appetitive and spirited parts since only with the guidance of reason will
each enjoy ‘the best and truest of its own pleasures, in so far as it is possible’
(586e4–587a2). A glutton, for example, will not enjoy the pleasures of the
appetite as much as the philosopher will, since the glutton’s desires are not
controlled by reason. Socrates spells out this view in the case of the money-
and victory-loving character: constant irascibility and the overwhelming
desire for victory in fact prevent the successful satisfaction of such a person’s
predominant desires (586c7–d2).34
Premise (vi) adds very little that has not been explained or, at the very
least, discussed already; it adds only the association of pleasure with the
degree of fulfilment attained and the kind of object being used for the
fulfilment. If we have by now accepted the notion outlined and explained at
32
For discussion see Annas 1981, 294–305; Scott 2000; Ferrari 2003; Lorenz 2006b.
33
See Long 2005 for a discussion of Platonic personhood.
34
Cf. Russell 2005, 131–5. Compare also Socrates’ diagnosis of the constant futile toils of the tyrannical
man, trying desperately to satisfy his uncontrolled and changing appetites: 573b–581c.
585b11–c6 that bodily fulfilment is less a fulfilment than proper intellectual
fulfilment, then this new point follows without much trouble. We might
still imagine a staunch supporter of the pleasures of eating and drinking
objecting that he sees no particular reason to think that his preferred
pleasures are less truly pleasures than those of his more intellectually inclined
counterpart. Certainly, he might object, there is no reason to think that they
are any less intense. And, indeed, perhaps Socrates would agree with him;
the problem with bodily pleasures, after all, is that they are based in such
violent fluctuations and contrasts between satiety and emptiness that they
can mislead people into concentrating on them to the detriment of the
health of their souls (586b7–c5). He also explains the problem in terms
familiar from the epistemology and metaphysics of the central books: the
pleasures in question here are not only mixed with pain but are also ‘copies
and shadow-pictures of true pleasure’ (εἰδώλοις τῆς ἀληθοῦς ἡδονῆς καὶ
ἐσκιαγραφημέναις, 586b7–8).
The exact connotations of that description and the precise relationship
between the account of those pleasures and the general epistemological
and metaphysical commitments of the dialogue can be left aside for
now.35 Whatever we finally decide about these ‘shadow-pictures’ of
true pleasure, we are still faced with the problem of what to say about
the hedonic life of the fully fledged philosopher. The argument so far,
after all, strongly implies that the true pleasure to be had is associated
with the kinēsis that is learning – filling up the cognitive lack that is
ignorance – and that this filling is something which takes place in a stable
and everlasting container, uses stable and everlasting objects, and there-
fore does not have to be repeated. Indeed, the fact that, unlike the bodily
pleasures with which it is contrasted, such true pleasure is not in constant
need of repetition is one of the reasons why Socrates thinks it is a superior
form of pleasure.
There are a number of ways in which Socrates can respond to the concern
that the philosophical life will contain great and exquisite pleasures while
the philosopher is in the process of acquiring knowledge but, after that
point, will seem to have many fewer opportunities for continued enjoyment
of those same pleasures. A first general point to bear in mind is that Socrates
nowhere promised to show that the philosopher is at every moment of his
life experiencing the greatest pleasures; we are not to imagine him in a
constant state of intellectual ecstasy. Rather, the demonstrandum is that the
philosopher’s life, taken as a whole, is most pleasant. This lessens the need
35
For discussion of this see, for example, Wolfsdorf 2013b, esp. 119–29 and 133–6.
for us to show that the philosopher is at all times experiencing the greatest
pleasures since we might well agree that the philosopher’s life will contain at
some point in it the greatest, most true, and purest pleasures.
Second, the hedonic life of a fully-fledged philosopher will nevertheless
contain a great variety of pleasures and, moreover, will contain pleasures
which are still superior to those found in any other possible life. Socrates
asserts at 586e4–587a2 that only in the light of the rule of reason in the
soul is a person able to experience appetitive and spirited pleasures of the
best and truest variety available. Of course, these pleasures are never
going to be pure and true in the sense that the intellectual pleasures
are, but nevertheless this passage serves as an important reminder that the
philosopher will also continue to enjoy the pleasures of eating and so on
and, more to the point, we are assured that because of the harmonious
arrangement of his soul, free from internal conflict (586e5), and the fact
that therefore his desires are all correctly marshalled and arranged by
reason, he will be able to do so to the greatest extent possible for any
person.36 In contrast, when one of the other parts of the soul is dominant,
it forces its fellow soul-parts to pursue pleasures which are alien to them
(587a4–6).
This observation remains unsatisfying to the extent that it concerns
pleasures that are not related directly to the philosopher’s special emphasis
on living a life identified with the best activities of reason. A philosopher
might well take great pleasure in eating his healthy diet, perhaps even more
pleasure than the gluttons or gourmands take in eating theirs, because he
eats in a way that is ultimately guided by a conception of the good. But that
still falls short of the account we want of why a philosophical life remains
most pleasant and Socrates himself seems most interested in locating the
superiority of the philosopher’s hedonic life in its being related closely to the
experience of pleasures that are both true and also – as we have seen –
appropriate to our best nature.
Third, perhaps Socrates imagines that a philosopher will be qualified to
rule once he has grasped various essential moral truths – knowing what is
good and just, for example – but there will remain a number of other Forms
that the philosopher might come to know even once he has taken up his role
36
This is important additional support for the earlier contention (580d–583a) that the philosopher’s life
is the most pleasant because only he has experienced true and pure intellectual pleasures and, as an
expert in all pleasures, he would judge his life to be the most pleasant. On that argument see Taylor
2008, who rejects Socrates’ claim that the philosopher excels other types of men in his experience of
pleasure. Erginel 2004, ch. 3, has a wide-ranging discussion of this argument and compares it
fruitfully with similar arguments in Mill’s Utilitarianism §10.
as a ruler in the city.37 This proposal will postpone the difficulty: the
philosopher’s life can contain the marvellous pleasures of learning for longer
than his required period of training. But it does little more than that. There
is no guarantee, I think, that there is an indefinitely large number of Forms
to learn such that a philosopher will never run out of potential new sources
of the pleasures of intellectual discovery. (The Republic is unfortunately
unclear about the precise range of the Forms.) And this proposal never-
theless still faces the problem that there is no sense in which the possession
of knowledge already acquired is itself a source of pleasure for the
philosopher.
Another possibility is that Socrates has in mind a wider conception of
intellectual pleasures than just those concerned with Forms.38 Perhaps the
fully qualified philosopher will continue his intellectual development by
acquiring various true beliefs, finding out various facts about the world,
reading literature or history, even doing some mathematics or revisiting his
old harmonic theory text-books and trying out some new problems. There
is some textual support for such a view since at 585b11–c2 Socrates groups
not only the pleasures of knowledge and understanding but also true beliefs
and generally all virtue against those concerned with food, drink, and
nutrition as a whole. All of the former types, it seems, will produce pleasures
that are superior to those of the latter type. Now, the precise ramifications of
this proposal for the classification of this wider group of pleasures will
depend to a large extent on what view is taken of the ontological stance of
the Republic as a whole and also of the capacities for the acquisition of true
beliefs of not only the other classes of citizen but also the non-rational soul
parts themselves. But it is an important reminder that the philosopher-ruler
will not be a disembodied soul; he will continue to live and take enjoyment
in various pursuits and activities beyond the special case of acquiring
knowledge of perfect, intelligible, and everlasting Forms. But yet again,
the proposed pleasures that are said to characterise the philosopher’s life are
not obviously of a kind that cannot also be enjoyed by those less fortunate
people who cannot be said to live a philosophical life. A rather wide group of
37
This proposal was suggested by one of the anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press.
38
An interpretation of this kind is offered by Erginel 2011 (cf. Erginel 2004, ch. 4), which he further
supports by relying on a scalar interpretation of the being and truth of various objects of pleasure:
there are, in other words, objects that stand between those that are ‘always the same, immortal, and
the truth’ and those that are ‘never alike and mortal’ (585c2–6) such as the objects of true beliefs.
There are signs that some ancient readers were tempted by a version of this approach. For example,
Plutarch’s criticism of the Epicureans in his Non Posse seems to accuse them of neglecting a wide range
of apparently intellectual pleasures. See Chapter 4 below.
people, we might imagine, can come to acquire and perhaps enjoy acquiring
true beliefs or a grasp of empirical facts, even if we grant the possibility that
such learning would be transformed significantly by a proper grasp of the
nature of the Good.
A proposal
A better answer can be given if we allow ourselves to work with a richer
conception of the workings of the reasoning part of the soul. We have
already seen signs in the discussion of the pleasures and pains involved in
the philosopher’s ascent from the cave that the Republic must be using
something like the conception of first- and second-order knowledge that
Protarchus expresses in more explicit terms and that in both cases there is an
evident interest in the pleasure and pain to be associated with a kind of
reflexive knowledge. My further claim is that the analysis taken from the
Philebus can be used to alleviate the problem of the philosopher’s intellec-
tual pleasures in the Republic by pointing to a set of pleasures that the
philosopher will be able to experience after the point of coming-to-know
the Forms and that are not accessible in any way or to any degree by
someone who has not similarly come to know the Forms. It is certainly
wrong to say that the philosopher, once he has acquired knowledge of the
Forms, will continue to experience the pleasures of that initial and
extremely satisfying discovery because he will ‘forget’ what he has learned.
It is hard to square such a proposal with the evident emphasis in the Republic
on the stability and permanence of not only the object of philosophical
knowledge but also the rational soul with which that knowledge is acquired,
not to mention the insistence that philosophers will have excellent powers
of memory (487a). However, Delcomminette’s proposal is on the right
lines because it is true that the philosopher’s life will continue to be
characterised by various changes in the soul that might reasonably be
said to be examples of coming-to-know of the sort that would qualify as
potential pleasures. We do not need, on the other hand, to posit some
kind of constant state of learning and forgetting of any first-order knowl-
edge since any psychological changes necessary can be restricted to the
second-order kinds of knowing.
Protarchus drew our attention to the possibility of there being a second
order of reflection on what a person knows and the connections this might
have to experiences of pleasure or pain in coming to know something, since
it allows a distinction between coming-to-know in some cases in which one
does and in others in which one does not also know that one does not know
A proposal 47
that something. There are cases in which this second-order knowledge that
one does not know something is coupled with the fact that one previously
did know that something, in which case we are right to talk in terms of
‘forgetting’ or ‘remembering’.39 But this is not true of all cases. There is
surely, we might insist, an important distinction between having forgotten
something and merely not having to mind something that we still know.
That distinction is brought out most forcefully by the fact that in the case of
something forgotten but now recognised as necessary to know, the previ-
ously held piece of knowledge is not easily remembered. Indeed, the
difficulty of remembering that previously held piece of knowledge coupled
with the recognised need for it is precisely the combination of factors that
would make it plausible to say that the experience is a painful one.
Once again we can turn to the Philebus for a more explicit expression of
an idea that I want to suggest is relevant to Socrates’ claims in the Republic.
In his discussion with Protarchus, Socrates articulates a distinction between
‘remembering’ something that has been forgotten and ‘calling to mind’
something that has not been forgotten but has simply not been the focus of
attention. At 34b–c he distinguishes between two forms of ‘recollection’,
anamnēsis: one in which the soul ‘takes up’ (analambanēi, 34b8) a memory,
which is something originally experienced together with the body, and
another in which the soul ‘unearths’ or recovers (anapolēsēi, 34b11) a
memory which it previously had lost (apolesasa, 34b10) of a perception or
a piece of learning. Both, he says, can rightly be called examples of
anamnēsis, although it is evident that we are not meant to think on this
occasion of the special kind of recollection considered in the Meno and
Phaedo: both forms of anamnēsis in the Philebus deal with perceptions or
things learned during a person’s life.40 This distinction between the two
forms is embedded in a longer section that tries to clarify what memory is
(33c–34c) since Socrates wishes to use the pleasures belonging to memory as
an example of pleasures which belong only to the soul and not to the soul
and body together. His principal concern, therefore, is to show that even in
cases where what is being recalled is something that originally involved the
body (a perception or some other kind of experience) the recollection of it
involves only the soul. But whatever the other subtleties of the passage, it is
reasonable to identify here some recognition on Socrates’ part that there is
39
And there is also the further aspect of whether the person concerned knows that he has forgotten,
which is a complicated combination of (i) not knowing X, (ii) knowing that he does not know X, and
(iii) knowing that he previously did know X.
40
There is a helpful discussion of this passage in Delcomminette 2006, 324–30.
an important difference between the soul’s remembering something that
has been forgotten – that is, a memory that has been lost (33e2–4) – and the
soul’s recovering something stored in the memory. Calling a piece of latent
knowledge to mind can hardly be called ‘learning’, of course, nor can it
really be called ‘remembering’. But the Socrates of the Philebus apparently
thinks it might still be called a case of anamnēsis, and what matters for our
purposes is that he does identify a psychological capacity involving the
taking up of things stored in the memory.
At this point we might be put in mind of not only Aristotle’s discussion
of anamnēsis in De Mem. 2, but also his useful distinction between the first
and second actualities of knowing in De An. 2.5. Of course, Aristotle has
his own account of how it can be both pleasant to learn and also pleasant
to possess and use already-learnt knowledge. And that account is in turn
related to a more general disagreement between him and Plato on the
necessity of thinking of pleasure as a kind of kinēsis. That disagreement
will be further explored when we consider Aristotle’s own account of the
pleasures of learning and knowing.41 Still, it seems that Plato needs some-
thing that will do the same job as Aristotle’s useful distinction. He needs
some distinction between the kinēsis that is the remembering of something
previously known that has been forgotten and a kinēsis that is the bringing
to mind of something known that has become somehow latent but can be
activated at will and without effort when it is found to be necessary. The
first of the two species of anamnēsis at Phileb. 34b seems to satisfy this
need. My hope is that we now have sufficient evidence that Plato does
consider there to be a complexity of psychological activity concerning
learning, knowing, and remembering such that we can move beyond a
simple and exhaustive dichotomy between the philosopher-ruler’s
‘knowing’ the Form and his being engaged in the process of learning the
Form.42
Philosopher-rulers will not spend all of their time in ruling. Indeed, we
are told explicitly that for the most part they will be able to spend their time
in philosophy (540a–b). Socrates does not say much about what kind of
philosophy a philosopher-ruler will do, nor does he give a detailed account
of what a philosopher-ruler will do as he rules, but some of what he does say
will allow me to illustrate some of the pleasures which will characterise the
41
See Chapter 3.
42
A similar idea appears at Theaet. 198d–e, where Socrates and Theaetetus are investigating the ‘aviary’
analogy. Socrates distinguishes between ‘possessing’ a piece of knowing and ‘holding’ it. And this
distinction corresponds to two senses of learning: the initial acquisition of some piece of knowledge
and the retrieval of a piece of knowledge already learned.
A proposal 49
fully fledged philosopher-ruler’s life. When the philosopher is not ruling
but instead doing philosophy, we can assume that either he is acquiring
more philosophical knowledge – which is pleasant in an uncontroversial
way – or he is reviewing and revisiting philosophical knowledge he already
has. The latter activity is neatly characterised as the first kind of anamnēsis
canvassed in the Philebus: the soul takes up something stored in the
memory. The philosopher will turn his attention back to this or that
Form or consider how the Forms are related to one another. Whatever he
does, precisely, it is reasonable to think that it involves a change of a kind in
his soul, the bringing to mind of latent knowledge, and is therefore
something we can readily classify as an intellectual pleasure. These pleasures
are both plausibly imagined as kinēseis and, furthermore, are related directly
to his being a philosopher-ruler.
When the philosopher ruler is actively engaged in ruling, although it is
evidently not his preferred activity, it too presents opportunities for
intellectual pleasures. At 501b Socrates likens the activity of the philoso-
phers in constructing the ideal city to that of a painter. Just as the painter
will work by looking back and forth between his picture and the original
that he is attempting to depict, so too the philosophers will turn their
attention first to the Forms they are attempting to instantiate as best they
can, then to their city, then back to the Form, and so on. Throughout this
process they of course know, for example, what Justice is but the constant
movement back and forth between the model and the original might
rightly be said to correspond to a psychological shift of attention from
the perceptible construction to the ideal model and back again. They call
to mind the original and then, in the light of that original, they turn their
attention back to the city. And the process goes on, stopping not when the
city is complete but also being called into action whenever the philoso-
phers are called to make a judgement about a specific question of the city’s
affairs.
To borrow the apparatus of Protarchus’ observation, we might say that
the philosopher-ruler will continue to use his faculty of logismos and in
doing so call to mind and reconsider various things that he knows both
when he is doing philosophy and when he is ruling. He needs to do this not
because he has forgotten the nature of the Just or the Fine but because,
although he does know these things, his attention is moving between these
intelligible objects and various perceptible objects and particular instances
of justice and fineness in the city. It is not at all implausible to imagine that
on each occasion when he turns once again to consider, for example, the
Just, this will involve a coming-to-know that, while not of the significance
of the first time he came to know its nature, will share enough of the
characteristics of that first occasion to be thought of as a kinēsis that fills a
kind of lack in the soul. And, as such, it can be thought of as a true and pure
pleasure. Finally, it is a kind of pleasure that is entirely unavailable to
anyone who is not a philosopher-ruler.
Philebus 55a: pleasure, thought, and the divine life

There is a final twist in the story. In the Philebus Socrates and Protarchus are
happy to identify various pleasures associated with learning and they also
make some headway in outlining a number of processes involved in learn-
ing, remembering, and then retrieving items of knowledge. But they do not
claim that there is a pleasure to be had in the state of the continued
possession or the continual active contemplation of knowledge. In fact,
the account of the pleasures of learning and remembering at 51e7–52b9
turns out to be relevant only for human knowers and learners since it is
contrasted with a different kind of life at 55a5–8: a ‘third kind of life’ which is
characterised by neither destruction nor coming-to-be. This life is charac-
terised, however, by being a life of neither pleasure nor pain but of ‘thinking
in the purest way possible’ (φρονεῖν δ’ ἦν ὡς οἷόν τε καθαρώτατα).
Protarchus agrees that this life would not be one a human should choose
since he and Socrates have agreed that a human life ought to contain
some pleasure (21d9–e4). This conclusion that the life of continued and
pure thinking is not a human life had, in fact, been advertised as a possibility
earlier in the dialogue. They had reminded themselves that, according to the
original comparison of lives (21d9–e2), the life of understanding (noein) and
thinking (phronein) would not contain any pleasure or pain at all (33b2–4).
And they had even recognised the possibility that this would be the most
divine (theiotatos) life (33b2–7) since it is not likely (eikos) that the gods will
experience either pleasure or its opposite (33b8–9).43 What is surprising
about this claim is not that gods will not feel pain but that they will not feel
pleasure either.44
Now, at 55a Socrates and Protarchus have a metaphysical argument for
this same conclusion. If pleasure is a coming-to-be, then a life that contains
43
The divine life is also described at 30d1–3: οὐκοῦν ἐν μὲν τῇ τοῦ Διὸς ἐρεῖς φύσει βασιλικὴν μὲν ψυχήν,
βασιλικὸν δὲ νοῦν ἐγγίγνεσθαι διὰ τὴν τῆς αἰτίας δύναμιν. . . For an illuminating account of the gods
in the Philebus see Carpenter 2003.
44
It is common to deny that the gods feel pain but divine lives are usually thought to be pleasant. For
example, the demiurge seems to be pleased at Tim. 37c6–d1. The claim that god lives a life free from
pain or toil can be traced back in the philosophical tradition at least as far as Xenophanes (DK 21 b25).
Philebus 55a: pleasure, thought, and the divine life 51
no coming-to-be will contain no pleasure. A life of continual thinking of the
purest kind and no destruction or coming-to-be at all will therefore include
no pleasures. Socrates embraces just this difficulty sometimes identified
with the account in the Republic. And perhaps it should remind us that the
philosopher-rulers of the Republic are indeed still humans and still subject to
the processes of destruction and restoration that characterise human lives.
Nevertheless, the Philebus denies that a life of continual pure thought will
be a pleasant life. There are some important consequences of this result. It
implies that in so far as the divine life of the gods is a life of thought and
subject to no destruction or coming-to-be then it too will be without
pleasure. Furthermore, if the goal of a human life is to become as much
like god as possible, the presence of pleasure and pain in a human life is a
marker of the limits of such assimilation and therefore the best human life
may well always fall short of the divine life.45
The conclusion that a divine life is without pleasure is doubtless sup-
posed to be striking and perhaps even shocking. It may also be a conse-
quence that Plato himself would find uncomfortable but which he is
prepared to air in the Philebus because it is dictated by the account of the
nature of pleasure he finds most plausible. As we shall see in the next
chapter, Aristotle argues that a significant virtue of his own alternative
account of the nature of pleasure is that it allows there to be pleasure
associated not merely with the coming-to-be of knowledge but also – indeed
primarily – with the possession and active contemplation of knowledge:
‘thinking in the purest way possible’.
45
Perhaps Socrates and Protarchus deny that the life of thinking which is free from pleasure and pain is
preferable to a life which includes pleasure and pain because a choiceworthy human life must include
both reason and pleasure. (This is a plausible interpretation of 21a8–22a6.) Alternatively, they may
hold that the divine life is indeed preferable for humans to a life including pleasure and pain but think
that the divine life is an ideal which humans can only approximate at best. For further discussion see
Carone 2000; Russell 2005, 198–9; Delcomminette 2006, 188–90, 310–13; Evans 2007c, esp. 352–6,
and 2007b, 134–45.
chapter 3
Aristotle on the pleasures of learning and knowing
It is well known that Aristotle disagrees with what he takes to be the analysis
of the nature of pleasure dominant among his predecessors and contempo-
raries, namely that pleasure is some kind of change (kinēsis) or coming-to-be
(genesis). He often connects this view of the nature of pleasure with the
related claim that pleasure is a kind of fulfilment or replenishment
(anaplērōsis). This view of the nature of pleasure is indeed not hard to
find in Plato’s works. We have already seen that the idea of pleasure as a
process of replenishment allows Socrates in the Republic to make a case for
the pleasantness of cases of coming-to-know something. But we also noted
that it is not obvious how such a framework for understanding pleasure will
allow Socrates to claim that the continued possession or use of knowledge
already acquired might also be pleasant. It was difficult, in short, to see how
a philosopher-ruler’s life might continue to be pleasant once he or she has
come to possess the knowledge of the pure intelligible forms required for
ruling, even if we granted that the initial acquisition of such knowledge is
pleasant in the way Socrates insists. Aristotle shares Plato’s view that the life
of the best kind of intellectual activity is the best kind of life for a human to
live. And he agrees also that it will be the most pleasant life for a human to
live. Aristotle’s solution to the difficulty of reconciling these two views
depends on his general revision of the metaphysics of pleasure, denying
the Platonic view that it is a kind of change or coming-to-be and instead
insisting that pleasure is to be associated with his metaphysical notion of
‘activity’ (energeia).1 In this way he stands in stark opposition to Plato.
1
This is not an unproblematic revision. While Plato may struggle to account for the pleasures of
knowing and contemplating a geometrical proof, Aristotle may find it difficult to make good sense of
obvious pleasures such as those involved in the process of satisfying a hunger or of satisfying a desire for
revenge. Frede 1996b, 278: ‘[B]oth the Platonic and the later Aristotelian accounts of pleasure suffer the
same defect: neither is sufficient to cover the whole range of phenomena that it supposedly explains. In
principle, Aristotle at least could have known better.’ For a recent interpretation that tries to attribute
to Aristotle a more plausible account of the pleasures of restorative processes, see Aufderheide 2013.
52
But this opposition ought not to obscure the ways in which he and Plato
think very much alike, particularly when it comes to the value and impor-
tance of the pleasures that come from rational activities and the close
connection between the possession or active use of knowledge and the
fulfilment of the best parts of our human nature.
A natural desire to know

Aristotle thinks that humans all have a natural desire for knowledge. And
the presence of this desire for knowledge is indicated by a certain kind of
pleasure:
πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει. σημεῖον δ’ ἡ τῶν αἰσθήσεων
ἀγάπησις. (Metaph. A.1 980a21–2)
All humans desire to know. An indication of this is the joy they take in
perceiving.
Of course, the specific pleasure being referred to here is one that we
experience through the use of our senses and not through reasoning as
such. But Aristotle thinks that this is a good piece of evidence for there being
a general desire for and, we presume, enjoyment of knowledge. As we shall
see, both perception and thought are for Aristotle prime examples of
activities that produce pleasure; he often uses them in tandem to make
points about the metaphysics of pleasure and he will then often contrast the
two or note some kind of cognitive progression from perception to thought.
Sight in particular is for Aristotle the sense we value above all others and it
produces the best pleasures, even though we would choose to see even if it
provided no pleasure at all.2 The same goes for thinking (cf. NE 1.6
1096b16–19). The general thrust of the famous passage at the beginning of
the Metaphysics is that, beginning from the most basic form of cognition
that we all share (and which other animals also share), Aristotle shows how
this is the basis of other kinds of cognition and understanding: memory,
experience, skill, and understanding. The details of how these are to be
distinguished from and related to one another need not concern us here, but
we should remember that cognition of a more elevated sort than perception
is not far from Aristotle’s mind.
The claim about perception is twofold: first we take a certain kind of
delight in it whether or not it serves some particular end and, second, the
2
Johansen 2012, 206–7, notes that in Sens. 1 437a1–17 Aristotle claims that, in a way, hearing is more
important for thinking in so far as its accidental objects are logoi.
54 Aristotle on the pleasures of learning and knowing
reason why we do take delight in it is because it makes us knowers (ποιεῖ
γνωρίζειν ἡμᾶς) in the sense of revealing differences (980a24–7).3 The
vocabulary used in these lines will not withstand any particularly fine-
grained scrutiny that might distinguish between different kinds of knowl-
edge or objects of knowledge. Aristotle is pointing to a very general and
universal human impulse for knowledge understood very broadly.4 Rather,
the delight in knowing and the associated claim that we would choose to
engage in such activities just for their own sake is supposed to show that this
is something we all desire by nature. This is of course compatible with
Aristotle’s also holding, as he does, that there is a specific form of under-
standing that is the best kind of knowledge for humans, is involved in the
kind of activity that ought to be recognised as the goal of a human life and is,
in that sense, something that all humans desire just as all humans desire to
live well. In other words, there is a special kind of knowing that is to be
identified as the fulfilment of our human nature: this is the best thing we
can do and is the activity of the very best part of us. But there is no reason to
think that the message of these opening lines of the Metaphysics should be
confined to the assertion of a specific kind of desire for a specific kind of
understanding.5
Aristotle also offers an elaborate analysis of what it is first to learn and
then to know something. This analysis allows him to deal with the problems
that we identified for Plato’s connection between pleasure and knowing
since they allow Aristotle to make clear the distinction between the pos-
session of already-acquired knowledge and the active contemplation and use
of such knowledge. He can also account for the movement between these
states. Finally, he will be able to identify a way in which it can be pleasant
both to acquire knowledge and actively to contemplate already-acquired
knowledge.
In De An. 2.5 he is explaining the kinds of change that are involved in
perception. Part of his explanation involves him in offering an analysis of
3
Cambiano 2012, 3–4, notes that agapēsis is a hapax: ‘Aristotle presumably aimed at emphasizing that
what we are faced with is a peculiar kind of pleasure, more exactly a kind of delight, as Ross rightly
translates it. Nor should it be confused with any sort of pleasure by whatever sense and for every thing.’
4
Cf. Burnyeat 2011.
5
The verb oregesthai is perhaps chosen for its similarly broad scope, on which see Pearson 2012, 17–87.
At NE 3.1 1111a30–4 Aristotle refers to an appetite (epithumia) for learning (mathēsis) since he is
emphasising the pleasures that are supposed to come from satisfying this appetite. For this expanded
notion of epithumia see Pearson 2012, 100–4. Cf. Lear 1988, 1–10, who takes the opening of the
Metaphysics to be emblematic of a general account of Aristotelian philosophy and Aristotle’s account of
human nature.
different cognitive states and the changes from one to another. Starting at
417a21, he draws distinctions between different kinds of ‘knowers’:
(1) Someone who is a knower in the sense that he is a human and humans
are animals who are knowers and have knowledge;
(2) Someone who is a knower in the sense that he has knowledge of, for
example, grammar;
(3) Someone who is a knower in the sense that he is now contemplating
some particular piece of knowledge.
The person in (3) is a knower because he is ‘in fulfilment and knows in the
proper sense this particular thing’ (ἐντελεχείᾳ ὢν καὶ κυρίως ἐπιστάμενος
τόδε τὸ Α). He stands as the end-point or goal of intellectual achievement to
which the other two should be compared and related.6
Then, at 2.5 417b5–28 Aristotle contrasts the following:
(i) Someone who has knowledge and who comes to contemplate
(θεωροῦν γὰρ γίνεται τὸ ἔχον τὴν ἐπιστήμην 417b5–6);
(ii) Someone who has the capacity to know and who, through the agency
of someone who has fulfilled that capacity and is a teacher, learns and
acquires knowledge.
There are therefore three stages here which, in rough chronological order of
development, are:
(a) A capacity to know that is not yet fulfilled;
(b) A fulfilment of the capacity to know through the agency of a teacher
who knows;
(c) A change from the mere possession of knowledge to contemplation of
a particular piece of knowledge.
The situation in (i), he says, should not be called teaching or learning; the
situation in (ii) presumably should be (417b9–12).7 And Aristotle also thinks
that there is reason not to call the situation in (i) an alteration (alloiōsis) or, if
it is an alteration, then it is a distinct kind of alteration (417b6–7). The
reason for this hesitation is that in the case of the situation in (i) the
development is ‘to itself and to fulfilment’ (εἰς αὑτὸ γὰρ ἡ ἐπίδοσις καὶ
εἰς ἐντελέχειαν): a curious phrase that implies that the change from being
6
(1) and (2) both have the capacity for knowing but in different ways. (1) has the capacity in the sense
that he can acquire knowledge and contemplate; (2) has the capacity in the sense that, provided that
nothing external prevents him, he can exercise his capacity to contemplate some knowledge that he
possesses. (1) can acquire knowledge and (2) can, provided that circumstances are right, exercise the
knowledge he already has.
7
Aristotle also considers the metaphysics of learning in Phys. 3.3, where he says that when a teacher
teaches something to a pupil who learns there is a single change that occurs in the pupil; this fulfilment
of the pupil as something changeable is brought about by the teacher as something productive of
change.
someone who possesses knowledge to someone actively using that knowl-
edge in contemplation is indeed the fulfilment of the knower as such – it
brings the knower to his fulfilled state – and is the development of the
knower to the state of being what it is by nature. It is a fulfilment of the
nature of the knower and perhaps a satisfaction of the universal desire to
know trailed at the beginning of the Metaphysics.
We can also add to this picture the various distinctions offered in
Aristotle’s account of memory and recollection. Memory (mnēmē) is the
preservation of some prior experience or knowledge and is to be distin-
guished from the first acquisition of knowledge (De Mem. 2 451a20–451b2).
Recollection (anamnēsis), by contrast, is the retrieval of some previously
held knowledge, perception, or state (De Mem. 2 451b2–7). We should note,
however, that it is also possible for the same person to learn the same thing
twice (451b7–8). This last comment is rather important; it shows that just as
there is a change that is, so to speak, the opposite of change (i) above, so too
there is a change that is the opposite of change (ii) above. Not only can
someone cease now to be thinking about some piece of knowledge and
nevertheless retain that knowledge but also someone can forget a piece of
knowledge and have to re-learn it.8
Much of this will be familiar. But I want to draw attention to three
aspects of this general account that are important for Aristotle’s conception
of the relationship between pleasure and knowing and allow him to improve
upon the Platonic account discussed in the previous chapter. First, and most
basically, there is a set of distinctions that cover the relevant stages: the
capacity to acquire, the acquisition, the use, the ceasing to use, and the loss
of knowledge. Second, Aristotle identifies a related set of distinct changes
involved in the transition from one of these stages to the next, although he
signals that in this respect we should not think of all the changes in the same
way.9 Third, we should take seriously the implication that the process of
first having a capacity to know, then acquiring some knowledge, and then
actively contemplating that knowledge is a teleological process; each step is
part of a process of perfecting the nature of the human knower. In so far as
8
Cf. Sorabji 2004, 35–46, who rightly stresses that Aristotle is here responding to various Platonic
accounts of learning as recollection.
9
In the case of the change in (ii), this is a simple exchange of knowledge for ignorance. But it seems that
the change in (i) is not the familiar kind in which an underlying subject exchanges one of a pair of
opposite properties for another; instead Aristotle signals that it may be a different kind of alloiōsis
involved in the completion or fulfilment of a capacity. This difference between the two changes is the
focus of attention for those interested in the kinds of changes – particularly material changes – that
may be involved in perception. See for further detail and discussion: Burnyeat 2002, esp. 48–65;
Lorenz 2007; Johansen 2012, 158–69.
they are both progressions towards this goal, the changes in (i) and (ii) are
alike. The culmination and goal of the process is for the knower as such to
be in a state of fulfilment and to be ‘itself’. These guiding notions form the
important background of the account of the pleasures associated with
learning and knowing that are the focus of Aristotle’s attention elsewhere,
principally in his ethical and aesthetic works.
Pleasures of thought in the Nicomachean Ethics

The assertion of a universal human desire for knowledge in Metaph. A.1
stands in contrast with Eudoxus’ assertion of a universal desire for pleasure
which is the subject of Aristotle’s interest in NE 10.2 and which introduces
some of the important ideas that are developed in Aristotle’s own account in
the following three chapters. Eudoxus begins his argument with the obser-
vation that all animals – both rational and non-rational – aim at pleasure
(10.2 1172b9–11) and concludes from this that pleasure is the good. Eudoxus
emerges from the chapter as a whole as someone who, in Aristotle’s
estimation, has hit upon the important truth that pleasure and pain are
important indications of an organism achieving or failing to engage in its
proper natural activity. But Eudoxus overplays his hand and infers that
pleasure itself is the goal of all animal desires rather than the accompani-
ment of an organism achieving its proper telos.10 Eudoxus also fails properly
to take into account the important distinctions to be drawn between
rational and non-rational creatures. His assertion that both rational and
non-rational creatures prefer pleasure to pain and prefer pleasure to the
mere absence of pleasure is not disputed. However, one of the arguments
ranged against Eudoxus’ strong conclusion is inspired by Socrates’ observa-
tion in the Philebus that we humans would want to live a pleasant life only if
it were accompanied by wisdom. Aristotle begins with the relatively weak
claim that a life without phronēsis at all but with plenty of pleasure would
not be so worthy of choice as a life with both (10.2 1172b28–32). This is
something from Plato’s otherwise deficient analysis of pleasure that Aristotle
is happy to preserve: when we consider the place of pleasure in a human life
we should never lose sight of the fact that we are rational animals. In the
next chapter Aristotle strengthens the claim. He insists not merely that a life
of pleasure with reason is ‘more choiceworthy’ (10.2 1172b29) than a life of
10
For discussion of Eudoxus’ arguments, Speusippus’ criticisms of them, and Aristotle’s partial
rehabilitation and defence of the Eudoxan insight see Warren 2009. See also Broadie 1991, 346–53;
Rapp 2009, 209–14.
pleasure alone. Now he also claims that no one would choose to live with
the intellectual capacity of a child (10.3 1174a1–3: ζῆν παιδίου διάνοιαν
ἔχων) for their whole life even if that life were filled with pleasures and free
from pains. (This is stronger than the Philebus’ claim that we would not
want to live the life of a mollusc, even if it were filled with pleasures; a child
does at least have some intellectual capacities.) And we would choose to see,
remember, know, and be virtuous even if none of these ever brought
us pleasure. The fact that pleasures do necessarily follow from these activ-
ities is irrelevant for the moment; we would choose them even if no
pleasures ensued (10.3 1174a1–8).
Nevertheless, Eudoxus is also right to say that pleasure is a good even for
rational creatures like us. Aristotle agrees that we should pay attention to the
fact that not only non-rational animals but also we rational humans aim at
what is pleasant. He thinks, for example, that this fact undermines the
argument of those who sneer at any proposed good that is the focus of such
widespread pursuit by all animals; true, pleasure is something rather com-
monly pursued, but it is significant that even intelligent (phronima) crea-
tures like us pursue it also (10.2 1172b35–1173a5). The conclusion Eudoxus
ought to have drawn, we discover as Aristotle’s discussion proceeds, is that
each kind of animal is pursuing its own proper natural activity and that this
activity is what is accompanied by pleasure; pleasure itself is not the goal
(cf. 7.13 1153b25–32: animals and humans all pursue pleasure but perhaps not
all the same pleasures).11
Negotiating the importance of our human nature as rational animals
for the role of pleasure in the good life is therefore part of the very
opening arguments in the last book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Before
Aristotle turns to offer his own account of the nature of pleasure and its
relationship to various human activities, he highlights the importance of
recognising the ways in which we humans are not only like but also
distinct from non-rational animals. It is no surprise, in that case, that our
human capacities for various kinds of cognitive and rational activity play
a central role when he elaborates on his view in NE 10.3–5 and, in
particular, explains his dissatisfaction with the idea that pleasure is a
kind of change or coming-to-be.
Aristotle criticises the view of pleasure as a coming-to-be in both of the
sections of the Nicomachean Ethics in which the discussion of pleasure’s role
11
Cf. Rapp 2009, 225–9. See also NE 10.5 1176a5–8: a horse’s pleasure is different from that of a dog or a
human; so Heraclitus was right to say that donkeys prefer rubbish to gold.
in the good life comes to the fore, namely 7.11–14 and 10.1–5.12 In both
passages we find a strong interest in the pleasures to be had from various
kinds of cognition and it is clear that Aristotle takes the pleasures experi-
enced in perception and thought to be a strong piece of evidence in favour
of his opposition to the pleasure-as-genesis view. This in turn is part of his
series of objections to the view that pleasure cannot be good. In this case, the
argument is based on the idea that a coming-to-be cannot be a good because
it is essentially incomplete and looks to its goal for any derivative value it
might possess. Indeed, Socrates and Protarchus decide that it would be odd
for someone who thinks that pleasure is a good to choose a life of ‘thinking
in the purest way possible’ (ὡς οἷόν τε καθαρώτατα) over a life of pleasure
and pain, that is, a life of destruction and coming-to-be.13 Aristotle counters
this argument by denying that pleasures are all comings-to-be and cognitive
pleasures are his prime piece of evidence. For example, in 10.3 he writes:
ἡ δόξα δ’ αὕτη δοκεῖ γεγενῆσθαι ἐκ τῶν περὶ τὴν τροφὴν λυπῶν καὶ ἡδονῶν·
ἐνδεεῖς γὰρ γενομένους καὶ προλυπηθέντας ἥδεσθαι τῇ ἀναπληρώσει. τοῦτο
δ’ οὐ περὶ πάσας συμβαίνει τὰς ἡδονάς· ἄλυποι γάρ εἰσιν αἵ τε μαθηματικαὶ
καὶ τῶν κατὰ τὰς αἰσθήσεις αἱ διὰ τῆς ὀσφρήσεως, καὶ ἀκροάματα δὲ καὶ
ὁράματα πολλὰ καὶ μνῆμαι καὶ ἐλπίδες. τίνος οὖν αὗται γενέσεις ἔσονται;
οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἔνδεια γεγένηται, οὗ γένοιτ’ ἂν ἀναπλήρωσις. (NE 10.3
1173b13–20)
The same opinion [sc. that pleasure is a movement and coming-to-be] seems
to have arisen because of the pains and pleasures of nutrition. This is because
it seems that those who have become in need and are in pain beforehand take
pleasure in the replenishment. But this is not the case for all pleasures; for the
pleasures of learning are without pain as are those that come about according
to the senses – through smell and from the many things we hear and see – as
well as memories and expectations. And of what will these be comings-to-be?
For no deficiency has come about of which there would be replenishment.
There are three types of pleasure that Aristotle offers as counter-examples to
the replenishment view: the pleasures of learning, of sense perception, and
of memory and expectation. For now, that is as much as Aristotle has to say;
12
The details of Aristotle’s criticisms of this theory and his own preferred account in terms of activities
(energeiai) are the subject of a great deal of debate and interest. See Gosling and Taylor 1982, 301–17;
Broadie 1991, 339–46; Gonzalez 1991; Frede 1997, 418–27; Bostock 1998; Van Riel 2000, 7–78; Taylor
2003; Heineman 2011; Shields 2011; Strohl 2011; Wolfsdorf 2013a, 114–33; Aufderheide 2013.
13
Plat. Phileb. 55a5–11; see above p. 50. The argument for classifying pleasure as a coming-to-be begins at
54a3. Cf. Arist. NE 7.12 1153a7–12. Damascius, In Phileb. §§214–22 offers a response to Aristotle’s
concerns (cf. Van Riel 2000, 145–73, and 2012 on Damascius’ interpretation that the Philebus is
compatible with the Aristotelian view that there are pleasures ‘in activity’). On ‘purity’ used of the
objects of thought and of associated pleasures, see below, pp. 64–6.
he merely registers these counter-examples and moves on to debunk the
next argument offered by the anti-pleasure camp. But the next chapters
elaborate on his preferred conception of the metaphysics of pleasure, and
the pleasures of sensing and thinking are again to the fore. Before passing on
to look more closely at those chapters, however, we should notice the
inclusion here in 10.3 of the pleasures of memory and expectation.
Although memory – along, of course, with the sense perception – is some-
thing that some non-human animals possess, Aristotle also here includes
expectations or hopes (elpides) and this points to a capacity that is possessed
only by human animals (cf. PA 3.6 669a19–21). In that case, since ‘memories
and expectations’ are likely to function as a pair, we should probably think
that memory here is not just a general ability to preserve and recall things we
have learned but also the specific human capacity for deliberately recollect-
ing one’s own past experiences and imagining future ones.14 The pleasures
and pains we experience when considering our own past and imagining our
own future have in any case already been the focus of Aristotle’s attention in
NE 9.4 1166a23–9, where the pairing mnēmai . . . elpides also occurs.15
Throughout the next section of his argument in chapters 10.4 and 10.5
Aristotle makes reference to the pleasures of perception and of cognition. In
both cases he is prepared also to distinguish between better and worse or
perhaps more and less perfect or complete examples of the two kinds of
activity. He also distinguishes between better and worse, or perhaps more
and less appropriate, objects for each of those activities. But both perception
and thought play an important role in his further defence of the view that
pleasure is to be associated primarily with activities (energeiai) in Aristotle’s
own specific sense of the term rather than with changes, comings-to-be, or
replenishments. Chapter 10.4 begins with an account of the way in which
seeing is something ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ (teleia). This notion of ‘com-
pleteness’ or ‘fulfilment’ works in two ways throughout the argument.16 It
has a chronological sense and also a teleological sense. First of all, seeing is
14
Aristotle might also be gesturing towards Plat. Phileb. 39e4–6 and 40a3–4: πολλῶν μὴν ἐλπίδων, ὡς
λέγομεν ἄρτι, πᾶς ἄνθρωπος γέμει;
15
I discuss this passage in Chapter 7 below.
16
On the question whether there is a shift in the meaning of teleios and its cognates in this passage from
all cases of seeing being ‘complete’ to only some cases being ‘perfect’ see Bostock 1988, 257–9. It seems
to me that the adjective teleios and its cognate verbs are being used throughout this passage to cover
the notions of being ‘complete’ and of being ‘perfect’ and that this is best grasped by emphasising the
core notion of a completed goal or end-point (telos). (See Waanders 1983, esp. §§204, 216.) I do not,
however, think that very much of my own discussion hangs on being any more precise than this and
so I will use both ‘complete’ and ‘perfect’ to render this vocabulary in what follows. Cf. Gonzalez 1991,
esp. 151 n. 16; Shields 2011, esp. 209; Strohl 2011.
not a process that takes time. At any moment in an act of seeing, the seeing
is complete. We do not have to wait a period of time for the act of seeing to
be complete. Seeing is also perfect in the sense that seeing does not have a
goal or end-point (telos) as, for example, shipbuilding does. Shipbuilding is
complete only once the ship is finished: that is the chronological end of the
process and it is also the goal or end of the process. Seeing is not like that and
that is why seeing is not a change (kinēsis). And in this respect pleasure
seems to be like seeing (10.4 1174a16–17).17
At 10.4 1174b14–16 Aristotle adds something new.
αἰσθήσεως δὲ πάσης πρὸς τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἐνεργούσης, τελείως δὲ τῆς εὖ
διακειμένης πρὸς τὸ κάλλιστον τῶν ὑπὸ τὴν αἴσθησιν·
All perception involves activity in relation to an object of perception and this
activity is active in the most complete/perfect way when the sense is well
arranged and is in relation to what is the finest of the things relevant to the
sense.
This principle is then generalised for each activity and it is added that in
each case when the activity is most complete (teleiotatē) it is also most
pleasant (10.4 1174b18–20). Although the expression is very abstract and
generalised, the central idea is both clear and, I think, familiar from the
Platonic account of pleasure in the Republic. Aristotle thinks that for each
sense we can specify the conditions under which that sense is engaged in its
proper activity in the most complete and perfect fashion. For example, I am
engaged in seeing in this superlative fashion when not only is my organ of
sight in good condition but also it is being trained upon the sort of thing
that it is best for me to see: the ‘finest thing’ that is relevant to that sense.
It is worth pausing to recognise the important background assumptions
here: not only the plausible thought about the relationship of the activity of
perceiving to the state of the perceiver, but also the assumption that there
are better and worse objects for each sense to be trained upon. Aristotle
claims that the better the object, the more complete and perfect the activity
of seeing will be that is trained upon that object. More noteworthy still is
that he chooses to express the property of the object concerned in terms of
its beauty or fine-ness (kallos). We shall see later in this chapter the
importance Aristotle places on the recognition of what is fine in his aesthetic
17
We might think that Aristotle’s account of the metaphysics of change and the contrasting cases of
activities like seeing is not as accurate as we might wish. He does say, however, that the details are
pursued elsewhere (10.4 1174b2–3). For the relation between the discussion of the distinction between
energeia and kinēsis in Metaphysics Θ.6 and this section of NE 10 see Burnyeat 2008, 265–79; cf.
Heinaman 2011, 9–16.
as well as his ethical works and it is evident that Aristotle will have no time
for worries about whether it is possible to classify perceptible objects as
objectively more or less beautiful or fine. But it is also clear that this beauty
and fine-ness is something recognisable only by rational animals. In that
case it seems that here we have a good example of Aristotle insisting that our
rational capacity has significant effects on our other psychological capacities,
including perception. Being rational, we can perceive beauty and fine-ness.
What is more, since perception of beauty appears to be directly related to
the completeness and perfection of the activity itself, rational animals can
engage in perception in a more complete and perfect way than non-rational
animals. And, since pleasure is in turn directly related to the completeness of
the activity, it will turn out that rational animals take pleasure in their
perceptions in a way in which non-rational animals cannot.18
Although his general metaphysical account of pleasure is very different
from Aristotle’s, Socrates offered a similar thought in the Philebus when he
established that there are ‘true and pure’ pleasures. His discussion of these is
brief, but they seem to include certain pleasures from perception. Socrates
suggests that these pleasures are related to ‘beautiful colours, shapes, most
odours and sounds’ (51b3–5) and goes on to explain at 51b9–d3 that his
understanding of the beauty (kallos) of shapes is not the commonly held
account that would say that various living animals or depictions of living
animals are beautiful in this way. For Socrates, just as beauty in the case of
colour is to be found, for example, in a patch of pure unadulterated white
rather than in a variegated colourful scene, so too beauty in shape is found in
perfect straight lines or circles and the constructions of these using a
compass or ruler. These, he says, have their proper pleasures (oikeiai
hēdonai).19 The revisionary Platonic aesthetic views are not accepted whole-
sale by Aristotle and we will see that he comes to endorse explicitly the idea
that there is a beauty that can be enjoyed in the perception of both living
animals and also human imitative depictions.20 But the underlying point is
18
Cf. Gonzalez 1991, 153, on EE 3.2 1230b21–1231a26, which I discuss below. And compare Taylor 2003,
10–11.
19
The pair: ‘what is straight or round’ and ‘things constructed from these with a compass etc.’ is, I think,
supposed to function as an analogue for the pair: ‘living thing’ and ‘depiction of a living thing’. In
each pair there is an original item which is the object of a human construction and imitation. Socrates
does not here distinguish between the pleasures to be had from one or other member of each pair.
20
However, at Sens. 3 439b31–440a6, Aristotle says that those colours that are most easily expressed in
terms of ratios of white and black – apparently these include crimson and purple – will be the most
pleasant. The same principle applies for musical concords: τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἐν ἀριθμοῖς εὐλογίστοις
χρώματα, καθάπερ ἐκεῖ τὰς συμφωνίας, τὰ ἥδιστα τῶν χρωμάτων εἶναι δοκοῦντα, οἷον τὸ ἁλουργὸν
καὶ τὸ φοινικοῦν καὶ ὀλίγ’ ἄττα τοιαῦτα (δι’ ἥνπερ αἰτίαν καὶ αἱ συμφωνίαι ὀλίγαι), τὰ δὲ μὴ ἐν
ἀριθμοῖς τἆλλα χρώματα.
the same in both the Philebus and here in the Nicomachean Ethics: in the case
of perception there are more or less beautiful objects of perception and, the
more beautiful the object of perception (however we understand beauty),
the more pleasant the act of perceiving it.
The same principle holds in the case of the intellect as well as perception.
Aristotle continues:
καθ’ ἑκάστην δὴ βελτίστη ἐστὶν ἡ ἐνέργεια τοῦ ἄριστα διακειμένου πρὸς τὸ
κράτιστον τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτήν. αὕτη δ’ ἂν τελειοτάτη εἴη καὶ ἡδίστη. κατὰ
πᾶσαν γὰρ αἴσθησίν ἐστιν ἡδονή, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ διάνοιαν καὶ θεωρίαν,
ἡδίστη δ’ ἡ τελειοτάτη, τελειοτάτη δ’ ἡ τοῦ εὖ ἔχοντος πρὸς τὸ
σπουδαιότατον τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτήν· τελειοῖ δὲ τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἡ ἡδονή.
(NE 10.4 1174b18–23)
In each sense, the activity is best when it belongs to something disposed in
the best way and in relation to what is the most powerful of those things that
fall in its remit. The same activity would be the most complete/perfect and
the most pleasant. For all perception is pleasant, as are both thinking and
contemplating, but what is most pleasant is what is most complete/perfect
and what is most complete/perfect is what belongs to something in a good
state and with relation to the best of the things in its remit. Pleasure
completes/perfects the activity.
Intellectual activity, therefore, will be more complete and perfect under the
same relevant conditions. It will be most perfect when the knower is in the
best state with regard to his capacity for thinking and is thinking of the most
excellent objects for that capacity. (Aristotle shifts his vocabulary here away
from accounting for the object in terms of beauty to more general terms –
kratiston, spoudaiotaton – consonant with the move away from cases of
perceptual activity.)
The reference to intellectual activities is left without further expansion
but they continue in the subsequent exposition to be used as counterpart
examples to the initial example of perception (e.g. 10.4 1174b33–1175a3).
Both are used to bolster the general account through the explanation of
familiar phenomena. The account of the relationship between activity, the
completeness or perfection of the activity, and the pleasure that attends on
the activity explains why it is not possible to be pleased constantly. Humans
cannot engage in constant activity; they get tired (10.4 1175a3–6). It explains
why novelties are more pleasant because thought (dianoia) is more inten-
sively engaged on something new just as we look more intently on some-
thing new. As time passes, the activity diminishes and so does the pleasure
(10.4 1175a6–10).
This line of thought continues into the next chapter in which Aristotle
supports his account by claiming it makes best sense of the fact that
pleasures differ in kind from one another (this is because intellectual
activities differ in kind from one another as do perceptual activities) and
why it is that people are more likely to do things that they enjoy and their
enjoyment in turn makes them more engaged in what they are doing.
Again, he uses examples of intellectual and perceptual activity. People who
enjoy geometry are the people who become the best geometers and people
who love music similarly get better at music because they enjoy it (10.5
1175a21–1175b1). And this also explains how activities might clash with one
another – someone who loves flute music might be distracted from a
conversation by the sound of the flute – and how pains might destroy an
activity – if writing or calculating is painful for someone then they are
unlikely to engage in writing or calculating (10.5 1175b3–6, b16–20).21 The
connection between the activity and pleasure is so close, in fact, that some
people have mistakenly identified the two (10.5 1175b34–6).
Thus far, Aristotle has been talking mostly in terms of simple differ-
ences in kind between activities and their pleasures, although we should
not forget his insistence on there being a difference in degree of activity
dependent on the state of the agent and the relevant object. From 10.5
1175b36 he returns to marking distinctions in value between activities
and it is at this point that the perceptual and intellectual activities begin
to come apart from one another. First, perceptual pleasures are ranked in
terms of ‘purity’ (kathareiotēs): sight differs from touch and hearing and
smell from taste. Their respective pleasures differ accordingly. Next, the
pleasures of thought (dianoia) differ from all of these and different
intellectual pleasures differ from one another (10.5 1175b36–1176a3). So
intellectual activities – and therefore their pleasures – are as a kind
superior to perceptual activities and their pleasures and there are also
further differentiations of value to be made within each of these two
classes.22 What comes next is an argument borrowed again from Plato,
since Aristotle rests his account of the relative superiority of the different
pleasures on the idea that the guide and judge in these matters is the
good person (spoudaios, 1176a16). The fact that some people may in fact
21
One of the arguments offered against pleasure being a good at 7.11 1152b16–18 is that pleasure can
obstruct thinking. For example, no one can think properly while enjoying sex. At 7.12 1153a20–3
Aristotle counters by saying that this all depends on the pleasure concerned. Pleasure in general does
not obstruct thinking; in fact, pleasure can enhance learning and contemplating if the pleasure in
question is the pleasure of learning or contemplating.
22
On how fine-grained the differentiation between these activities might be, see Heinaman 2011, 19–40.
enjoy the pleasures of taste over the pleasures of intellectual activity is no
reason to lose confidence in the initial classification. Indeed, in a way it
confirms it: the preferences of such people are driven by their poor
character. Just as the fact that donkeys prefer rubbish to gold makes us
humans prefer gold no less, so too the presence of disagreement over the
relative values of different pleasures and activities should make us no less
sure of the correctness of the good person’s ranking. This line of argu-
ment continues into the next chapter: tyrants and people who envy the
tyrannical lifestyle have no taste for the pleasures that the good person
enjoys but what such tyrannical people happen to enjoy gives us no
reason to think that they are helpful arbiters of what is good and pleasant
or indeed what a good human life is. Rather, Aristotle concludes that the
pleasures that complete and perfect the activities of the ‘complete and
blessed man’ are those we should properly call ‘human pleasures’. Other
pleasures are human pleasures only in a secondary sense, as are the
activities that they accompany.23
NE 10.6 resumes the topic of human happiness (eudaimonia) and estab-
lishes that the good man will choose his proper activity, namely virtuous
activity; 10.7 then specifies that the best activity will be the intellectual
activity of a person’s nous. This is the most divine thing in us, the best aspect
of us, and also what is superlatively human; indeed Aristotle is even tempted
to say that each person should be identified with this ruling element
(1177a13–17, 1177b26–1178a8).24 The best activity of this divine part is
identified as ‘contemplative’ activity (theōrētikē, 1177a17–18). One of the
arguments then offered in support of the conclusion that the best activity of
this part is constitutive of a good human life is based on the pleasures
associated with this activity.
οἰόμεθά τε δεῖν ἡδονὴν παραμεμῖχθαι τῇ εὐδαιμονίᾳ, ἡδίστη δὲ τῶν κατ’
ἀρετὴν ἐνεργειῶν ἡ κατὰ τὴν σοφίαν ὁμολογουμένως ἐστίν· δοκεῖ γοῦν ἡ
φιλοσοφία θαυμαστὰς ἡδονὰς ἔχειν καθαρειότητι καὶ τῷ βεβαίῳ, εὔλογον δὲ
τοῖς εἰδόσι τῶν ζητούντων ἡδίω τὴν διαγωγὴν εἶναι. (NE 10.7 1177a22–7)
23
NE 10.5 1176a26–9: εἴτ’ οὖν μία ἐστὶν εἴτε πλείους αἱ τοῦ τελείου καὶ μακαρίου ἀνδρός, αἱ ταύτας
τελειοῦσαι ἡδοναὶ κυρίως λέγοιντ’ ἂν ἀνθρώπου ἡδοναὶ εἶναι, αἱ δὲ λοιπαὶ δευτέρως καὶ πολλοστῶς,
ὥσπερ αἱ ἐνέργειαι. The parallel Platonic argument is at Plat. Rep. 581c4–583a11. On this and
Aristotle’s version of the same argument see Taylor 2008. See also Strohl 2011, 260–71. Compare
the argument at Iambl. Prot. 11, 58.3–13, which concludes in a similar fashion that the philosophical
life is the most pleasant. This section is one of those attributed to Aristotle’s Protrepticus by
Hutchinson and Johnson 2005, esp. 265–9.
24
On the theological aspects of Aristotle’s account of the relationship between nous and eudaimonia see
Long 2011.
And we think that pleasure has to be mixed into happiness. Most pleasant of
all the activities is, we all agree, activity in accordance with wisdom. So it
seems that philosophy offers the most marvellous pleasures both in terms of
their purity and security, and it is reasonable that the life of those who know
is more pleasant than the life of those who are inquiring.
It is no surprise that this is Aristotle’s point of view but he has expressed it in
rather precise terms as the culmination of the argument of the previous
chapters. We noted that he had earlier ranked activities in terms of purity
(kathareiotēs, 10.5 1176a1). The same criterion is used now to express the
superiority of the pleasures of the life of wisdom, confirming the implication
that the activities of such a life are themselves somehow ‘most pure’. ‘Purity’
is not an insignificant term to use. It is not used in the Nicomachean Ethics
other than in these two passages and it is clearly connected to the theological
aspects of the account of the activity of human reason.25 But it also –
particularly when paired with the notion of security (bebaiotēs) – looks
back to Plato and Socrates’ criteria for the superiority of the pleasures from
knowing the forms in the Republic (584b9, 585b11, 585d11–e5, 586a1–b4).26
However, Aristotle can also claim to have an account superior to that
offered by Socrates because his view can explain easily why we also find it
reasonable that the pleasures of those who know should be even better than
the pleasures of those who are only inquiring since now we agree that
pleasure should be associated with activities and not comings-to-be. After
all, knowing – the activity of contemplation – is the goal and completion of
a process of inquiry.
Aristotle has now made the case for philosophy itself – understood in a
particular sense – as providing the most perfect and pure pleasures. It is a
claim that could easily be endorsed by a Platonist too, regardless of the
difference of opinion between Plato and his pupil on the precise metaphys-
ical nature of pleasure. Aristotle would presumably take it to be a virtue of
his account that it is able not only, to his mind, to give a more reasonable
account of all pleasures (including those of perception and cognition) but
also can do so while retaining the important insight that there is a specific
and special pleasure to be had from philosophical activity in particular and
25
Aristotle also uses the vocabulary of purity when explaining Anaxagoras’ notion of nous: De An. 1.2
405a13–19, Metaph. A.8 989b14–16 (cf. EE 1.4 1215b6–14, where Aristotle reports Anaxagoras’ picture
of the best human life. He speculates that perhaps Axagoras thought that the best human life was one
lived without pain, unblemished with respect to justice, or sharing in some divine contemplation:
αὐτὸς δ’ ἴσως ᾤετο τὸν ζῶντα ἀλύπως καὶ καθαρῶς πρὸς τὸ δίκαιον ἤ τινος θεωρίας κοινωνοῦντα
θείας, τοῦτον ὡς ἄνθρωπον εἰπεῖν μακάριον εἶναι.).
26
Van Riel 2000, 70–1. Cf. Plat. Phileb. 55a5–8. And see above, Chapter 2.
especially in the highest form of philosophical activity, which is the active
contemplation of already-discovered eternal truths. It is this activity which
Aristotle famously identifies as ‘becoming like god, so far as is possible for a
human’ (10.7 1177b33–4).27
Learning and pleasure in Rhetoric 1.11

Outside the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the pleasures of learning
and knowing in various places. Often the sense of ‘learning’ involved seems
to be of a rather low-level kind not much more elevated than a mere
‘recognition’ that such-and-such is the case. But this shows that Aristotle
accepts that all forms of intellectual achievement are pleasant in a way, even
if they fall short of the exquisite and divine pleasures of contemplation,
perhaps because these inferior pleasures are all associated with changes or
stages that bring us closer to that ideal natural state. Some of the most
interesting passages are concerned with explanations of certain forms of
aesthetic pleasure that cannot be accounted for by reference to the mere
perceptual appearance of an object. Instead, Aristotle is inclined to think
that there are also pleasures to be had from recognising the beauty of an
object, recognising its being the product of careful design, and also – in
certain cases – recognising its being a deliberate imitation of something else.
Let us start with a passage in the Rhetoric that introduces the general
approach and resumes a number of themes we have already found elsewhere:
καὶ τὸ μανθάνειν καὶ τὸ θαυμάζειν ἡδὺ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῷ
θαυμάζειν τὸ ἐπιθυμεῖν μαθεῖν ἐστιν, ὥστε τὸ θαυμαστὸν ἐπιθυμητόν, ἐν δὲ
τῷ μανθάνειν <τὸ> εἰς τὸ κατὰ φύσιν καθίστασθαι. καὶ τὸ εὖ ποιεῖν καὶ τὸ εὖ
πάσχειν τῶν ἡδέων· τὸ μὲν γὰρ εὖ πάσχειν τυγχάνειν ὧν ἐπιθυμοῦσι, τὸ δὲ
εὖ ποιεῖν ἔχειν καὶ ὑπερέχειν, ὧν ἀμφοτέρων ἐφίενται. διὰ δὲ τὸ ἡδὺ εἶναι τὸ
εὐποιητικόν, καὶ τὸ ἐπανορθοῦν ἡδὺ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐστὶν τοὺς πλησίον,
καὶ τὸ τὰ ἐλλιπῆ ἐπιτελεῖν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ μανθάνειν τε ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ θαυμάζειν, καὶ
τὰ τοιάδε ἀνάγκη ἡδέα εἶναι, οἷον τό τε μιμούμενον, ὥσπερ γραφικὴ καὶ
ἀνδριαντοποιία καὶ ποιητική, καὶ πᾶν ὃ ἂν εὖ μεμιμημένον ᾖ, κἂν ᾖ μὴ ἡδὺ
αὐτὸ τὸ μεμιμημένον· οὐ γὰρ ἐπὶ τούτῳ χαίρει, ἀλλὰ συλλογισμὸς ἔστιν ὅτι
τοῦτο ἐκεῖνο, ὥστε μανθάνειν τι συμβαίνει. (Rhet. 1.11 1371a31–b10)
And learning and admiring are for the most part pleasant; for in admiring
there is a desire to learn, so what is admired is desired. And in the process of
learning there is the attainment of a natural state. And benefiting and being
benefited are pleasures; for to be benefited is to hit upon what is desired while
27
The claim that contemplation is the most pleasant and best activity is repeated, again in a theological
context, at Metaph. Λ.7 1072b19–26.
to benefit is to possess something and to have more than enough and these
are both things that people aim for. Because conferring a benefit is something
pleasant, then it is also pleasant for people to set their neighbours straight and
to bring to completion things that are lacking. Since learning and admiring
are pleasant, then necessarily also this sort of thing is also pleasant: a product
of imitation like a picture, a statue, or some poetry. And everything, in so far
as it is a good imitation [is pleasant] even if that which it imitates is not
pleasant. For [the audience] is not being pleased by that [which is imitated]
but there is a deduction that this [imitation] is that [which is imitated], so a
learning of a kind takes place.
Perhaps most striking at the beginning of the passage is the use once again of
the notion of learning as the attainment of a natural state. In conjunction
with the assertion at the beginning of the passage that pleasure is ‘a kind of
change in the soul and a complete and perceived return to the underlying
nature’ (1369b33–5), we might wonder whether this is in conflict with the
preferred analysis of pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics as an activity or as
an accompaniment of an activity rather than a replenishment. Learning is
certainly a change of a kind and can therefore easily be counted as pleasant
but we are perhaps left wondering whether it is also possible for knowing to
be pleasant if it is not similarly a change.28 This chapter is more concerned
with pleasures related to desires and has nothing to say about the kinds of
pleasures that were identified as the most pure and best at the end of the
Nicomachean Ethics. Even if this chapter were to offer an endorsement of a
replenishment model of pleasure, of course Aristotle would not be commit-
ted to the idea that a lack of knowledge must be painful any more than Plato
before him was committed to the idea that any lack of knowledge must be
painful. It might be painful to know that you do not know something –
perhaps in order to desire to know something there must be some awareness
of one’s own ignorance – but the mere absence of knowledge need have no
necessary affective accompaniment.
We should also notice a careful use of different aspects of the verb ‘to
learn’. Aristotle uses both the present-tense infinitive (manthanein), which
denotes the ongoing process of learning, and the aorist infinitive (mathein),
28
See e.g. Pearson 2012, 101 n. 16. Pearson rightly notes in this passage an expanded notion of epithumia
beyond its more restricted scope of a desire for the tactile pleasures of drink, food, and sex. Frede
1996b, esp. 274–9, insists that the description of pleasure as a kinēsis is part of a deliberately
Platonising strategy that wants to retain Plato’s insight that emotions have a content beyond the
mere pleasantness or painfulness of how they feel. Furthermore, since the subject matter of the
Rhetoric is, to a large extent, human emotions and ‘remedial emotions’ such as anger in particular,
the Platonic account is more appropriate for this inquiry than the activities-based account of the
Ethics. She takes it to be a virtue of the account in the Rhetoric that it does not impose an activities-
based account that would have been quite unsuitable.
which signals a complete action. The argument proceeds as follows: it is
pleasant both to be learning (manthanein) and to be admiring something
(thaumazein) because to admire something is to desire to learn (mathein)
and to be learning (manthanein) is to be returning to a natural state. In other
words, the argument is carefully phrased to respect the position that know-
ing – the completed action of learning – is the natural state of a human
animal and is therefore a state for which we have a natural desire. Coming-
to-know – the process of learning – is indeed a move towards a human’s
good and natural state and is therefore also something we naturally desire.
Aristotle is not insisting that learning is a return to a certain state that did
obtain at some time in the past. While the relevant verb (kathistasai) can
imply a return to a previous state it certainly does not always do so.29 So we
should not think that Aristotle is committed to the idea that every learner
was at some previous time in such a state, which he later lost and has now
once again attained. There is no reason to detect here a lingering Platonist
idea of a pre-natal state of knowledge to which learning might finally return
us. It will perhaps be helpful to Aristotle that his account here is compatible
with both the more extravagant flights of Platonism and also other views
that do not similarly assume a pre-natal state of knowledge. And it is also a
virtue of this account that it need not restrict in any way the kind of
knowledge that will be relevant. After all, towards the end of the passage
it is evident that Aristotle wants to include some apparently rather mundane
examples of learning in his account such as recognising that this picture is a
picture of, say, Apollo.30
There is also an important role played by ‘admiration’ or ‘wonder’ in the
argument. We have previously been told in this chapter of the Rhetoric that
people take pleasure in being admired (1.11 1371a23) and after this passage we
find out that reversals of fortune (peripeteiai) and being rescued from danger
at the last moment are both objects of wonder (thaumasta, 1371b11). So it
seems that something is admired or wondered at because it is impressive or
29
LSJ s.v. καθίστημι A.2. Compare the account of pleasure at the opening of Rhet. 1.11 1369b33–5, where
Aristotle similarly sets down the claim that pleasure is a change in the soul and a complete perceptible
return to an underlying nature (ὑποκείσθω δὴ ἡμῖν εἶναι τὴν ἡδονὴν κίνησίν τινα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ
κατάστασιν ἀθρόαν καὶ αἰσθητὴν εἰς τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν φύσιν, λύπην δὲ τοὐναντίον). For the most
part, simple bodily pleasures will indeed be a return to some previously obtaining state but, more
generally, we should thnk of pleasure as a movement towards some normative natural state, whether
or not the animal in question has ever previously been in that state.
30
I here assume that the things that can be recollected from pre-natal knowledge according to the Meno
and Phaedo are restricted to eternal truths or certain eternal and intelligible objects (the Forms). In the
Phaedo Socrates does also recognise a sense in which we might ‘recollect’ something we have learned
through perception and experience while alive, as when we recollect Cebes when we see Simmias or
indeed recollect Simmias when we see a picture of Simmias (Phaed. 73c5–74a8).
demands our attention and concern. To admire something, then, is to direct
one’s attention to it on account of its possessing some kind of arresting
feature. What is interesting at 1371a32–3 in the passage above is that this
admiration is linked closely to a kind of desire and to a desire to learn in
particular: presumably a desire to learn about the thing being admired.
Perhaps we should think, for example, of dramatic performances since they
seem to be what is indicated by the talk of ‘reversals of fortune’. We see
Oedipus fall from being a strong ruler to a blind outcast and this provokes
wonder and demands our attention. Our attention, furthermore, involves a
desire of a kind: a desire to learn more about the event and perhaps even to
understand how and why such an amazing thing could happen to such a person.
There is an important role for wonder and the associated pleasure of
wonder in Aristotle’s aesthetic theory in general. Tragedy ought, in
Aristotle’s view, to strive for the marvellous. In Poetics 9 he insists that
tragedy should concern events that arouse pity and fear and, what is more,
that those events should occur not unexpectedly but as a consequence of
one another; in that way the plot will be more thaumaston (Poet. 9 1452a1–
11). Even chance events are more arresting in this sense if there is the
appearance of design: it is more marvellous in this sense that Mitys was
killed when a statue honouring him fell on him at a public festival. It looked
as if there was some kind of purpose to what was in fact a simple accident. So
too, we presume, it is more thaumaston for events in a tragic plot to unfurl as
consequences of one another rather than, for example, for Oedipus simply
to discover by brute accident the truth of his paternity.
At Poet. 24 1460a11–18 Aristotle restates a connection between what is
marvellous or arresting and pleasure. He restates his earlier assertion that
tragedy in particular ought to show what is thaumaston but warns that this
can be difficult on a stage. Epic poetry can describe Achilles’ pursuit of
Hector, for example, in a way that would be ridiculous in performance. But
nevertheless, evidence that the marvellous brings pleasure comes from the
fact that we all embellish stories to engage the attention of our audience.31
This evidence further suggests that wonder is to be associated with close
engagement and attention. The added details of the story make no sub-
stantial difference to the content of what is being said but they allow the
audience to linger over it, savour the narrative, and take pleasure in
listening.
31
Poet. 24 1460a17–18: ‘What is marvellous is pleasant. An indication of this is the fact that people
embellish the stories they tell so as to make them more enjoyable’ (τὸ δὲ θαυμαστὸν ἡδύ· σημεῖον δέ,
πάντες γὰρ προστιθέντες ἀπαγγέλλουσιν ὡς χαριζόμενοι).
The overall lesson seems to be that wonder is a form of engagement in or
attention paid to some arresting object. That engaged attention is pleasant
because it involves an active cognitive relationship with the object based on
some kind of desire to linger over it in our thoughts, pay it greater attention,
ponder it or the like because it is an object of such a kind as to deserve close
attention. This conclusion is supported by the famous contention in
Metaph. A.2 that ‘both at present and in the past people began to engage
in philosophy because of wonder’ (διὰ γὰρ τὸ θαυμάζειν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ
νῦν καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἤρξαντο φιλοσοφεῖν, A.2 982b12–13). An initial interest
in things close at hand that are ‘unusual’ (atopa) gradually leads us to ponder
things that are of greater import. Most importantly:
ὁ δ’ ἀπορῶν καὶ θαυμάζων οἴεται ἀγνοεῖν (διὸ καὶ ὁ φιλόμυθος φιλόσοφός
πώς ἐστιν· ὁ γὰρ μῦθος σύγκειται ἐκ θαυμασίων)· ὥστ’ εἴπερ διὰ τὸ φεύγειν
τὴν ἄγνοιαν ἐφιλοσόφησαν, φανερὸν ὅτι διὰ τὸ εἰδέναι τὸ ἐπίστασθαι
ἐδίωκον καὶ οὐ χρήσεώς τινος ἕνεκεν. (Metaph. A.2 982b17–21)
The person who is at a loss and is in wonder thinks that he does not know the
answer (hence also the person who loves myth is in a way a philosopher,
because a myth is put together from wondrous things). The upshot is that
since they took to philosophy because of fleeing from ignorance, it is clear
that they were pursuing understanding for the sake of knowing and not for
some use.
This rounds off the argument begun at the beginning of A.1 and integrates
this sense of wonder into Aristotle’s general account of a natural human
drive for understanding.32 Wonder is in some ways close to what we might
call ‘curiosity’ but with the addition of an implied recognition of igno-
rance about a matter of some importance. Humans feel wonder for
something that they want to know or understand and recognise that
they do not yet know or understand. Philosophy begins in wonder in
the sense that it presupposes the realisation of ignorance about some
important matter and involves the desire to know more about the object
of wonder.
Learning and pleasure in Poetics 4

In Poetics 4 Aristotle returns to a theme we have already introduced in the
discussion of Rhet. 1.11, namely the pleasures that humans may enjoy at the
32
See Broadie 2012, 44–53, on the general argument of Metaph. A.1–2, and, 62–4, on this passage.
recognition of products of mimēsis. In the Poetics, as is perhaps to be
expected, these pleasures are given a more detailed treatment:33
ἐοίκασι δὲ γεννῆσαι μὲν ὅλως τὴν ποιητικὴν αἰτίαι δύο τινὲς καὶ αὗται
φυσικαί. τό τε γὰρ μιμεῖσθαι σύμφυτον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐκ παίδων ἐστὶ καὶ
τούτῳ διαφέρουσι τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων ὅτι μιμητικώτατόν ἐστι καὶ τὰς
μαθήσεις ποιεῖται διὰ μιμήσεως τὰς πρώτας, καὶ τὸ χαίρειν τοῖς μιμήμασι
πάντας. σημεῖον δὲ τούτου τὸ συμβαῖνον ἐπὶ τῶν ἔργων· ἃ γὰρ αὐτὰ
λυπηρῶς ὁρῶμεν, τούτων τὰς εἰκόνας τὰς μάλιστα ἠκριβωμένας χαίρομεν
θεωροῦντες, οἷον θηρίων τε μορφὰς τῶν ἀτιμοτάτων καὶ νεκρῶν. αἴτιον δὲ
καὶ τούτου, ὅτι μανθάνειν οὐ μόνον τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ἥδιστον ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς
ἄλλοις ὁμοίως, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ βραχὺ κοινωνοῦσιν αὐτοῦ. διὰ γὰρ τοῦτο χαίρουσι
τὰς εἰκόνας ὁρῶντες, ὅτι συμβαίνει θεωροῦντας μανθάνειν καὶ συλλογίζεσθαι
τί ἕκαστον, οἷον ὅτι οὗτος ἐκεῖνος· ἐπεὶ ἐὰν μὴ τύχῃ προεωρακώς, οὐχ ᾗ
μίμημα ποιήσει τὴνἡδονὴν ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν ἀπεργασίαν ἢ τὴν χροιὰν ἢ διὰ
τοιαύτην τινὰ ἄλλην αἰτίαν. (Poet. 4 1448b4–19)
The following two natural causes seem to account for the existence of poetry
in general. First, humans have from childhood a natural affinity with imi-
tation. In this respect they differ from the other animals because of being the
most imitative of creatures, the fact that humans’ first steps in learning come
about via imitation, and the fact that all humans enjoy imitations. Evidence
for this is available from the following facts. We enjoy gazing at images that
are particularly accurate representations even of the very things that we look
upon with distress, for example the shapes of the most lowly beasts and even
corpses. The reason for this too is that learning is most pleasant not only to
philosophers but to all people in the same way, even if they share in it only
fleetingly. That is why they take pleasure in looking at representations,
because as they look they learn and reason out what each thing is, for
example that this is so-and-so. Because, if the viewer does not happen to
have seen the original previously, the imitation will not give pleasure as an
imitation but because of its workmanship or some colour or some other
reason of that kind.
In part, this passage repeats ideas we have already seen in the last section of
the passage from Rhet. 1.11. Indeed it repeats one interesting piece of
evidence that Aristotle has for finding in humans an interest in and enjoy-
ment of considering things that are imitations of something else, namely the
fact that we can enjoy looking at something if we are looking at it as an
imitation or representation even if what it imitates or represents would itself
be unpleasant to perceive. For example, it is perfectly possible to take
33
My understanding of this issue has been helped by discussion with Pierre Destrée. See Destrée 2012
and 2014.
pleasure in looking at a statue of Laocoön and his sons being attacked by
serpents. It would be odd, to say the least, to take pleasure in the sight of a
father and his sons in fact being killed in this way. The reason for this
difference, Aristotle says, is that we humans take pleasure in thinking of the
representation as a representation. We recognise: ‘This is [a statue of]
Laocoön’ and therefore we can take pleasure in the workmanship, the life-
like depiction, and so on, as well as the recognition itself of this thing as a
representation of something else.
Of course, were we not to know anything of the story of Laocoön, we
might still take pleasure in the statue. Aristotle recognises that we might
take pleasure in the craft, in the colour, or perhaps in the formal arrange-
ment of the elements. Later, in Poet. 7 1450b35–1451a10, he famously insists
that all beautiful things must have both a certain orderly arrangement and a
certain magnitude, so that a beautiful object takes some time to perceive as a
whole. Animals that are too small cannot be beautiful since they are
perceived more or less all at once, and those that are too long are not
beautiful since it is difficult to perceive them as wholes. Something similar
holds, he says, for the plots of good tragedies: they must be neither too brief
nor too long.34 What is worth noting is that there is a certain kind of
arrangement that we humans perceive as beautiful which can be viewed as a
whole but not in an instant. It is hard to be certain, but the idea might be
that it must be possible to perceive the whole as an arrangement of parts and
that is why something that is perceived all at once as a unit will not fit the
bill, nor will something which is so large that its overall structure cannot be
grasped. (A beautiful piece of music is a good example: it cannot be so short
as not to be perceived as having a structure at all, nor too long so that the
listener cannot keep in mind the recognition of its overall form.) The
recognition of this structural beauty will bring a certain kind of pleasure.
In so far as recognising such structural arrangements is dependent on a
rational appreciation since the fineness and beauty of the structure is related
to the good, then this pleasure too will be a kind of rational pleasure.35 So
without knowing whom this statue is supposed to depict, we can
34
Cf. Poet. 23 1459a17–21: Aristotle insists that a story must be whole and complete with a beginning,
middle, and end so that, like a single and complete living creature, it can generate its own proper
pleasure (περὶ δὲ τῆς διηγηματικῆς καὶ ἐν μέτρῳ μιμητικῆς, ὅτι δεῖ τοὺς μύθους καθάπερ ἐν ταῖς
τραγῳδίαις συνιστάναι δραματικοὺς καὶ περὶ μίαν πρᾶξιν ὅλην καὶ τελείαν ἔχουσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ μέσα
καὶ τέλος, ἵν’ ὥσπερ ζῷον ἓν ὅλον ποιῇ τὴν οἰκείαν ἡδονήν, δῆλον).
35
See Richardson Lear 2006, 122–3, and Moss 2012a, 206–19. In Chapter 7 below I return to this theme
and suggest that the virtuous agent has a similarly pleasant appreciation of the arrangement and order
of his own life. This may be compared also with Plato’s account in the Philebus of the good and pious
man discussed in Chapter 6.
nevertheless take pleasure in its formal and structural properties as we look
at it.36 Certainly, at EE 3.2 1230b36–1231a5 Aristotle notes that although
other animals often have rather sharper senses than we humans, nevertheless
they do not recognise some pleasant objects of perception that we do. They
do not, for example, recognise good order or beauty (εὐαρμοστία ἢ κάλλος,
1231a1–2) and, barring certain very unusual circumstances, are not affected
by beautiful sights or sounds as such. This must be a case in which our
human capacity for reason allows us to take pleasure in perceiving items as
beautiful or as fine in a way that other animals that can hear or see simply
cannot.37
There is a further pleasure beyond the simple appreciation of beautiful
order to be had from our contemplation of imitative art. Were we not to
know that this is a statue of Laocoön, we would be missing the additional
pleasure of recognising the imitation as such. This enjoyment of imitation
as such is taken by Aristotle in this passage of the Poetics to be a sign of a
general human enjoyment of learning. Quite how it is supposed to
instigate the ‘first steps in learning’ is not made clear, but we might
speculate that it is part of a general process of cognitive development
that involves seeing how things differ from and resemble one another,
drawing general inferences about kinds and the like. What is more,
someone who takes pleasure in the statue as a mimetic object also shows
some appreciation of the fact that it has been deliberately fashioned in
order to resemble something else; recognition of its causal history and its
being the product of deliberate rational skill are also involved in enjoying
seeing something as an imitation of something else. Aristotle is certain that
there is a pleasure to be had just in the recognition of that kind of design.
This also provides a second reason for distinguishing two kinds of pleasure
available from such works of art. The first argument is the fact that, in the
absence of recognition of the imitation we might nevertheless take pleas-
ure in the formal arrangement. The second is the mirror image of the first:
even if the object under consideration is not formally or structurally
beautiful we might nevertheless take some pleasure in recognising it as
36
This would also allow Aristotle to give an account of the pleasures to be had from non-
imitative art.
37
Compare Plat. Laws 653e3–654a3: ‘The other animals do not perceive orderliness and disorder in
motions – what we call rhythm and harmony – but those same gods we called our companions in the
chorus gave this to us as a gift: the pleasant perception of rhythm and harmony’ (τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα ζῷα
οὐκ ἔχειν αἴσθησιν τῶν ἐν ταῖς κινήσεσιν τάξεων οὐδὲ ἀταξιῶν, οἷς δὴ ῥυθμὸς ὄνομα καὶ ἁρμονία· ἡμῖν
δὲ οὓς εἴπομεν τοὺς θεοὺς συγχορευτὰς δεδόσθαι, τούτους εἶναι καὶ τοὺς δεδωκότας τὴν ἔνρυθμόν τε
καὶ ἐναρμόνιον αἴσθησιν μεθ’ ἡδονῆς). See also Warren 2013a.
an imitation of something else. Something grotesque and ugly might
nevertheless be enjoyed as a product of skilful imitative craft.38
The ‘reasoning out’ involved here (syllogizesthai: the cognate noun is used
in the parallel claim at Rhet. 1.11 1371b9) is not an onerous cognitive labour
and the ‘learning’ involved is similarly undemanding. The viewer works out
what this statue imitates and the product of this working out is something
that is learned. The whole process requires the prior knowledge in some
sense of what is being imitated and the recognition of the imitation as a
deliberate attempt at representation. The viewer must remember what is
being imitated, recall it, and perform some basic intellectual operation that
concludes with the thought that this particular statue, for example, is an
attempt to depict this particular individual.39 This is all some distance from
the pleasures of philosophy, as Aristotle notes, but the fact that everyone can
enjoy something of this kind of intellectual achievement, even at the very
low level of recognising that this is a statue of a snake, or of Laocoön, or that
it depicts that passage in that poem, shows that there is a common psycho-
logical capacity in all humans.40
There is a similar kind of pleasure noted at Rhet. 3.10 1412a33–1412b3.
Aristotle describes a kind of joke or pun that depends on the similar sound
in Greek of the phrases ‘something bothers you’ and ‘you are a Thracian
slave’ said by one Theodorus to Nicon.41 There is a pleasure in recognising
the play on words for anyone who knows also that Nicon is a Thracian and
that therefore the double meaning is appropriate. Here too Aristotle
describes the relevant pleasure as one of learning (διὸ μαθόντι ἡδύ,
1412b1), where the learning involved is not much more demanding than a
certain kind of recognition of the relevance of a possible double meaning.
This learning itself depends on a prior background knowledge of the
situation but the pleasure of this learning is nevertheless distinct from any
enjoyment of that prior knowledge.
The connection between the pleasure of seeing naturally well-arranged
items and similarly ordered products of imitative craft is made even closer if
we bear in mind Aristotle’s general notion that art imitates nature. He makes
explicit the connection between natural and imitative design in PA 1.5 when
38
See also Plutarch’s account of the pleasure to be had in recognising the products of deliberate,
rationally guided craft: Quaest. Conv. 5.2 673d–e and De Aud. Poet. 18b–c. Plutarch too notes that
this pleasure may be taken even in objects which imitate things we would not perceive with pleasure.
39
Recollection too is a kind of syllogismos: De Mem. 2 453a10–12. Again, compare Phaed. 73c5–74a4.
40
For further discussion of this passage see Halliwell 1992 and 2011, 208–9; Heath 2009, 62–8; Destrée
2012, 98–103.
41
The phrases are θράξει σε and Θρᾷξ εἶ σύ.
making the case for there being something wonderful (thaumaston, 645a17) in
all natural things and identifies a pleasure to be had in contemplating even
the lower animals. In this case, the pleasure involved might require a prior
commitment to a certain kind of philosophical enterprise or, at the least, some
capacity to appreciate natural philosophical explanations. But for anyone
suitably predisposed, there will be a pleasure in considering natural living
things that is perhaps even better than the pleasure we can all enjoy in
contemplating the products of human design.
The chapter opens by restating the now familiar idea that the best and
most pleasant objects of thought are things that are eternal and ungener-
ated, although it is likely in this case that what Aristotle means are not
necessary truths but eternal perceptible things such as the heavenly bodies.
(This seems to be the sense of the parenthetical phrase at PA 1.5 644b25–8;
cf. 645a4–6.) But the chapter concentrates on making a case for there being
pleasures to be had also in the investigation and understanding of corrup-
tible things such as animals and plants (644b20–31). These may not admit of
the divine contemplation that the eternal objects do but, in compensation,
they are more easily investigated. Indeed, the eternal objects are much more
honourable and provide more pleasure even if they are grasped only fleet-
ingly or in part (kata mikron). This much is also familiar from the arguments
for the superiority and pleasure of contemplation in the Nicomachean Ethics.
But here in PA 1.5 Aristotle adds that there is a pleasure to be had also in
considering the perishable natural world and, what is more, the natural
world offers much closer and more accessible objects of study. Moreover,
there is pleasure and value in considering the full range of natural living
things, even those that might initially appear lowly or ugly.
καὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς μὴ κεχαρισμένοις αὐτῶν πρὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν κατὰ τὴν
θεωρίαν ὅμως ἡ δημιουργήσασα φύσις ἀμηχάνους ἡδονὰς παρέχει τοῖς
δυναμένοις τὰς αἰτίας γνωρίζειν καὶ φύσει φιλοσόφοις. καὶ γὰρ ἂν εἴη
παράλογον καὶ ἄτοπον, εἰ τὰς μὲν εἰκόνας αὐτῶν θεωροῦντες χαίρομεν ὅτι
τὴν δημιουργήσασαν τέχνην συνθεωροῦμεν, οἷον τὴν γραφικὴν ἢ τὴν
πλαστικήν, αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν φύσει συνεστώτων μὴ μᾶλλον ἀγαπῷμεν τὴν
θεωρίαν, δυνάμενοί γε τὰς αἰτίας καθορᾶν. διὸ δεῖ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν παιδικῶς
τὴν περὶ τῶν ἀτιμοτέρων ζῴων ἐπίσκεψιν. (PA 1.5 645a7–16)
For also in the case of those animals that are not agreeable to look at,
nevertheless nature’s craftsmanship provides enormous pleasures to those
who contemplate them: those who are able to recognise their causes and are
naturally lovers of wisdom (‘philosophers’). For it would be paradoxical and
odd if, when contemplating representations of these things, we take pleasure
in considering the craftsman’s skill in painting or sculpture, for example, but
Conclusions 77
do not take more pleasure in the contemplation of those very things that are
put together by nature when we are able to survey their causes. Hence we
must not grumble like children at the consideration of the less noble animals.
The themes introduced in Poetics 4 are brought together here in defence of
Aristotle’s project of investigating all natural things, including those animals
that might be thought less worthy of attention and even perhaps unpleasant
to look at. He notes first of all our enjoyment of recognising the art and skill
of painting and sculpture and then offers an argument a fortiori. He reminds
us that there should be more enjoyment in seeing the products of nature’s
skill, particularly since we take pleasure in looking at depictions in paint or
marble of just these same natural things. If someone enjoys looking at a fine
and beautiful statue of a deer then there should be no less pleasure to be had
in contemplating the fine and beautiful natural design of a deer itself. To be
sure, it might take a particular kind of philosophical nature in this case to
recognise natural design but the principle is precisely the same as in the case
of human arts: recognition of the explanations for the arrangement and
construction of the item under consideration is part of taking pleasure in
appreciating the item in question. Presumably, this will also be the case even
for those animals that were in Poetics 7 thought too small to be pleasant to
view; in those cases too there might nevertheless be a pleasure to be had in
recognising the cunning natural design of an insect’s eye or a tiny worm’s
body.42
Conclusions
The differences between the Platonic and Aristotelian accounts of the
metaphysical nature of pleasure and their disagreement over the ontological
nature of the objects of human thinking and perception should not obscure
the similarities between their approaches to the role of pleasure in a good
human life. Both are inclined to think that the best things that a human
being can do are intellectual activities, and both place these activities at the
heart of what makes for an excellent human life. Both are inclined to
identify pleasures that accompany such activities and therefore identify a
class of superior pleasures that will characterise an excellent human life.
Aristotle differs from Plato, however, in expressing in more detailed terms
the various differences between processes of learning, recalling, contempla-
ting, and knowing. But he agrees with his predecessor in thinking that all of
42
Cf. Destrée 2014, 8–9.
these are directed ideally at a final goal of possessing and actively contem-
plating eternal truths. Aristotle also differs from Plato – certainly the Plato
of the Republic – in the explicit acknowledgement of pleasures associated
with a variety of forms of inferior intellectual and cognitive activities and
changes, and he is more prepared to find an intellectual accomplishment of
a sort – and also an accompanying pleasure – in thinking and learning about
the natural perceptible world and the products of human craftsmanship.
chapter 4
Epicurus and Plutarch on pleasure and human nature
Debates over the pleasures and pains of various kinds of learning and
knowing continued into the Hellenistic period. To illustrate this, in the
present chapter I consider the extent to which the hedonistic school of
Epicureanism found room for such pleasures and then how the Epicureans
were attacked by Plutarch on the grounds that they demonstrated an
insufficient grasp of human rational nature. Plutarch’s anti-Epicurean
polemic borrows heavily from some of the Platonic texts that were discussed
in Chapter 2. It also offers a further perspective on the identification of the
proper pleasures of the rational part of the soul that suggests something
about the later Platonists’ understanding of Plato’s own position.
Epicureans on the pleasures of learning and knowing

The Hellenistic Epicureans were hedonists. Since they thought that we
humans should aim to live the most pleasant life possible, it is perhaps no
surprise that they have a lot to say about the importance of different kinds of
cognitive activity for the production and maintenance of pleasure.
They certainly claim that it can be instrumentally good – and therefore
pleasant – to know things and to be good at planning and predicting one’s
future experiences. For example, at Ep. Men. 128 Epicurus insists that
maintaining ‘unwavering consideration’ (ἀπλανὴς θεωρία) of the fact that
some of our desires are natural and necessary is essential for making sure we
make the correct choices about what we need to pursue and avoid to
maintain a pain-free life.1 (We will come to look more closely at that aspect
of their theory in Chapter 8 below.) And he also insists that the proper
understanding of the nature of the world and of human mortality is essential
1
On which see Erler 2012: θεωρία and its cognate verb and adjective (sometimes amplified with the
addition of the phrase διὰ λόγου) is often used in Epicurus specifically to mean a rational grasp or
consideration of some topic or truth. See e.g. Ep. Hdt. 35, 47.
79
80 Epicurus and Plutarch on pleasure and human nature
for ridding our lives of various kinds of false but painful beliefs. But the
Epicureans also emphasise how learning and knowing can be pleasant in
themselves. This is perhaps surprising, particularly given the predominantly
hostile reaction their philosophy received in antiquity, since most critics of
Epicureanism concentrate on painting a picture of a philosophy of life
dedicated only to the most basic physical pleasures. A good example of
that hostile reaction can be found in Plutarch’s essay On the Fact That It Is
Impossible to Live Pleasantly Following Epicurus (Non Posse). But let us turn
first to what the Epicurean texts themselves have to say about the pleasures
of learning and knowing.
Epicurus himself clearly states that it is important to acquire an under-
standing of the world through what he calls the ‘study of nature’ (physio-
logia) because such knowledge is required for living a happy, and therefore
pleasant, life. He stresses this towards the end of the Letter to Herodotus (78–
9) and also at the opening of the Letter to Pythocles (85–8). Here it seems that
the purpose of such understanding as can be acquired of the nature of the
world is to dispel painful fears and superstitions. The essential message is
presented in Kyriai Doxai 11 and 12: physiologia is needed because we tend to
be troubled by superstitions concerning natural phenomena we do not
understand. In a similar vein, the Epicurean poet Lucretius repeatedly
encourages his addressee, Memmius, to pay attention and recognise the
benefits of understanding the nature of things. By coming to understand
why such things as thunder occur we come to avoid painful anxieties about
them; so some knowledge of natural science is necessary for a pleasant and
trouble-free life (see e.g. Lucr. DRN 6.80–9). Epicurus’ own Letter to
Herodotus begins (35–7) by insisting on the importance of thoroughly
understanding the principles of Epicurean natural philosophy and
committing the essentials to one’s memory so that they can be easily and
accurately referred to whenever necessary.2
Usefulness for removing pain and anxiety of learning about and
understanding the nature of the world is the principal contribution that
these intellectual pursuits can make to the production of pleasure. But there
are also indications that Epicurus envisaged a more direct relationship
between knowledge of the nature of things and pleasure. The best piece
of evidence for this is one of the Vatican Sayings:3
2
The Epicureans set great store by memorisation of the essentials of their philosophy, which led to the
composition of epitomes of the larger works, sometimes in the form of letters such as those collected in
DL 10, sets of aphorisms such as the Kyriai Doxai and the distillation of the essentials of their views in
the most concise form: the tetrapharmakos.
3
Körte 1890 assigns this Saying to Metrodorus (fr. 47).
Epicureans on learning and knowing 81
ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιτηδευμάτων μόλις τελειωθεῖσιν ὁ καρπὸς ἔρχεται, ἐπὶ
δὲ φιλοσοφίας συντρέχει τῇ γνώσει τὸ τερπνόν· οὐ γὰρ μετὰ μάθησιν
ἀπόλαυσις, ἀλλὰ ἅμα μάθησις καὶ ἀπόλαυσις. (SV 27)
For other pursuits the reward arrives with some toil once the pursuit is
complete. But in the case of philosophy the joy comes hand in hand with
knowledge; for the pleasure does not come after the learning but pleasure and
learning are simultaneous.
This Saying is concerned with pointing out not only that knowledge can be
pleasant but also and more specifically that knowledge and pleasure come
about simultaneously. At the moment I come to know something I
simultaneously enjoy knowing that something. I do not need to wait for
that knowledge to be useful or to lead to some later pleasure; it is pleasant all
by itself and the pleasure occurs as soon as something is known.4 The
chronological claim is perhaps best understood as a claim about the nature
of the value of knowledge. The Saying might well be aimed at dispelling the
idea that the Epicureans think that knowledge – like virtue – is good only in
a crude way because of some later pleasure that it might produce. Instead,
they want to say that knowledge is good because it is pleasant immediately
and all by itself. Knowledge is intrinsically pleasant and therefore valuable;
knowledge does not have to bring about some later pleasure for it to be
valuable.
The Epicureans clearly feel some pressure to recognise a value for knowledge
that is not merely contingent on its producing some later pleasure while still
holding firm to their hedonist axiology. Perhaps the idea is as follows. It is not
pleasant for me to learn and then to know some trigonometry only in the sense
that it will allow me later on to build a house efficiently and live in a secure and
watertight dwelling. Yes, my learning geometry will do that and it will in this
way produce pleasure and prevent pain. But learning and knowing that the
square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two
sides is also pleasant all by itself; I take pleasure in that knowledge. Or, if we
want a more specific example of some Epicurean philosophy, perhaps it is
pleasant to know that lightning is not caused by divine anger not just because
that will allow me to live a life free from superstitious anxieties. Yes, it will do
that.5 But it is not necessary to wait until the next thunderstorm to derive any
4
Compare Diogenes of Oinoanda fr. 33.vi.11–vii.10 Smith for the idea that the pleasure and the cause
of the pleasure can be simultaneous: we do not eat and then afterwards experience pleasure because of
eating nor do men ejaculate and then later experience sexual pleasure. In these cases what causes the
pleasure and the pleasure itself are simultaneous. See Sedley 2002.
5
Compare KD 12, Ep. Hdt. 78–9, and Ep. Pyth. 86, which stress the necessity of the understanding of
such things for living a good life.
pleasure from this piece of knowledge; knowing that lightning is caused in
such-and-such a way is just pleasant all by itself. It is still the case that the value
of knowledge lies in its being pleasant, of course, but its pleasantness is not
merely a product of its usefulness.6
The Saying does not make clear whether it continues to be pleasant to
know something after the initial enjoyment of discovery, but it seems likely
that the Epicureans would indeed want to make such a claim. To be certain,
it will help to determine the precise meaning of gnōsis and mathēsis in SV 27,
translated above as ‘knowledge’ and ‘learning’ respectively. For example, if
mathēsis means ‘learning’ in the sense of the event of coming to know
something, then it will not follow that just because this is all by itself
pleasant when it happens, it will continue to be pleasant to have learned
something. But the sense of the event of coming-to-know something makes
best sense of the claim that there need be no time lag between the mathēsis
and the pleasure.7 Gnōsis, on the other hand, is more likely to mean an
ongoing state of knowing or understanding. (See, for example, its use in Ep.
Hdt. 78–9.) In that case, the combination of the two terms in this Saying
may be intended to encompass both the claim that coming-to-know
something will be immediately pleasant and the claim that a continued
comprehension of some truth will continue to be pleasant.
Vatican Saying 41 also offers a generally uplifting picture of the joys of
living an Epicurean life:
γελᾶν ἅμα δεῖ καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ οἰκονομεῖν καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς οἰκειώμασι
χρῆσθαι καὶ μηδαμῇ λήγειν τὰς ἐκ τῆς ὀρθῆς φιλοσοφίας φωνὰς ἀφιέντας.
We must laugh at the same time as we philosophise and do our household
duties and employ our other faculties and never cease proclaiming the
sayings of the true philosophy.8
All these activities – philosophy, housework, and the rest – are a source of
joy and laughter. Certainly, the Epicureans seem to have thought that
philosophical conversations are themselves a source of pleasure besides
any instrumental benefit they might provide. Epicurus himself says that
he looks back and recalls such discussions with pleasure (DL 10.22).
6
Compare Lucretius’ famous experience of horror ac divina voluptas at the vision of the boundless
universe offered by Epicurean physics (DRN 3.27–9).
7
Mathēsis is not a common word in Epicurus; nor is the cognate verb. But compare SV 74: ‘In
philosophical shared inquiry the one who is beaten gains more according to how much more he
learns [prosemathen].’
8
Usener 1887 omits γελᾶν in his edition and adds it to the end of SV 40. See Bailey 1926, 382, for
compelling reasons to retain it.
Epicureans and Platonists 83
Epicureans against Plato, Platonists against Epicurus
Plutarch’s work On the Fact That It Is Impossible to Live Pleasantly Following
Epicurus (Non Posse) is devoted to showing that the Epicureans are mistaken
in their understanding of pleasure, the gods, and death, and therefore fail in
their project of offering a recipe for living a pleasant and good life free from
irrational fear. Plutarch’s demonstration of the Epicureans’ failure relies
heavily on a set of Platonic assumptions about the body and soul and their
respective pleasures, many of them based in a reading of Plato’s Republic. In
particular, Plutarch accuses the Epicureans of failing to install intellectual
achievements in their proper place in a good human life.9 To do so, Plutarch
cleverly – albeit sometimes very selectively – uses the Epicureans’ own
texts and their known anti-Platonic position on a range of philosophical
topics as the evidence on which he bases a critical interpretation of these
philosophical rivals.
Non Posse is one side of a tit-for-tat Platonist versus Epicurean polemic,
whose other side is well exemplified by what we have of Epicureans like
Colotes’ strong and equally committed reaction to Platonic works.
Non Posse is explicitly offered as a companion piece to the Adversus
Colotem (see Non Posse 1086c–d) and the Epicurean polemic against
other philosophers – in Colotes’ case also against various Platonic works
including the Republic – is the perfect justification, should there really be
any need for one, for Plutarch to adopt this robust approach in response. He
feels no pressure for the criticisms he offers to be based on a charitable or
even-handed interpretation of Epicurus’ views. Nor does he feel the need
for any serious dialectical engagement with the opposing school’s philoso-
phy. Perhaps Plutarch did take that approach elsewhere, however, since the
Lamprias catalogue (§129) includes mention of a work On Epicurean
Contradictions (Περὶ ᾿Επικουρείων ἐναντιωμάτων) which might have been
somewhat like the surviving anti-Stoic work with a similar title (De Stoic.
Repug.).10 But in Non Posse Plutarch is perfectly at liberty to write a
retaliatory Platonist critique of Epicureanism from a partisan standpoint.
Despite the Epicureans’ reputation for being generally uninterested in
inter-school dialectic, they were accomplished polemicists and, by
9
While I concentrate on Non Posse since it contains Plutarch’s most sustained treatment of Epicurean
hedonism, it is clear that similar concerns surface in other works. See e.g. An Seni 786c, Lat. Viv.
1129b (Usener 411, 412).
10
The situation with the Stoics is complicated further by their philosophical affinity with the Socratic
tradition, often drawing on Platonic works, and Plutarch’s own preferred account of that same
tradition. For a careful and illuminating discussion of this theme in De Stoic. Repug., see Boys-Stones
1997.
Plutarch’s time, had long been engaged in criticism of Platonic works.
Indeed, the Epicureans had been both interested in and irritated by Plato
since the foundation of the school. There is good evidence of a close
engagement by Epicurus himself in various aspects of Plato’s dialogues,
including notably the Timaeus and Phaedo and also the Republic.11 The first
generation of Epicureans also were keen polemicists: Metrodorus appears to
have written an Against the Euthyphro and Against the Gorgias and Polyaenus
wrote Against Plato (DL 10.25). Colotes, in particular, seems to have
warmed to this theme. As well as the general work to which Plutarch’s
Adversus Colotem is a response, Colotes wrote works Against the Lysis and
Against the Euthydemus. And, most interesting for current purposes, he was
keen to criticise Plato’s Republic; at least, we know from Proclus’ commen-
tary on the Platonic work that he was keen to offer criticisms of the myth of
Er.12 Proclus even dubs him ‘the enemy of Plato’, something which would
in all likelihood have pleased him greatly.13 Proclus, we might also notice,
writing more than seven hundred years after Colotes, still feels it important
to offer a rebuttal of the Epicurean’s accusations. And he notes that
Porphyry before him had felt a similar need to respond to Colotes
(Procl. In Plat. Rem Pub. vol. 2: 111.6ff. Kroll).
Although the evidence is not particularly rich, there is every reason to
think that the period in which Plutarch was writing the Non Posse saw the
continuation of a general vein of polemic between the two schools. There is,
to be sure, little explicit polemic surviving between Epicureanism and
Platonism in later Hellenistic and early Imperial times, but there is no
reason to think it disappeared in the period between Colotes and Plutarch;
there are certainly in our sources some traces which might support such a
case.14 The second-century evidence is nevertheless much clearer. As well as
Plutarch’s evident interest in Epicurean theories of pleasure, we have Aulus
Gellius’ report of the – admittedly peculiar – view that all subsequent
philosophical accounts of pleasure are dependent on one or other of
11
See also Warren 2006 for a discussion of Epicurus’ engagement with the harmonia-theory of soul and
its refutation in the Phaedo. Epicurus’ On Nature book 14 (PHerc. 1148) discussed the physical theory
of the Timaeus. See Leone 1984.
12
See Procl. In Plat. Rem Pub. vol. 2: 105, 23; 109, 12; 111, 6ff.; 113, 9; 116, 19; 121, 24 Kroll. Cf. Warren
2002b, 204–5, for how Proclus plays Colotes against his atomist predecessor Democritus. For more
information on Colotes’ works see Westman 1955, 26–107.
13
See Procl. In Plat. Rem Pub. vol. 2: 113, 9–10 Kroll.
14
The question of Lucretius’ interest in non-Epicurean philosophy in general is rather complicated. I
offer some thoughts on how the didactic nature of his poem may suppress complex inter-school
dialectic in Warren 2007. Philodemus clearly had an interest in the Academy and wrote a history of
the school (PHerc. 1021 and 164).
Epicureans and Platonists 85
Plato’s descriptions of pleasure’s various forms.15 One of the views
mentioned prominently in this connection is the Epicurean conception
that the highest good is pleasure and that this is a ‘well balanced state of the
flesh’ (τὸ σαρκὸς εὐσταθὲς κατάστημα), for which Gellius uses the same
Epicurean tag that also appears in Plutarch at 1089d and 1090a.16 This short
phrase therefore appears to be a favourite touchstone for this kind of anti-
Epicurean criticism, precisely because of the prominence it offers to the
state of the flesh rather than the soul.17 (The phrase is also quoted by
Clement at Strom. 2.119 and 131. It could well be another phrase made
notorious by Timocrates’ selective quotation.) For his part, the second-
century Platonist Calvenus Taurus seems to have been particularly attached
to an anti-Epicurean and anti-hedonist agenda of an extreme kind.
Certainly, the terms of his attacks on Epicurus reported by Gellius are
uncompromising:
Taurus autem noster, quotiens facta mentio Epicuri erat, in ore atque in
lingua habebat verba haec Hieroclis Stoici, viri sancti et gravis: ἡδονὴ τέλος,
πόρνης δόγμα· οὐκ ἔστιν πρόνοια, οὐδὲ πόρνης δόγμα. (Noct. Att. 9.5)
But our own Taurus, whenever he made mention of Epicurus would have on
the tip of his tongue this phrase of the Stoic Hierocles, a pious and serious
man: ‘That pleasure is the goal of life is the dogma of a whore; that there is no
providence is not even the dogma of a whore.’
The details remain obscure, but it is enough for my purposes to show that
there was an ongoing debate between the two schools. This debate, fur-
thermore, points towards two features which are relevant to the interpreta-
tion of this work by Plutarch. First, the report from Gellius shows that,
whether in the case of Calvenus Taurus’ abusive dismissal or in the more
sober attempt to undermine Epicurean innovation by pointing to an
original Platonic source, there was heated discussion or polemic over the
true nature of pleasure and its precise role in a good human life. Second, as
the evidence from Proclus suggests, discussion between Platonists and
15
See Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. 9.5. The whole of this section is often attributed to Calvenus Taurus; it
appears, for example as 18T Gioé, §10 Lakmann and cf. Lakmann 1995, 98–113. There are, however,
reasons to doubt that the whole of the report concerns Calvenus Taurus’ views, rather than Gellius’
own. See Tarrant 1996, esp. 187–93 and cf. Annas 1999, 138–9 and n. 5. For more on Taurus see
Tarrant 2007, 456–60.
16
Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. 9.5.1: Epicurus voluptatem summum bonum esse ponit; eam tamen ita definit:
σαρκὸς εὐσταθὲς κατάστημα.
17
Usener 1887 prints as fr. 68 the entire sentence from Plut. Non Posse 1089d: τὸ γὰρ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς
κατάστημα καὶ τὸ περὶ ταύτης πιστὸν ἔλπισμα τὴν ἀκροτάτην χαρὰν καὶ βεβαιοτάτην ἔχει τοῖς
ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δυναμένοις. (I return to discuss this sentence in Chapter 8.) On the use of εὐστάθεια in
Plutarch see Albini 1993, 62.
Epicureans sometimes included discussion of Plato’s Republic, perhaps
instigated by an early critical work by the Epicurean Colotes.18 Plutarch’s
Non Posse fits neatly into both of these strands of Platonist–Epicurean
debate. For Plutarch, it would have seemed entirely natural to reach for
the Republic as a source for material to wield against the Epicureans and
their conception of pleasure. Indeed, it would have seemed perfectly apt
for him to do so given Colotes’ famous hostility to Plato and to this
dialogue, and also the obviously fertile material in Republic for producing
not only alternatives to the Epicurean view but also diagnoses of their
mistakes. In casting the hedonist and empiricist Epicureans as subject to
the very failings which Socrates finds in both the ‘lovers of sights and
sounds’ in book 5 and also the patients and gluttons in book 9, Non Posse
offers an object lesson in the creative use of a Platonic text for the purposes
of inter-school polemic some five hundred years after the Republic was
written.19
Plutarch’s Platonist attack on Epicurean pleasures

Plutarch’s most striking use of Plato’s Republic comes at Non Posse 1091d–e:
τὸ γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον οὐκ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπέκεινα τῆς φυγῆς τῶν κακῶν
κεῖται τὸ ἐφετὸν καὶ τὸ αἱρετὸν καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ οἰκεῖον, ὡς Πλάτων
ἔλεγε, καὶ ἀπηγόρευε τὰς λυπῶν καὶ πόνων ἀπαλλαγὰς ἡδονὰς μὴ νομίζειν,
ἀλλ’ οἷόν τινα σκιαγραφίαν ἢ μῖξιν οἰκείου καὶ ἀλλοτρίου, καθάπερ λευκοῦ
καὶ μέλανος, ἀπὸ τοῦ κάτω πρὸς τὸ μέσον ἀναφερομένων, ἀπειρίᾳ δὲ τοῦ
ἄνω καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ τὸ μέσον ἄκρον ἡγουμένων εἶναι καὶ πέρας· ὥσπερ
Ἐπίκουρος ἡγεῖται καὶ Μητρόδωρος, οὐσίαν τἀγαθοῦ καὶ ἀκρότητα τὴν
τοῦ κακοῦ φυγὴν τιθέμενοι καὶ χαίροντες ἀνδραπόδων τινὰ χαρὰν ἢ
δεσμίων ἐξ εἱργμοῦ λυθέντων ἀσμένως ἀλειψαμένων καὶ ἀπολουσαμένων
μετ’ αἰκίας καὶ μάστιγας, ἐλευθέρας δὲ καὶ καθαρᾶς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς καὶ
ἀμωλωπίστου χαρᾶς ἀγεύστων καὶ ἀθεάτων.
For what is imposed by necessity is not good; the object of our aspiration and
choice lies beyond the escape from ills; yes, and so too does what is pleasant
18
Epicurus himself was no less graphic than Calvenus in his dismissal of opposing views. Epicurus
famously is supposed to have said: ‘I spit on the fine (τὸ καλόν) and those who vacantly gawp at it,
whenever it produces no pleasure’ (Athenaeus 547a (Usener 512)). It is possible that this is an anti-
Platonic jibe. (And see above for Plutarch’s assertion of a φιλόκαλον aspect of the human soul.)
19
Cf. Hershbell 1992, 3362. For a more sophisticated discussion of Plutarch’s interest in Colotes’ work
see Kechagia 2011, 19–45, who notes the Platonic atmosphere of the discussion related in Adv. Col. and
the explicit Platonist sympathies of at least some of the participants. Aristodemus, in particular, is a
real Plato enthusiast (Adv. Col. 1107e). Much of her discussion could, with little modification, be
equally applied to Non Posse.
and appropriate, as Plato said, who forbade us to regard riddance from pain
and discomfort as pleasure, but as instead some trick of perspective as it were
or blend of what is appropriate with what is alien to us, like a blend of white
and black, which occurs when people ascend from a lower to a middle region,
and suppose, in their lack of any expertise or knowledge of the higher region,
that the middle is the summit and the end. So Epicurus supposes, and
Metrodorus too, when they take the position that escape from harm is the
reality and upper limit of the good; and thus their delight is that of slaves or
prisoners released from confinement, overjoyed to be annointed and bathed
after the cruel treatment and the flogging, but knowing neither the taste nor
the vision of a free man’s delight, pure, untainted, and bearing no scars from
the lash (trans. B. Einarson and P. H. De Lacy, modified).
Commentators rightly point out that in this passage Plutarch borrows
heavily from Plato’s Rep. 584d–585a, which is an obvious passage for
Plutarch to have in mind.20 There, Socrates outlines two criticisms which
are taken by Plutarch to apply to the Epicureans’ account of the ideal
pleasant life. Plutarch finds ammunition to use against his principal target
in this very section of Republic book 9 and can therefore point to clear
Platonic authority for his anti-Epicurean polemic: the Epicureans are just as
misguided as the poor opponents whose misconceptions Socrates dismisses.
Plutarch thinks he can find good evidence in the Epicureans’ own words of
this turn away from the soul to the pleasures of the body and, more
specifically, of the stomach. Indeed, it is announced early on that his
criticisms will be aided by what the Epicureans themselves have to say. This
is not to say that the conversation is properly dialectical in the sense that it is
working from and wholly within Epicurean premises to uncover some sort of
internal inconsistency or flaw. Rather, the polemic will quote Epicurean
sources – selectively, no doubt – and show how the grounds of the criticism
to be offered can be located in authentic Epicurean texts.21 And it is certainly
true that some of the passages Plutarch cites, particularly a passage from a
letter from Metrodorus to his brother Timocrates at 1098c–d (previewed at
1087d), give a strong impression of the reprehensible outlook Plutarch wishes
to emphasise since they do indeed appear to highlight above all the
pleasures of a full stomach. (These also contrast, we might note, with
20
Cf. H. Adam 1974, 36 and n. 73; Zacher 1982, 208–10; Hershbell 1992, 3373; Albini 1993, 34–5.
21
Non Posse 1087d: νῦν δὲ χρήσομεθα τοῖς διδομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. Compare Roskam 2005, 360: ‘For
here too [sc. in Non Posse as well as Adv. Col.], the whole discussion is conditioned by a specific
polemical strategy, viz. the technique of attacking the philosophical opponent from the inside. Such a
strategy of course implies that one starts from the premises of the opponent himself. Accordingly,
Plutarch always introduces his reflections by a reference to Epicurus’ own convictions (1097a, 1099d,
1099f–1100a).’
various Epicurean claims about the relative unimportance of bodily pleas-
ure introduced 1088b–c.) Timocrates is a very helpful source for a writer
like Plutarch since he seems to have cast himself as the victim of some
persecution by the first generation of Epicureans and even as the object of
a long attack by Epicurus himself (Cic. De Natura Deorum 1.33). Whatever
the cause of the original disagreement, Timocrates is perfect for Plutarch’s
needs: an Epicurean insider who can cite with plausibility various claims
by the early Epicureans which make them appear to be gluttons and
hypocrites, confirming Plutarch’s portrait of the school with unimpeach-
able first-hand evidence.22 The picture of Epicureanism suggested by this
evidence is then subjected to various criticisms inspired by Platonic texts,
especially book 9 of the Republic.
In book 9 Socrates argues that the absence of pain is a distinct state from
the experience of pleasure. In other words, he tries to dispel the notion that
the relief from pain is truly a pleasure and instead wishes to show that it is a
mere false pleasure, a shadow of the true and original pleasure
(eskiagraphēmenē in Plato at 583b5, cf. skiagraphia in Plutarch at 1091d).
Given the Epicureans’ famous insistence that the greatest magnitude of
pleasure is indeed the absence of pain, it is no surprise that Socrates’
argument might appear helpful in an anti-Epicurean text. Plutarch enjoys
quoting from both Metrodorus’ Against the Sophists (fr. 28 Körte) and an
un-named work by Epicurus (Usener 423) to show that the Epicureans did
indeed think that the greatest joy comes from the absence of evil (1091a–b).
From Socrates’ perspective this is merely a false or illusory pleasure and
should be contrasted with true, positive, pleasure; this true pleasure is not
simply comparatively better than some previous or subsequent state of pain.
To expose the error, Socrates mounts a dialectical argument aimed at
some opponents who claim that the state of pain-free health is in fact
the most pleasant state possible, but that this is only evident once someone
is no longer in that state and is instead suffering some kind of sickness
(583c10–d2). In response, Socrates sets about convincing his opponents that,
on the basis of their own assumption that one’s proper hedonic state might
be incorrectly evaluated because of current experiences, they should think
that a general state of health is in fact merely an intermediate state – neither
22
See also DL 10.6–7 for more of Timocrates’ claims. DL 10.4 says that Timocrates wrote a work
impugning Epicurus’ Athenian citizenship. In short, Timocrates seems to have been ‘extraordinarily
successful . . . in contaminating the biographical tradition about Epicurus and Metrodorus’ (Sedley
1976, 127–32; cf. Roskam 2007, 43–9; Gordon 2012, 14–37). Compare also Timon of Phlius fr. 7 Diels
for wording very like what is found at Plutarch Non Posse 1098c–d.
pleasant nor painful – and not, as in their sickened state they currently
claim, the highest pleasure.
Further, Socrates goes on to use as an illustration of the kind of mistake
he wants to expose some people who think they have climbed to a ‘higher’
region when they have simply lifted themselves out of some kind of
depression (584d1–e5; cf. Phaed. 109aff.); they think that they have ascended
to somewhere elevated but in reality have merely made it back up to ground
level. Plutarch is quick to work this same comparison into his brief sum-
mary. For Plutarch, the Epicureans are much like those people in the
Republic whom Socrates describes as ‘sick’ (583c10). These people – like
the Epicureans – mistakenly consider the absence of pain to be a pleasure
because, in their illness, they wrongly overvalue their previous health in
comparison with their present state. It is not coincidental that a conse-
quence of this illusion is that the sick people deny that there is any
intermediate state between pleasure and pain.23
This leads to Socrates’ second argument, which was discussed at some
length in Chapter 2 and which is based on the hypothesis of there being
certain perfect intelligible objects of knowledge to which human reason
naturally ought to tend and which best satisfy human rational desires. In
ignoring these perfect intelligible objects – ‘the Forms’ – and concentrating
on the satisfaction of bodily needs, in Plutarch’s eyes the Epicureans are
clearly attempting to offer as the goal of life something which, considered
rightly, is at best only an illusory or false pleasure.
In this same passage at Non Posse 1091d–e there are indications that
Plutarch may also be looking outside the argument specifically concerning
misconceptions of pleasure in Republic book 9 for material he can usefully
deploy. For example, Plutarch here compares the state of the Epicurean who
knows only the cessation of pain and mistakes this for pleasure to the state of
a slave or prisoner who has been released from painful torture and bondage
(1091e). The prisoner may feel, comparatively, free. But he is nevertheless
still in no position to experience true pleasure; he may have been freed from
his bonds but he remains a prisoner. His present state may be good in
comparison with his former misery but it remains inferior to the pleasures of
a free man who has never been held prisoner or beaten. Given the imme-
diately preceding direct reference to the Republic it is not implausible that
we are here meant to think of the central arresting metaphor in book 7 of
that work: the simile of the cave and the imagined release from bonds of one
of the cave’s prisoners who is then able to learn the true nature of things and
23
For more on this argument in the Republic see Warren 2011b and Wolfsdorf 2013b.
experience true pleasures.24 The crucial notions of (metaphorical) ascent
and of being mistaken about one’s true epistemological and hedonic state
are clear enough in both the cave simile and the extended discussion of
pleasure in book 9 of the Republic; it is perfectly reasonable for Plutarch to
think that they should be read together.25
To his mind, the Epicureans find themselves in the position of the
prisoners in the cave of Republic book 7 or the sick of Republic book 9,
concentrating overly in their misery on bodily and perceptible objects of
pleasure and failing to recognise that the cessation of pain that they seek is
merely a pale imitation of something much better and more stable. And this
failure is linked to a general failure to recognise the existence of permanent
intelligible things independent of the perceptible and bodily world. Indeed,
much of Plutarch’s discussion of the Epicureans’ errors turns on the
metaphysics of pleasure: what its proper objects are and how this is related
to a proper conception of human nature. There is obviously a lot of good
material for building such a case to be found once again in the Republic,
specifically in the argument at 585a–e, where Socrates uses the overall
metaphysical vision of Forms and particulars to distinguish between the
pleasures of the soul, whose objects are pure, true, and stable (i.e. the Forms)
and which are registered by something which is itself everlasting (i.e. the
soul) and the pleasures of the body whose objects are changeable, impure,
and so on, and which are registered by an impure and changeable body.
These latter pleasures, says Socrates, cannot properly satisfy a person. In
ignoring these perfect intelligible objects and concentrating on the satisfac-
tion of bodily needs, in Plutarch’s eyes the Epicureans are again clearly
attempting to offer as the goal of life something which, considered rightly, is
at best only an illusory or false pleasure. Time and again, Plutarch character-
ises the Epicurean pleasures as unstable – abebaioi – which is often coupled
with the claim that they are also untrustworthy – apistoi: 1090a, 1090b,
1090d, 1091a, 1092d, 1104f – both of which are watchwords of the original
Platonic account (see 585e3–5). The Epicureans are attempting vainly to
achieve satisfaction and painlessness by filling something which is by nature
changing and cannot be stably satisfied with objects that are themselves
24
Zacher 1982, 211 also compares Plat. Phaedr. 258e2–5.
25
Even if this specific reminiscence is not intended, Plutarch surely is offering a more general
reminiscence to the Platonic theme of the sōma sēma and to the notion that a preoccupation with
bodily pleasure merely enslaves and further binds the soul to the body. Certainly, when later in the
work Plutarch adds to his discussion the mistaken Epicurean idea that death is annihilation, he
returns to that general theme: 1105d.
unstable and unreliable guides to what is of true value. And this has a further
consequence for their chances of living a good human life.
Just a little further on in the Republic there is another passage which
clearly underlies Plutarch’s Platonist position:
οἱ ἄρα φρονήσεως καὶ ἀρετῆς ἄπειροι, εὐωχίαις δὲ καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ἀεὶ
συνόντες, κάτω, ὡς ἔοικεν, καὶ μέχρι πάλιν πρὸς τὸ μεταξὺ φέρονταί τε καὶ
ταύτῃ πλανῶνται διὰ βίου, ὑπερβάντες δὲ τοῦτο πρὸς τὸ ἀληθῶς ἄνω οὔτε
ἀνέβλεψαν πώποτε οὔτε ἠνέχθησαν, οὐδὲ τοῦ ὄντος τῷ ὄντι ἐπληρώθησαν,
οὐδὲ βεβαίου τε καὶ καθαρᾶς ἡδονῆς ἐγεύσαντο, ἀλλὰ βοσκημάτων δίκην
κάτω ἀεὶ βλέποντες καὶ κεκυφότες εἰς γῆν καὶ εἰς τραπέζας βόσκονται
χορταζόμενοι καὶ ὀχεύοντες, καὶ ἕνεκα τῆς τούτων πλεονεξίας λακτίζοντες
καὶ κυρίττοντες ἀλλήλους σιδηροῖς κέρασί τε καὶ ὁπλαῖς ἀποκτεινύασι δι’
ἀπληστίαν, ἅτε οὐχὶ τοῖς οὖσιν οὐδὲ τὸ ὂν οὐδὲ τὸ στέγον ἑαυτῶν
πιμπλάντες. (Rep. 586a1–b3)
Therefore those who have no experience of wisdom and virtue but spend
their time always in feasts and the like, are – so it seems – carried downwards
and hardly even make it back up to the middle. And they wander back and
forth like this for their whole life, never making it up to what is truly above
nor looking up nor being taking up to it. They would never be filled with
what really is, nor would they ever taste stable and pure pleasure. But they are
always looking downwards and, bent over towards the ground like cattle,
they scoff from tables, grow fat, and mount one another. In order to get more
of this than anyone else they kick and butt one another with iron horns and
hooves. And they kill one another out of a lack of satisfaction because they
are trying to fill with things that are not something that is not and is not
watertight.
Two further themes central to Plutarch’s account are prominent here. First,
Socrates ends with a reference to a familiar metaphor of pleasure as a kind of
filling. People who concentrate on bodily pleasures are like people trying to
fill up a leaky jar: the satisfaction they seek is forever unattainable because
they have failed to attend to an underlying fault in their souls. The image is
expanded more fully and famously in Plato’s Gorgias (493a–494a) with
reference to the myth of the Danaids, but it is certainly being invoked
here in Republic too and Plutarch makes prominent use of it early in Non
Posse at 1088e–1089a and 1089d–e. The first of these is an elaborate
reworking of the Platonic model which is designed also to take a swipe at
the Epicureans’ notorious claim that present pain might be offset mentally
by either anticipating some future pleasure or recollecting some past
pleasure.26
26
I will return to the Epicureans’ use of the pleasures of memory and anticipation in Chapter 8 below.
εἰ δ’ ἀκούεις αὐτῶν μαρτυρομένων καὶ βοώντων, ὡς ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ ψυχὴ τῶν
ὄντων πέφυκε χαίρειν καὶ γαληνίζειν πλὴν ἐπὶ σώματος ἡδοναῖς παρούσαις
ἢ προσδοκωμέναις, καὶ τοῦτ’ αὐτῆς τὸ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἆρ’ οὐ δοκοῦσί σοι
διεράματι τοῦ σώματος χρῆσθαι τῇ ψυχῇ, <καὶ> καθάπερ οἶνον ἐκ πονηροῦ
καὶ μὴ στέγοντος ἀγγείου τὴν ἡδονὴν διαχέοντες ἐνταῦθα καὶ παλαιοῦντες
οἴεσθαι σεμνότερόν τι ποιεῖν καὶ τιμιώτερον; καίτοι γ’ οἶνον μὲν χρόνος
διαχυθέντα τηρεῖ καὶ συνηδύνει, τῆς δ’ ἡδονῆς ἡ ψυχὴ παραλαβοῦσα τὴν
μνήμην ὥσπερ ὀσμὴν ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν φυλάσσει· ζέσασα γὰρ ἐπὶ σαρκὶ
κατασβέννυται, καὶ τὸ μνημονευόμενον αὐτῆς ἀμαυρόν ἐστι καὶ κνισῶδες,
ὥσπερ ἑώλων ὧν τις ἔπιεν ἢ ἔφαγεν ἀποτιθεμένου καὶ ταμιεύοντος ἐπινοίας
ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ χρωμένου δηλονότι ταύταις προσφάτων μὴ παρόντων. (Non
Posse 1088e–1089a)
But when you hear their loud protest that the soul is so constituted as to find
joy and tranquillity in nothing in the world but pleasures of the body either
present or anticipated, and that this is its good, do they not appear to you to
be using the soul as a decanter of the body, and to imagine that by decanting
pleasure, like wine, from a worthless and leaky vessel and leaving it to age in
its new container, they are turning it into something more respectable and
precious? Yet there is a difference: the new vessel preserves the wine that has
settled in the course of time and improves its flavour, whereas in the case of
pleasure the soul takes over and preserves the memory of it, as it were the
bouquet, and nothing else; for the pleasure effervesces in the flesh and then
goes flat, and what is left of it in recollection is faint and greasy, as though a
man were to lay away and store up in himself the thoughts of yesterday’s food
and drink, resorting to these, we must suppose, when nothing fresh is at
hand (trans. Einarson and De Lacy).
It is not hard to see why Plutarch might have taken up this image so eagerly.
In addition to the Platonic background, Plutarch can draw additional
support for his use of this analogy from the fact that the Epicureans
themselves prominently used the very same image in order to make
clear their claim that the highest pleasure is the absence of pain and can
offer a stable and lasting hedonist eudaimonia (see e.g. Lucr. DRN 3.935–46,
6.9–27).27 No doubt, the Epicureans are in part responding to Plato’s
attacks on hedonism by recasting the Platonic image and this is what in
turn provokes Plutarch to offer a Platonist response. (This is a recurrent
theme: Plutarch takes up Platonic arms against Epicureans in response to
their original attacks on Plato.) The philosophical disagreement between
the Epicureans and Plato over the relationship between pleasure and desire
27
See for further discussion Görler 1997. The Epicureans also used the image of the body as the
container of vessel of the soul (see Epicurus, Ep. Hdt. 65–6 and Lucr. DRN 3.433–44), perhaps in
order to emphasise the dependence of the proper functioning of the soul on a functioning body.
is complex but, in brief, the Epicureans agree with Socrates that a ‘leaky jar’
can never properly be filled but disagree with the assumption that pleasures
are always associated with processes of filling rather than states of plenitude.
They want there to be a kind of pleasure – indeed the highest
pleasure – which is precisely a state of plenitude and not a process of filling.
What we need, in that case, is to set a limit to desires and in this way make
sure the jar remains watertight (see e.g. Lucr. DRN 6.9–34). For his
purposes, Plutarch can again draw on the metaphysical argument at Rep.
585a–e and insist that the body is irredeemably porous, so to speak, since it is
a changing and impermanent item and the objects of the pleasures it is able
to enjoy are themselves unstable and impermanent.
Plutarch avoids any detailed engagement with the fine-grained interpre-
tation of Epicurean conceptions of the nature of pleasure; perhaps rightly
so: it is far from clear whether we can make genuine and satisfying
philosophical sense of this notion of ‘katastematic pleasure’.28 Indeed,
Plutarch makes no attempt to offer much of an argument at all against
the Epicureans rather than simply rejecting their view on the basis of a
restatement of a Platonist standpoint. But he does make great capital from
the possibilities of imagining the soul and body as two vessels, particularly
the idea of being able to decant pleasures from one vessel to the other.
Plutarch’s use of the image of the vessel is clever, in that case, because he can
combine the general point about the impossibility of lasting bodily
satisfaction with a further criticism of the Epicureans’ own notions that
remembered or anticipated pleasures may be used to counteract physical
pains. Putting the two together allows Plutarch to show the absurdity of the
operation of pouring from one leaky vessel to another and back again as a
means of trying to store pleasures over time.29 Of course, Plutarch’s
preferred understanding of the relationship between the soul and body
which underpins his polemical approach to this – admittedly implausible –
Epicurean idea is quite unlike the Epicureans’ own. Their distinction
between what is physical/bodily and what is psychic, given their general
physicalist approach to the soul, is rather different from Plutarch’s Platonic
dualism. But once again, Plutarch makes no attempt to tailor his criticisms
to be particularly sensitive to the details of Epicurean psychological theory.
There is no attempt, for example, to consider the Epicureans’ distinction
28
For my discussion of this difficulty, with reference to Cicero’s criticisms in De Finibus, see Warren,
forthcoming a.
29
The most celebrated example of this was Epicurus’ own insistence on his deathbed that the
recollection of prior pleasant philosophical conversations could be set against the pain of his terminal
disease (DL 10.22). Plutarch is not impressed: 1099d–f.
between the rational and non-rational soul or their own preferred account
of the relationship between a body and a soul. Evidently, the Epicureans’
own reputation for slander and polemic licenses their being paid back in
kind (1086e).
The second, and related, theme taken from the Platonic cue at Rep.
586a1–b3 is the notion that the Epicureans – deliberately or not – persuade
themselves to live a somehow bestial life and, in presenting us with a picture
of the supposedly good human life which is in fact somehow bestial, would
therefore reduce the rest of us to their subhuman level. This motif has been
foreshadowed towards the close of Adversus Colotem, at 1124d–1125c, where
Colotes is reported to have argued that the great early lawgivers lifted
humans out of a bestial form of life. In reply it is suggested that it is the
Epicureans who mistake the proper role of law in human societies and
would be unable to salvage a recognisably human life were their contractual
laws to be undermined. In fact, when considered properly their position
holds that the laws provide only a fragile veneer to mask the essentially
bestial nature of Epicurean societies.30 The point here is not, of course, that
the Epicureans are bestial simply because they pursue pleasure; rather, the
particular kinds of pleasures they pursue – in Plutarch’s eyes, the pleasures
of bodily gratification and pain avoidance – are not appropriate to our
nature as rational thinking souls. Their hedonism is therefore based upon an
impoverished view of human nature. Socrates’ arresting image in the
Republic makes such people into animals bent over a feeding trough,
looking to fill their stomachs and satisfy their appetites rather than properly
tend to their rational natures. This fits perfectly with a common strand in
anti-Epicurean polemic which compares them with pigs in particular or
beasts in general, concerned with full stomachs and nothing more.31 It is,
moreover, a criticism of the Epicurean view which has already been voiced
at Adv. Col. 1108c, but now that Plutarch’s focus is more directly on the
Epicureans’ own positive account of the pleasant life these concerns can be
given free rein and a much more expansive exposition. Plutarch can now
seize the perfect opportunity to rehearse those well-known anti-Epicurean
charges once again, with the full backing of his Platonic source. Certainly,
he appears to be enjoying himself in recalling on a number of occasions the
motif of the bestial Epicurean life. At Non Posse 1091c Epicurean happiness
is compared with that of ‘pigs or sheep’ (cf. 1094e). The same charge
30
For more on the close of Adv. Col. see the remarks in Kechagia 2011, 157–60.
31
For a more extended discussion of the theme and some possible Epicurean responses see Warren
2002a, 129–49.
reappears at 1092a–b: Epicurus perversely wants to lead us to the state in
which brute animals are placed by nature; and it is prominent once more
at 1096c–d: the Epicureans covertly ‘turn the whole person into flesh’
(σαρκοποιεῖν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὅλον), fail to recognise the proper concen-
tration on and identification of oneself with one’s soul, and instead ‘think
it right to play swineherd to the soul with the pleasures of the body’
(ἀξιοῦσι τὴν ψυχὴν ταῖς τοῦ σώματος ἡδοναῖς κατασυβωτεῖν).32 Indeed,
Plutarch repeats a familiar criticism of the Epicureans: their view in fact
results in the absurd conclusion that non-rational animals are better
placed than humans for living a good life since humans have to be rid
of false beliefs to attain a carefree, ‘ataraxic’, view of the gods, death, and
other supposed sources of misfortune; in contrast, non-rational animals
are fortunate not even to be able to form any such false beliefs and
cannot therefore suffer any mental anxiety as a result (1092b–d).33 Once
again, the overall message is that the Epicureans fatally misunderstand
what humans essentially are. In particular, they fail to recognise the
superiority of the human rational soul and its pleasures and, as a result,
cannot provide an account of a proper human life, let alone a pleasant
human life. (That final point is made most clearly at 1096d–e.)
Plutarch and the pleasures of reason

Plutarch is working with a clear set of identifications: the Epicureans are like
the misguided fools who mistake the absence of pain for pleasure and, worse
still, are so fixated on the body, bodily pleasures, and other sensible objects of
pleasure that they are in danger of betraying their rational natures and
bestialising themselves. But there is an even stronger case to be made against
their philosophy. The Epicureans do not, it appears, dedicate themselves even
to the more usual cognitive delights of human existence, at least not those of
the more refined kind. They are famously distrustful of culture and paideia
and, whether or not this is a fair representation of their stance, in Plutarch’s
eyes, at least, it suggests that they fail even to enjoy the best pleasures to be had
by way of the senses: they turn away from music, poetry, and other literary
arts.
32
Also cf. θηριώδη at 1089c and 1094a.
33
For similar concerns in other writers and for a discussion of the proper Epicurean response to such
charges see Warren 2002a, 129–42, where I also suggest that Plutarch’s work Bruta ratione uti (or
Gryllus) may be related to this debate.
The argument progresses by elaborating in turn the various pleasures
which the Epicureans ignore. Clearly, they know nothing of the exquisite
pleasures of coming-to-know the perfect and eternal Forms. But they are
also guilty of failing to cultivate other, perhaps less refined, pleasures of the
better part of our souls. When Plutarch comes to offer his preferred
characterisation of the pleasures appropriate to a rational human soul, his
discussion implies that he is prepared to soften the restrictive account found
in Republic book 9. There it is quite clear that Socrates wants true and pure
pleasures, strictly understood, to be focussed only on those objects which
always are and are always unchanging. Most obviously, this is a reference to
the Forms – the objects of knowledge of the true philosopher-ruler – but
perhaps a case might also be made for pure pleasures of this kind being
generated by contemplation of mathematical objects of some sort. Plutarch,
however, describes a significantly more expansive notion, including among
his list of appropriate sources of pleasure not only mathematics and astron-
omy but also the study of literature, history, and the like (1092d–1095b).34
For Plutarch, we take pleasure in learning the truth even in the case of truths
related to contingent facts about things that might be otherwise (1093a–c).
Plutarch is in fact prepared to say that we take pleasure in hearing some
news even when that news relates something painful. And we certainly take
great pleasure in listening to Herodotus’ Histories or Homeric poetry
(1093b–c). All these possible pleasures, we are asked to agree, are rejected
by the Epicureans as part of a blanket rejection of cultural and intellectual
pursuits in favour of a concentration on the most basic physical needs.35
This expansion in the scope of pleasures assigned to the rational soul is
perhaps allowed by Plutarch’s particular understanding of the dual nature of
that aspect of human psychology. Plutarch is not terribly explicit about his
own conception of the different faculties of the soul, although we might
expect him to be indebted in general terms to the Platonic and Aristotelian
tradition.36 There are some important hints, however, here and there. In
this very work, for example, he gives a reasonably clear indication that he
sees the working of the rational soul as being turned to two separate but
related functions. At 1092e he describes two general types of pleasure which
a human ought properly to pursue, neither of which is grasped by the
34
This is noted by Albini 1993, 35–9.
35
At Quaest. Conv. 674a–b Plutarch also claims that the Epicureans are in a worse position than the
Cyrenaics when it comes to accounting for the pleasures of viewing the products of mimetic craft.
(Here Plutarch seems to be indebted to Aristotle’s view in Poet. 4, discussed above.) See Warren
2013b.
36
See Opsomer 2005, 180–3.
appetitive and bestial soul emphasised by the Epicureans. Pleasures from
anticipations of bodily delight are not only unstable and empty but also
vulgar and immodest. The pleasures which we ought to pursue instead are
described as pure, that is, neither preceded nor followed by pain, and
attributed to the rational soul.
ἃς δ’ ἄξιον καὶ δίκαιον εὐφροσύνας καὶ χαρὰς νομίζεσθαι, καθαραὶ μέν εἰσι
τοῦ ἐναντίου καὶ σφυγμὸν οὐδένα κεκραμένον οὐδὲ δηγμὸν οὐδὲ μετάνοιαν
ἔχουσιν, οἰκεῖον δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ ψυχικὸν ἀληθῶς καὶ γνήσιον καὶ οὐκ
ἐπείσακτον αὐτῶν τἀγαθόν ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἄλογον, ἀλλ’ εὐλογώτατον ἐκ τοῦ
θεωρητικοῦ καὶ φιλομαθοῦς ἢ πρακτικοῦ καὶ φιλοκάλου τῆς διανοίας
φυόμενον. ὧν ὅσας ἑκάτερον καὶ ἡλίκας ἡδονὰς ἀναδίδωσιν, οὐκ ἄν τις
ἀνύσειε διελθεῖν προθυμούμενος. (Non Posse 1092e)
But what properly deserve to be called ‘delights’ and ‘joys’ are pure of any
taint of the opposite, have no element of aching or stabbing pain, and bring
no regret; the good in them is proper to the soul and really ‘psychic’ and
genuine and not adventitious or irrational but rational in the truest sense
since it comes from the theoretical or learning-loving part of the mind or else
the action-guiding and beauty-loving part. The pleasures yielded by each of
these are so many and so great that with the best will in the world no one
could tell the whole story (trans. Einarson and De Lacy, with modifications).
Plutarch is correcting the Epicurean understanding of pleasure and does so
by offering the correct understanding of ‘delight’ (euphrosynē) and ‘joy’
(khara). Both of these terms were used by the Epicureans themselves,
although it remains controversial whether there is a clear and precise
distinction to be made between these two concepts in Epicurean hedon-
ism.37 However the Epicureans understood these notions and however
Plutarch understood the Epicureans’ view, Plutarch offers in place of the
Epicurean view a correct account in which these are pure (katharai) pleas-
ures that belong to the rational soul. The classification of these preferred
pleasures as ‘pure’ is familiar from both Plato’s and Aristotle’s discussions of
the best kinds of pleasures we rational humans can enjoy. Plutarch offers
37
They appear in the fragment of Epicurus’ work On Choices cited at DL 10.136: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀταραξία καὶ
ἀπονία καταστηματικαί εἰσιν ἡδοναί· ἡ δὲ χαρά καὶ ἡ εὐφροσύνη κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ βλέπονται.
There has been extensive discussion of this fragment since it promises to help in the interpretation of
Epicurean hedonism, in particular whether there was a distinction between ‘katastematic’ and
‘kinetic’ pleasure and, if there was, how this should be understood. But the interpretation, translation,
and even the text itself is the subject of considerable dispute. See, for more recent contributions to the
discussion: Purinton 1993, Wolfsdorf 2009 (and, for Prodicus’ distinctions between these and other
pleasure terms: Wolfsdorf 2011), Warren forthcoming a. Khara also appears in the fragment from
Epicurus’ On the Telos cited at Non Posse 1089d (discussed further below) and in the scholion to
Ep. Hdt. 66. Cf. DL 2.89, where it appears during a report of the differences between Cyrenaic and
Epicurean hedonism.
two reasons for the superiority of these pleasures. First, he specifies that
these are pleasures that are neither preceded nor followed by any pain;
second, they are the pleasures that belong to the best part of the soul.
The precise psychological picture which Plutarch has in mind is never-
theless unclear. There is some doubt whether the alternatives mentioned in
the passages – ‘the theoretical or learning-loving part of the mind or else the
action-guiding and beauty-loving part’ – correspond to two aspects (or even
parts) of the rational part of the soul – one theoretical and the other
practical – or alternatively to the rational and ‘spirited’ parts of the soul
understood more or less on the model of the tripartite soul of Plato’s
Republic. This is related to the wider question, of course, whether
Plutarch adopts a full-blown tripartite psychology along the lines of that
found in the Republic or is more inclined to work for the most part with a
simpler two-part division. That question cannot be settled definitively, in
part because the evidence to be found in Non Posse is not conclusive. In
favour of the view that at 1092e we are offered two complementary roles for
the rational soul, producing ‘delights’ and ‘joys’, is Plutarch’s preceding
comment that the good he is discussing is the good appropriate to the soul –
the truly ‘psychic’ good – and has no mixture of pain and the like, all of
which suggests that this is somehow still meant to capture the essence of the
pure rational pleasures which Socrates discusses in the Republic. In that case,
when Plutarch characterises these alternative aspects of ‘thinking’ (dianoia)
he intends them to be two faculties of the rational part of the soul or,
perhaps, the rational soul viewed as acting in two different spheres, one
theoretical and the other practical.38 This interpretation would also appear
to give a more satisfying overall coherence to his view, since the pleasures he
goes on to list at 1092f onwards would be difficult to assign to the spirited
part of the soul as described in the Republic. Instead they are, broadly
speaking, aesthetic and cultural pleasures which are concerned nevertheless
with particular stories, works, or occasions. They are therefore just the class
of items which, on the one hand it would be hard to assign to the theoretical
aspect of reason, if that is conceived as concerned exclusively with necessary
and eternal abstract objects and truths; but, on the other hand, they are
certainly related in some sense to a rational appreciation and a general love
38
Plutarch’s use of the term διάνοια elsewhere is not easy to pin down. It may be used simply as a
synonym for ψυχή but on other occasions has a more restricted reference to the rational or
‘hegemonic’ part of the soul (Virt. Mor. 441c, cf. 451b; De Fato 571d; De Soll. Anim. 960a, 960c,
963d, 969c, Quaest. Plat. 1001d, 1002a). Cf. Opsomer 2012.
of acquiring true beliefs and information, albeit about particular or
contingent facts.
Support for this view might also come from De Animae Procreatione in
Timaeo, which describes reason (logos) in terms which suggest that it is a
single faculty able to operate on both intelligible or universal and also
perceptible or particular objects (see 1024e–1025a and 1025d–e).
Consider this passage:
καὶ μὴν θεωρητικῆς γε τῆς ψυχῆς οὔσης ἅμα καὶ πρακτικῆς, καὶ θεωρούσης
μὲν τὰ καθόλου πραττούσης δὲ τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα, καὶ νοεῖν μὲν ἐκεῖνα ταῦτα δ’
αἰσθάνεσθαι δοκούσης, ὁ κοινὸς λόγος ἀεὶ περί τε ταὐτὸν ἐντυγχάνων τῷ
θατέρῳ καὶ ταὐτῷ περὶ θάτερον ἐπιχειρεῖ μὲν ὅροις καὶ διαιρέσεσι χωρίζειν
τὸ ἓν καὶ τὰ πολλὰ καὶ τὸ ἀμερὲς καὶ τὸ μεριστόν, οὐ δύναται δὲ καθαρῶς ἐν
οὐδετέρῳ γενέσθαι διὰ τὸ καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐναλλὰξ ἐμπεπλέχθαι καὶ
καταμεμῖχθαι δι’ ἀλλήλων. (De An. Procr. in Tim. 1025e)
Now, as the soul is at once contemplative and practical and contemplates the
universals but acts upon the particulars and apparently cognizes the former
but perceives the latter, the reason common to both (ὁ κοινὸς λόγος) as it is
continually coming upon difference in sameness and upon sameness in
difference, tries with definitions and divisions to separate the one and the
many, that is the indivisible and the divisible, but cannot arrive at either
exclusively, because the very principles have been alternately intertwined and
thoroughly intermixed with each other (trans. H. Cherniss).
This is clearly a Platonist attempt to make sense of the relationship between
theoretical understanding and practical reasoning based upon a metaphys-
ical account of the relationship between universals and particulars. The
details are more difficult to tease out, but what is important for present
purposes is that theoretical understanding and practical reasoning are most
emphatically understood to be two related uses of a single and shared faculty
of reason (and a similar account can be found at Virt. Mor. 443e, which
further identifies the virtue of the theoretical use of reason as wisdom,
sophia, and of the practical use of reason as prudence, phronēsis).39 It
would be reasonable, given this view, to think that there could be rational
pleasures associated with both the cognition of universals and the learning
39
There are also evident Aristotelian influences on this general view, and a strong Peripatetic influence
throughout Virt. Mor. (Compare, for example: NE 6.2 1139a5–15.) The passage at 443e is, admittedly,
a little odd since it appears to make part of theoretical wisdom a grasp of truths concerning not only
heavenly bodies but also, more surprisingly, the sea. In contrast, thoughts about what is good will
belong to practical wisdom only. Nevertheless, the general point is clear: Plutarch is not averse to
offering reason differing spheres of activity and tends to discriminate these by positing different kinds
of object upon which a single rational faculty operates.
or appreciation of particulars. Perhaps we might argue that by reference to
this more expansive notion of the remit of the reason, Plutarch can conceive
of a range of objects appropriate for the pleasures of reason that is broader
than we might have suspected solely from reading Plato’s Republic.
On the other hand, concerns about the pleasures appropriate to a sense of
self-worth, reputation, and the like, all of which might be associated with
the Republic’s spirited part of the soul, are also discussed in Non Posse.
Plutarch is evidently also concerned to show that Epicureanism fails prop-
erly to acknowledge the natural sense in which humans take pleasure in
fame and a good reputation and therefore to continue his gradual reduction
of the Epicureans’ pleasures to the most basic ones available to human
experience. Much of the discussion of 1098e–1100d, for example, is
designed to show not only that there are examples of men who have taken
proper pleasure in their noble achievements but that there is a general desire
for and enjoyment of such pleasures among humans. Indeed, Epicurus
himself is criticised for being inconsistent on this score: his own concern
for a particular reputation is what drove him to disown and then slander his
teachers but enjoy the reverence paid to him by his followers (1100a–c). In
the terms of Plato’s Republic, these would indeed appear to be the pleasures
of the spirited part of the soul (see, for example, 581a9–b5). However, there
is no clear evidence in Non Posse that Plutarch is committed to a strong
notion of psychic tripartition including the existence of a separate spirited
part of the soul. To be sure, when Plutarch concludes the work he offers a
summary of the various pleasures and goods which the Epicureans omit
from a human life. And there he tells us that Epicurus made ‘the love of
learning of the theoretical aspect of us and the love of honour of the action-
guiding aspect of us’ (τοῦ θεωρητικοῦ τὸ φιλομαθὲς καὶ τοῦ πρακτικοῦ τὸ
φιλότιμον) blind to their due pleasures (1107c). Nevertheless, my suspicion
is that, just as at 1092e, these two are both considered to be aspects of
dianoia, which is itself the rational part of the soul, rather than distinct soul
parts.40
In any case, it is important to note that the pleasures of the broad range of
intellectual and social pursuits canvassed by Plutarch in 1093a–c certainly
do not correspond, strictly speaking, to the exquisite cognitive pleasures of
the philosopher-ruler imagined by Socrates in the Republic. Whether they
are meant to be thought of as still, in a sense, pleasures of our rational
natures or are somehow linked also to a spirited part of our souls, Plutarch
can nevertheless use them as part of his a fortiori argument: the Epicureans
40
For example, contrast the distinction between the rational and non-rational soul at De Adul. 61d.
not only reject the best pleasures of the intellect; they even try to
recommend a life which omits the pleasures which the majority of educated
readers might take to be their most intellectual or stable objects of enjoy-
ment. Not only do the Epicureans, in that case, fail to recognise the most
pleasant life possible because they do not admit the pleasure of contempla-
tion of perfect eternal object; they also recommend that we jettison the best
pleasures that most of our lives currently contain.
There may even be another inconsistency in Epicurean theory since, as
Plutarch notes at 1095c, Epicurus claimed in his work Diaporiai that a sage
would be a ‘lover of spectacle’ (philotheōros) and enjoy more than anyone
else the sounds and sights of Dionysian performances.41 For a reader already
alert to Platonic echoes, this will surely recall another famous passage from
the Republic – the discussion with the ‘lovers of sights and sounds’ begin-
ning at Republic 475d – and further consolidate the Platonic image of
the empiricist Epicureans as falling far short of the correct standards of
knowledge, true pleasure, and the good life. And this – albeit passing –
reference is yet one more example of a motif we have seen emerging already:
the charge of inconsistency is Plutarch’s riposte to a hostile Epicurean
reaction to Plato’s Republic. There is some reason to think this part of
Republic book 5 was in Epicurus’ mind when rejecting the Platonic disso-
ciation between philosophers and lovers of spectacle.42 And, in any event, it
is not implausible that Plutarch should make this connection since this
passage in Republic book 5 has a number of close similarities with the
discussion with the patients in Republic book 9, which, as we have seen,
he most surely does have in mind. Structurally, both involve a twofold
discussion: Socrates and Glaucon agree independently on the basis of some
previously agreed premises – themselves involving reference to what we can
recognise as ‘Forms’ – what the true nature of pleasure and knowledge is;
they also undertake a dialectical discussion with an opponent attempting to
show the same conclusion but on the basis of commonly held, non-
proprietorial assumptions. Further, in both passages, the reader is alerted
to the mistake made by these opponents by the comment that they are ‘sick’
or somehow hold unhealthy opinions (584e7, cf. 476e2). Finally, it is just
the objects that are of prime interest to the lovers of sights-and-sounds
which are revealed in Republic book 9 as the sources of imitation or false
41
Cf. DL 10.120.
42
Cf. Asmis 1995, 18–21, who argues that this is part of Epicurus’ general reaction to Platonic concerns
about poetry. He and Plato agree that the content of poetry is often to be criticised. But he and Plato
differ sharply about the proper nature of the philosophy which ought to take the place of traditional
education. For more on the Epicureans’ attitude to the arts see Blank 2009.
pleasures – unstable objects enjoyed by the unstable and impermanent
body – while the objects of knowledge are the sources of true and genuine
pleasures of the soul. Whether or not Plato intended such a close link to be
drawn between these two sets of characters, it is clear that they are in various
ways analogous in the content and reasons for the false beliefs they uncover.
It is also not at all implausible for a reader of the Republic such as Plutarch to
reach for both passages in an attack on a school of empiricists and hedonists
such as the Epicureans.43
It certainly suits Plutarch’s anti-Epicurean polemical purposes to be able
to draw on Socrates’ characterisation – at various points of the Republic – of
the kinds of people who are overly impressed by and fixated on what they
can experience and enjoy through sense perception: the empiricist
Epicureans, who famously insisted that ‘all perceptions are true’, can hardly
announce that they are unconcerned with the perceptible world. But,
according to Socrates and Plutarch, an unfortunate consequence of this
concentration on the perceptible and physical world is that it prevents access
to what is truly and properly pleasant for humans. Epicureans therefore
cannot live a pleasant life since, in failing to recognise their true, rational
human nature, they fail to recognise what is properly pleasant. And since
they identify pleasure and the good, they cannot – even by their own
standards – live a good life.
Conclusions
Plutarch reasserts many of the concerns and commitments about pleasure
and human nature that Socrates elaborated in the Republic. He agrees that
there are proper human pleasures associated with the proper exercise of the
very best part of our nature: our rational souls. He appears, however,
tempted to include among those pleasures the enjoyment of a wider range
of intellectual activities than those of coming-to-know the Forms. He is no
hedonist, of course, and therefore strongly resists what he sees as the
dangerous Epicurean attempt to reduce human nature to mere animal
desire-satisfaction and allow no room for the more valuable activities of
learning, knowing, and contemplating. The disagreement between the
43
Another possible connection is Plutarch’s choice of wording at 1091f. He is expanding on the notion
that the Epicureans restrict pleasure to mere absence of pain and connects this with the idea that
Epicurean pleasure is somehow subhuman; they put joy into a tiny and closed pen where it is forced
to twist and turn (ἐν ᾧ στρέφεται καὶ κυλινδεῖται). Although this verb is not uncommon in Plutarch,
this is the only time he uses this form. Perhaps it is meant as an allusion to the nature of the ‘many
beautiful things’ at Plat. Rep. 479d4.
Conclusions 103
Platonists and Epicureans is therefore not just a disagreement over whether
pleasure is the telos. It is, perhaps more importantly, a disagreement over
some fundamental claims about human nature.
The place and role in our human lives of rational activities is a central
bone of contention in that more fundamental disagreement, and both sides,
in their approach to their opponents’ views, are guilty of exaggerating and
distorting the other’s position for polemical effect. The Epicureans’
approach to the role of reason in securing and maintaining the good and
pleasant life is certainly more nuanced than Plutarch will allow. And I shall
return to consider their account in more detail in Chapter 8 below.
chapter 5
Measuring future pleasures in Plato’s

Protagoras and Philebus
Towards the end of Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates and Protagoras discuss our
ability to choose between possible courses of action or possible objects of
pursuit by comparing respective levels of pleasantness and painfulness.
Socrates outlines a means by which someone can ensure that he makes
the right decision by having an accurate measure of the pleasantness and
painfulness of the various options available and then comparing them
appropriately. Socrates promises that this is a means by which we might
maximise our pleasures and minimise our pains through the use of our
rational capacities.
This is another way in which our ability to think is related to our ability
to experience pleasure and pain and, moreover, to our general preference for
pleasure over pain. Of course, in this case our ability to reason, measure, and
compare is first of all a means by which we can ensure that our lives overall
are as pleasant as possible and the pleasures involved might be pleasures of
any kind. Although they might include pleasures from learning, thinking,
and the like, they can also include pleasures of eating, drinking, competi-
tion, and so on. Some of this material will be relatively familiar but it is
worth our while to set out in some detail Socrates’ proposal and the various
assumptions on which it must depend since in doing so we have a clear
model against which we can compare other similar discussions of the
procedure of prudential reasoning and of anticipating future pleasures and
pains. Considering in detail this section of the Protagoras and the various
questions that Socrates’ proposals provoke will provide a helpful back-
ground to the discussion in each of the subsequent chapters.
First, the Protagoras suggests one way in which human reasoning and the
consideration of future experiences might be subject to misleading appear-
ances and mistaken anticipations of future experiences. Our opinions about
the pleasantness and painfulness of an object of pursuit might be false
104
because the objects appear to be more or less pleasant or painful than they
really are. Second, it shows how correct reasoning and evaluation of future
experiences can be a means of maximising the pleasure and minimising the
pain in a life taken as a whole. Similar recommendations for accurate and
reliable prudential reasoning also appear in Epicureanism. Third, the
Philebus builds on these two thoughts to consider the way in which such
planning and anticipation might also be a source of pleasure and how this
pleasure itself might also be subject to misleading appearances and evaluated
accordingly. According to Socrates in the Philebus, we anticipate pleasures
in order to consider and choose between courses of action, and our antici-
pation of future pleasure and our present evaluation of different possible
future pleasures might also be pleasant or painful. Therefore, the activity of
reason in the service of prudential planning can itself have important and
interesting affective aspects. What is more, those affective aspects can in
turn influence – or distort – our capacities for prudential planning and our
comparative evaluations of future pleasures and pains.
Finally, by considering the discussion in the Protagoras we begin to
consider how the manner in which an agent looks forwards and backwards
through his or her own life reveals important – and often morally signifi-
cant – things about the agent’s character: its consistency, predictability, and
stability. In Chapter 6 I argue that this connection between anticipation and
character is a central aspect of the account of the false pleasures of antici-
pation at Phileb. 40a. In Chapter 7 I show how Aristotle uses notions of
regret, and recollection and anticipation of pleasure as markers of a person’s
moral character. The Protagoras’ interest in prudential hedonic reasoning
and the importance of the character and consistency of the agent concerned
are also both echoed in the philosophy of the Hellenistic period; those
echoes are the topic of Chapter 8.
Weighing and measuring

There are many puzzling aspects of the argument in Plato’s Protagoras in
which Socrates tries to persuade the famous sophist that all the virtues are
somehow unified. Socrates attempts to persuade Protagoras of this view in a
roundabout fashion, part of which involves what has now come to be
known as a denial of akrasia (‘incontinence’ or ‘weakness of will’).
Socrates invites Protagoras to join him in objecting to a common view
that it is possible for someone, thinking that one course of action open to
him is better, nevertheless to choose an alternative course of action that is
thought worse. The view held by ‘the many’ ascribes this failure to the
106 Future pleasures in Plato’s Protagoras and Philebus
intervention of some kind of passion or to the enticement of pleasure.
Socrates focusses our attention on the idea of pleasure as the cause of this
phenomenon and proceeds, with Protagoras in support, to argue instead
that if there is any failing in such cases then it must in fact be a failure of
some kind of rational calculation and evaluation. And since it is a kind of
rational failure then it can be remedied with some appropriate rational
education. Here, Socrates proposes that there is in fact a ‘skill of
measurement’ – a tekhnē metrētikē – which, once acquired, will prevent
such errors and remove the possibility of the phenomenon that is com-
monly thought of as akrasia but which has now been revealed to be an
intellectual mistake. Socrates’ account makes significant use of a rational
power of correct estimation and comparison, to be contrasted with a simple
acceptance of ‘appearances’, and it is this rational procedure that promises
to result in the recommendation of choices that will lead to a better life
overall, where a better life is at least for the moment understood to be a life
that is more pleasant and less painful.1
Socrates offers two distinct analogies in his general description of the kind
of procedure that he envisages. The first analogy concerns the weighing of
pleasures against pleasures, pains against pains, and pleasures against pains.
The second analogy concerns the proper estimation of size, taking into
account problems of perspective caused by different distances from the
person carrying out the estimation. The weighing analogy addresses the
question of how to recommend one of a set of possible courses of action
both in terms of deciding whether, for a given course of action, the agent
will experience more pleasure than pain overall and, for pairs of courses of
action, which of the pair will produce more pleasure or which of the pair will
produce less pain.2 The measuring analogy, on the other hand, addresses the
question of how to assess the value of a given course of action and its
consequences accurately and without the distorting effects of, for example,
relative temporal proximity.3 It will be necessary for the agent first to
measure up the various options and then to weigh them against one
another. But Socrates begins at 356a5 by outlining the weighing procedure,
1
This brief summary skates over a number of important interpretative controversies. For an introduc-
tion to some of the important issues and recent scholarship see Russell 2005, 239–48, and Evans 2010.
2
Given a presumption of some form of psychological hedonism, the agent must choose the course of
action that appears more pleasant (hence the occurrence of words connoting obligation: prakteon
356b8–c1). Cf. Moss 2006, 506.
3
Richardson 1990, 32, emphasises how the measuring art by itself will provide accurate accounts of value
rather than choices between options: ‘The science of measurement in the Protagoras plays the fact
checker’s role of assuring a precise estimation of consequences, not the decision theorist’s role of
presenting a precise criterion of choice.’
perhaps because he can in this way familiarise us with the notion of the
commensurability of pleasures and pains that his model requires, before
moving on to the measuring procedure which will be the principal element
in his insistence on the power of reason over the potentially disruptive
power of mere appearances.
The principal aim of the art of measurement is to produce an accurate
account of something’s size or value which is not distorted by factors that
are irrelevant. The example offered of such an irrelevant factor is the
physical proximity of an object. This might give a misleading impression
of a given object’s size: distant objects appear smaller than they really are.
And this might lead someone to think mistakenly that a nearer but in fact
smaller object is larger than a more distant but in fact larger object.
Proper measurement will counteract this misleading appearance. This
phenomenon caused by physical proximity is then taken to be an analogue
for a similar phenomenon caused by temporal proximity in the case of the
estimation of the value of some potential object of pursuit: things further
in the future sometimes appear less valuable than they really are when
compared with things in the nearer future. But Socrates also talks as if
the measuring art itself involves a degree of comparison between different
objects, and this comparative aspect of the measuring seems to usurp the
principal point of the weighing analogy. So he talks of the art itself – the
‘salvation of life’ – showing whether something is larger than, smaller
than, or equal to something else (357a5–b3), whereas this comparative
conclusion must be the result of the measuring art being trained on
more than one object and then the results being subjected to a comparative
assessment. Of course, it is easy to see why this comparative procedure
might naturally be assimilated to the measurement. After all, the measure-
ment itself might be of a comparative kind, as it is when we measure a
quantity in terms of multiples of an agreed standard unit amount of that
quantity.4
At Prot. 356a8–c1 Socrates uses the metaphor of weighing to describe how
we make choices between different possible courses of action on the basis of
the pleasure or pain involved in each. The courses of action being weighed
4
It is certainly true that it is hard to think of a method that would provide some kind of quantitative
precision in measurement of the pleasure or pain of a given object. (What would the relevant quantity
be? Cf. Taylor, 1991, 197: ‘There can be no numerically specifiable unit of measurement of pleasures
and pains, since the ability to describe an object in quantitatively precise terms implies that the
description is inter-subjectively true.’) And it is therefore more plausible to think in terms of relative
assessments, perhaps nevertheless using some agreed reference example against which other pleasures
and pains may be compared. But for an example of such a system see Hall 1966–7.
against one another will each often include both pleasures and pains. The
ways in which pleasures and pains may vary are:
355d8–e1: larger/smaller and more/fewer (μείζω/σμικρότερα πλείω/
ἐλάττω)
356a3–5: larger/smaller, more/fewer, and more/less (μείζω/σμικρότερα,
πλείω/ἐλάττω, μᾶλλον/ἧττον)
The precise meaning of each pair of opposing variables and how each pair
relates to the others is not spelled out in full but it is not difficult to imagine
that we are faced with choices between pleasures and pains that vary
according to duration, frequency, intensity, and perhaps also extent (how
much of a person is pleased or pained). There is no reason to think that
Socrates here is pointing to the incommensurability of pleasures and pains,
particularly since the remainder of his theory seems to commit him to their
commensurability.5 There is no room here for pleasures and pains differing
in value according to their proximity or their certainty. These two –
proximity/remoteness and certainty/uncertainty – are related to one
another; generally speaking, the more remote a good the less certain an
agent can be of attaining it. And there have been versions of a hedonistic
calculus that include one or both of these variables in the criteria for
assessing the value of a pleasure or a pain.6 Socrates omits them both and
instead asserts a form of temporal neutrality. The temporal position of a
good or bad is irrelevant to its value.
5
Nussbaum 1986, 89–121, for example, takes Socrates to be assuming commensurability. Richardson
1990 argues that Socrates’ position does not assume commensurability (although it is compatible with
it) (25): ‘The disjunctions vary, and sometimes Socrates pairs a positive element from one disjunct with
the negative one of another. This disarray is slightly easier to understand on the hypothesis that he was
trying to allow for the complexity of incommensurably different types of pleasure than it would be on
the supposition that he had in mind a precise model of maximising homogeneous pleasures.’
Richardson then claims (21) that if two pleasures compared are indeed incommensurable, the
preference for one rather than another cannot be a case of akrasia ‘since there is no unique answer’
and therefore does not endanger Socrates’ thesis.
6
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), chapter IV: ‘Value
of a lot of pleasure or pain, how to be measured’, lists various characteristics used to assess the pleasure
experienced, considered ‘by itself’: intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, and propinquity or
remoteness (IV.II). (In the case of multiple subjects these four are supplemented by an additional
factor: extent.) On this account a more distant pleasure is less valuable than a less distant pleasure, and
a more certain pleasure is more valuable than a less certain pleasure. Sidgwick 1907, 124 n. 1 (cf. 381),
allows that intensity and duration are relevant factors for assessing pleasures but rejects Bentham’s
factor of ‘proximity’: ‘[P]roximity is a property which it is reasonable to disregard except in so far as it
diminishes uncertainty. For my feelings a year hence should be just as important to me as my feelings
next minute, if only I can make an equally sure forecast of them. Indeed this equal and impartial
concern for all parts of one’s conscious life is perhaps the most important element in the common
notion of the rational – as opposed to the merely impulsive – pursuit of pleasure.’
Having assessed the relevant pleasures and pains according to these
criteria the various possible courses of action are then evaluated compara-
tively. Socrates mentions three tests and gives a recommendation for each
based on the outcome.
Test 1. Weigh pleasures against pleasures (356b3–4).
Here, the right thing to do is to choose the option with the most pleasures.
Test 2. Weigh pains against pains (356b4–5).
Here, the right thing to do is to choose the option with the fewest pains.
Test 3. Weigh pleasures against pains (356b5–c1).
Here, the right thing to do is explained in two conditional claims: for a given
course of action (praxis), if pleasures outweigh pains then choose this course;
if pains outweigh pleasures then do not choose this course.
The question settled by Test 3 is different from the questions addressed in
Test 1 and Test 2. The first two Tests are concerned with ranking options,
all of which are apparently being considered as possible courses of action. In
Test 3, however, it is being decided whether a course of action should be
taken or not. Many courses of action will pass Test 3; it judges only whether
we would be better off doing a given action than not doing it.
Consider someone who is a maximising hedonist. He is trying to choose
the best course of action available to him. He first gathers up the pleasures
and pains for a particular action and weighs the pleasures against the pains.
(He submits a proposed course of action to Test 3.) Let us imagine that the
pleasures win out. That course of action is therefore given a preliminary
recommendation. He will perhaps also consider other courses of action and
retain all and only those for which their respective pleasures outweigh their
pains and for which he therefore has a similar preliminary recommendation.
But now what does he do? He needs to rank the options in order to choose
the one in which there is the greatest preponderance of pleasure over pain
since he is a maximiser. But the procedures in Test 1 and Test 2 will not
individually allow him to settle this question. Imagine that two courses of
action are being considered: A and B. Both A and B have both pleasures and
pains associated with them. For both A and B, moreover, it is the case that the
pleasures outweigh the pains (so both pass the Test 3). But how will the good-
maximiser choose between A and B? For example, course of action A may
have more pleasure associated with it than course of action B (A will beat B in
Test 1) but course of action A may also have more pains associated with it
than course of action B (A will lose to B in Test 2). The procedure will be
unable to adjudicate between such cases since Test 1 and Test 2 register only
the fact of one set of pleasures being greater than another or one set of pains
being greater than another.7 Similarly, we can imagine a range of options in
which the choice with the greatest net result of pleasure minus pain is neither
the choice with the most pleasure (since at least one other choice involves
more pleasure but also more pain) nor the choice with the least pain (since at
least one other choice involves less pain but also less pleasure).
This interesting omission comes about because the analogy of weighing
used throughout is one in which we use a pair of scales to determine which, if
either, quantity is the larger.8 The procedure will not tell us with any degree of
accuracy by how much the quantity in one pan is greater than that in the
other pan. True, if one outweighs the other by only a very small amount then
perhaps we would see its pan descend rather slowly, but for any significant
discrepancies between the two amounts the larger quantity will cause its side
of the scales to sink immediately. Furthermore, both pleasures and pains
are being considered, as it were, to have positive weight. This should be
contrasted with a view in which pleasures and pains are thought to be in some
sense opposed in the manner of positive and negative amounts of
some common quantity or as, respectively, credits and debits in some kind
of ledger. This is helpful for Socrates because it allows the procedure in Test 3:
pleasures can be weighed directly against pains such that a larger quantity of
pain will outweigh a smaller quantity of pleasure. But it prevents us from
considering the ‘net’ weight of a given course of action as being the combi-
nation of the positive value of pleasures and the negative value of pains.
Imagine again two courses of action available to a given agent which are
being evaluated in the manner outlined at Prot. 356a8–c1. Imagine also that
course A will produce eight units of pleasure while course B will produce six.
(So: A beats B in Test 1.) And imagine that course A will produce six units of
pain while B will produce five. (So: A loses to B in Test 2.) Nevertheless,
both course A and course B will pass Test 3 since in both there is more
pleasure than pain produced. The three tests outlined so far will not suffice
to show which alternative course of action ought to be chosen. In order to
generate the desired determinate action-guiding result, a new procedure is
7
Richardson 1990, 18, argues: ‘This passage suggests the possibility that each disjunct [i.e. larger and
smaller / more and fewer] might operate separately, according to its own “scale”. What would make
this necessary besides the difficulty of incorporating temporal nearness and remoteness, would be the
incommensurability of pleasures.’ Cf. Russell 2000, 325.
8
Cf. Rudebusch 1999, 89–91.
required. For example, we might imagine a fourth test in which the
pleasures of course A are combined with the pains of course B in one pan
of the scales and weighed against the pleasures of course B combined with
the pains of course A in the other pan. The winning course of action is the
one whose pleasures are in the lower pan.9 But Socrates makes no explicit
reference to any such additional test in the description here.
The procedure outlined at Prot. 356a8–c1, in that case, does not amount to
a full recipe for pleasure-maximisation. The three tests will, if followed
correctly, prevent someone from choosing to pursue a course of action that
produces more pain than pleasure overall. And they will, if followed correctly,
allow a person to rank as clearly as possible the available courses of action
either in terms of the respective amounts of pleasure involved or in terms of
the respective amounts of pain involved. But that is all. The three tests will
not allow an agent to classify the available courses of action in terms of their
overall net goodness, where net goodness is understood as a sum of pleasures
minus pains. In short, the tests will be able to prevent gross errors but will not
provide a reliable recipe for the overall maximisation of pleasure.
At this point Socrates changes the metaphor he uses from one of weigh-
ing pleasures and pains to one of measuring pleasures and pains. This will
help him to imagine assigning values to pleasures and pains that will allow
them to be ranked comparatively rather than merely tested to see which set
of pleasures or which set of pains is the greater.
Measurement, illusion, and prudentialism

Socrates stresses that the art of measurement he has in mind is a means of
correcting our estimation of future pleasures and pains. (Since he is con-
cerned with such evaluations as the basis for choices and actions, he is
unconcerned with our estimation of past pleasures and pains.) Here he
draws the analogy between our thinking of pleasures and pains and our
perception of sizes of items that are at different distances away. Things
further away may mistakenly be thought to be smaller than they really are
and often smaller than things that are closer but in fact smaller.10
9
Since if PleasureA + PainB > PleasureB + PainA, then PleasureA + PainB – PainA> PleasureB, and
PleasureA – PainA> PleasureB – PainB. Denyer 2008 notes the need for such a procedure in his
commentary ad 356b1.
10
Socrates makes an analogous claim about sounds (356c6–8) and also thicknesses and pluralities
(356c6–7). The last of these is a little puzzling. Presumably, the idea is that we underestimate the
number of a group of things that are far away. If this is true, it must be because some of the distant
things are just too far away to be seen at all or perhaps seen as distinct members of the collection. It
seems equally possible that sometimes things are too close to count accurately.
Socrates argues that rather than being ‘overcome by pleasure’, when
people act against their best interests and favour a present pleasure over a
longer-term goal, they are committing a cognitive error. This error is then
diagnosed as caused by the ‘bias towards the near’. Consider the diagram
below (after Parfit 1984, 159), which tracks the varying strength of an agent’s
desires for two goods over time. One good is greater but later than the other.
Assume that obtaining the lesser good precludes the agent from going on to
obtain the greater good. Also, assume that the two goods are both certainly
attainable.
For the majority of the time, the agent has a greater desire for the greater
than the lesser good (see Figure 1). This is a rational preference based on the
relative values of those goods. However, the fact that the lesser good is
obtainable earlier than the greater good affects this preference as time
progresses. As the object of desire approaches so the concern for that object
increases. This indicates the ‘bias towards the near’ described by Plato
(although it does not demonstrate that such a bias is irrational). There is a
point at which the two lines cross. This occurs at the moment when the
desire for the lesser good equals that for the greater good. When the two
lines diverge again, the preference changes. Now for the first time the lesser
good is preferred to the greater. This preference remains until such a time as
the earlier good is past and then the agent reverts to a desire for the greater
good which, since it is indeed for a greater good, eventually becomes greater
than the desire for the lesser good ever was. Since we stipulated that the two
goods are mutually exclusive, any agent who obtained the lesser good will
now regret doing so since this has prevented him from obtaining the greater
good which he now desires more.
Greater good
Lesser good
Desire
Time
Figure 1
Socrates argues that this change of preference is irrational. The only
proper criterion of choice is the greater versus the lesser good and the
relative temporal distance of the goods and bads in question is irrelevant.11
Moreover, if the agent is adversely affected by an irrational bias to the near
and acts on the new preference for the lesser good he will do himself harm
by preventing himself from going on to obtain the greater good at a later
time. Socrates argues that rather than such changes in preference being
caused by some sort of pathos, specifically ‘being overcome by pleasure’,
the preference of a closer but lesser good over a more remote but greater
good is produced by an error of calculation caused by a kind of illusion.12
Were the agent in possession of a true account of the relative values of the
relevant goods then it would be impossible to prefer the lesser over the
greater good.
The ‘power of appearance’ that misleads the agent and prevents him from
seeing the true relative values of the objects of choice might be described in
various ways. Most commonly the relevant factors are expressed as psycho-
logical biases and there are various different such biases:13
Bias towards the future (F-bias): a future good is overvalued in
comparison with an equal past good.
Bias towards the perceived (P-bias): a good that is perceived is overvalued
in comparison with an equal but
unperceived good.
Bias towards the near (N-bias): a good that is nearer (temporally or
spatially) is overvalued in comparison
with an equal but more remote good.
Since Socrates is considering only rankings between future goods, F-bias is
not directly relevant here. It is relevant, however, in discussions of more
general forms of temporal neutrality. Socrates does not distinguish between
P-bias and N-bias, perhaps because he accounts for temporal N-bias in
terms of a perceptual illusion. The two are nevertheless distinct: I might
conceive a greater desire for the cake I can see at the opposite end of the
room than for the similar cake hidden from view in the cupboard nearby.
11
Parfit 1984, 164: ‘A mere difference in when something happens is not a difference in its quality. The
fact that a pain is further in the future will not make it, when it comes, any less painful.’ Cf. Taylor
1991, 188: ‘Rational calculation of one’s own interests requires that one abstract oneself from one’s
present situation in space and time and give equal weight to one’s desires, feelings etc. at future times.’
12
Parfit 1984, 161.
13
For these distinctions and a detailed discussion of which if any can be justified see Persson 2005, 195–234.
These biases can be combined: it is possible to be biased towards goods in the near future (NF-bias).
Socrates proposes an art of measurement that will counteract these
various biases. A measurement of the values of the available goods will
provide a sound basis for choice. Having emphasised how the appearance of
relative value might be misleading, Socrates does not make clear, however,
just how things appear once an unbiased measurement has been obtained.
Most likely, the appearance will persist: I know that the old Cavendish
laboratory is taller than St Bene’t’s church but still the church appears to be
larger from where I sit looking out of my window. Reason and measurement
do not dispel the appearance but they can make the appearance powerless
(akuron, 356d8). They do this by revealing the truth (356d8–e2).14 Socrates
insists that this persisting appearance will not generate any problems that
might lead the agent back into choosing a lesser good over a greater good.
The knowledge provided by the measuring and weighing will win out and
will continue to win out. The agent no longer desires what merely appears
to be the greater because this appearance has been rendered impotent by the
knowledge that something else is in fact the greater good. Socrates accepts
that we will desire whatever we think provides the greater pleasure but adds
the claim that knowledge will trump appearance in persuading us which
pleasure is greater. In that case, desire will follow knowledge even if the
knowledge is inconsistent with mere appearance. Only in the absence of
knowledge will desire and choice follow mere appearance.15
Socrates’ recommended procedure requires the agent to be able
accurately to assess the size of different future pleasures, regardless of their
relative distances from the present. Leaving aside the worry that the future
in general may not be sufficiently predictable, it also faces the difficulty that
the agent’s own future preferences in particular may not be sufficiently
predictable. For, in order to assess correctly the future pleasures and pains
14
Note how Socrates insists that the soul will stick to the truth once it has been revealed. Cf. Rudebusch
1999, 87–8.
15
Moss 2006, 510, raises concerns over Socrates’ confident optimism: ‘Reasoning can make optical
illusions “lose their power” over a person’s judgment, but not over her vision: her eyes will see the
nearer object as larger even when she knows that it is not. If desires for pleasure are really analogous to
perception, then we should expect that reasoning can make pleasure-illusions lose their power over a
person’s judgment, but not over her desires for pleasure: she will still desire the nearer object even when
she knows that she should not.’ Compare Sidgwick’s similar lack of optimism (1907, 141). Indeed,
Sidgwick enlists Plato himself in support of his objections: ‘[our habitual comparison of pleasures and
pains] is liable to illusion, of which we can never measure the precise amount, while we are continually
forced to recognise its existence. This illusion was even urged by Plato as a ground for distrusting the
apparent affirmation of consciousness in respect of present pleasure. Plato thought that the apparent
intensity of the coarser bodily pleasures was illusory; because these states of consciousness, being
preceded by pain, were really only states of relief from pain, and so properly neutral, neither pleasant
nor painful – examples of what I have called the hedonistic zero – only appearing pleasant from contrast
with the preceding pain.’ (He probably has in mind the discussion beginning at Phileb. 43c.)
the agent must be able to predict what will and will not bring him pleasure
in the future, including even the remote future. It would be absurd to think
that an agent should now give equal weight to desires he once had but no
longer possesses. So it is likely that, in the future, at least some of the desires
he possesses now will in retrospect be viewed in a similar fashion. Just as his
past desires may be incompatible with his present desires, an agent’s future
desires might be wholly incompatible with his present desires. In that case
how can an agent consider future pleasures and pains and produce a max-
imising strategy?16 We know that our preferences will change over time but
we are not able with any confidence to predict just what our future
preferences will be. But without any guide to what one’s future preferences
will be, it is impossible to form any assessment of possible future pleasures
and pains to allow the comparison of different possible courses of action.17
Some attempts to deal with these difficulties involve the demarcation of
different stages of a life. We should be temporally neutral within each stage
but we need not be neutral between stages. For example, a person’s life can
be viewed as falling into a number of different ‘life stages’, for example:
childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age. Each of these stages has a set of
appropriate desires and aspirations and prudential reasoning should func-
tion in the way suggested by the notion of temporal irrelevance only within
each stage.18 However, the division into life stages may look arbitrary and is
always susceptible to further division.19 Also, the insulation between life
16
Cf. Parfit 1984, 149–58. There he canvasses various alternative models. Suppose I think that as I grow
older I become wiser. Then I should have good reasons for preferring desires in the further future to
those in the present or nearer future. Alternatively I might decide that as I age I lose touch with the
proper ideals which I held as a youth. Then as an old man I should have reasons for preferring my past
desires over my present and more recent desires. For another reaction to such worries see Williams
1976, 205–7, who discusses these questions against the background of Parfit’s own treatment of
personal identity. William concludes that (206): ‘If it is indeed true that this man will change in these
ways, it is only by understanding his present projects as the projects of one who will so change that he can
understand them even as his present projects . . .’ Empirical research suggests that most people are
unable to give proper weight to the fact that their preferences will change since, no matter what their
current age, people tend to think that they will change less in the next n years than they think they
have changed in the past n years. See: Quoidback, Gilbert, and Wilson 2013.
17
Nagel 1970, 39–40, argues that such problems are endemic in any system which makes it a necessary
condition of acting to further future interests that the agent should have a present desire to foster those
same future interests. Indeed, Nagel’s objections are against any analysis of prudential reasoning
which makes such thought processes dependent on a ‘prudential desire’. Cf. Cockburn 1997,
especially 21–34.
18
See Slote 1983. He is criticised by Vorobej 1987, 407–23.
19
At the limit this will collapse into a form of aprudentialism, which holds that it is rational to pursue
only present pleasure. For an outline of aprudentialism see Trebilcot 1974, who also tries to answer
some of Nagel’s worries about whether an aprudentialist can retain a conception of himself as a single,
persistent individual. Cf. Cockburn 1997, 192–202.
stages makes it less easy to see how they can be knitted together to form a
single and continuous life. Some psychological continuity must surely be
reintroduced between any adjacent temporal sections of a life, and as a result
the desired ‘insulation’ is once again breached.20
The salvation of life

Before we move on to the Philebus, we should pause to notice that in the
Protagoras Socrates more than once refers to this art – perhaps to the
combined exercise of both measuring the correct value of a given pleasure
or pain and weighing it against alternatives – as the ‘salvation of life’: sōtēria
tou biou (356d3, 356e2, 356e8–357a2). What does this mean? Consider two
possible roles that Socrates’ weighing and measuring might be held to play
in one’s life. On one view, the procedure is intended to be applied con-
stantly and in a thoroughgoing manner to all decisions; at each and every
moment of choice we should properly measure and then weigh up the
possible outcomes in terms of pleasure and pain. Call this the Measure
Every Choice (MEC) view of the Socratic tekhnē. In so far as the measuring
art here ought to be closely associated – if not simply identified – with virtue
itself, this is an argument in favour of MEC. We would expect a virtuous
agent to be behaving virtuously continuously and thoroughly.21
Alternatively, we might imagine that the skill is invoked only at certain
points of one’s life or for certain decisions. For the most part we are able to
make do without invoking the full procedure of measuring and weighing.
But on other occasions we will need to use it if we are not to make an error
and suffer some damage to our wellbeing as a consequence. Call this the
Measure Only Some Choices view (MSC). Think again of the analogy
Socrates draws with comparing sizes of objects located at different distances
away. Often, there is no need to expend any effort in deciding that the
church tower over in the next village, for example, is in fact taller than the
pencil I am holding up as I try to sketch it. Even though there is a sense in
which the pencil appears larger, I am never in any doubt about the true
comparative sizes of the two. But we can imagine harder cases than this. Is
the church tower in the next village taller than the church tower just along
20
See Brink 1992, 217–20.
21
Such a view invites its own concerns. The calculation, for example, is itself likely to be of some
hedonic cost in so far as it requires time and effort and, even if it is not itself a painful activity,
precludes the performance of some other potentially more pleasant activity. Indeed, perhaps the
procedure is sufficiently demanding that it will be better overall in hedonic terms sometimes not to
engage in it and instead to make a choice based on much less accurate consideration.
The salvation of life 117
the road here? I cannot tell for sure and I realise that the appearance might
not be a reliable guide. I need to do some measuring and comparison of
those measurements to come up with a sound answer. If the tekhnē plays a
role such as this, namely as a ‘saviour of life’ in testing circumstances or in
circumstances in which there is a prima facie difficulty, then we need not
imagine even the virtuous person always using the art for every choice that is
made. Rather, for the majority of the time there is no need to engage the art
since there is no hard choice to be made. Most choices are sufficiently
obvious so as not to mislead even the most unreflective person or, perhaps,
the agent is sufficiently experienced in similar situations to recognise the
right answer even when others might be misled.
As an illustration of this last point we might consider the Müller-Lyer
illusion that is sometimes discussed in relation to Socrates’ proposal. It is
sometimes noted that the two lines in the illusion still appear to the
perceiver to be of different lengths even once that perceiver has measured
them and knows that they are equal. But having seen and measured and
recognised the truth, that perceiver is able to recognise similar situations in
the future and, if presented with the same illusion again, will not need to
measure the two lines to avoid being misled by the appearance. MSC is
therefore both less and more demanding of the agent than MEC. It is less
demanding in that it allows that for many choices no measurement will be
needed at all. It is more demanding in that it requires the agent to have built
up a set of experiences which allow him or her to forgo the need for
measurement in all but the more difficult cases. MSC imagines a
two-stage procedure. A given choice will first be compared with past
experiences and only if these are not enough to determine what we need
to do to maximise the overall good will it be necessary to deploy the tekhnē.
So it envisages an important role for knowledgeable experience in addition
to the art since experience will determine many choices and the art will be
needed only for cases which experience cannot settle.
It is hard to determine whether MEC or MSC is the dominant view.22
Socrates and Protagoras are initially interested in ruling out cases of what we
might term significant error: cases which the many are tempted to call
‘being overcome by pleasure’ or ‘being overcome by anger’ and in which it
seems that the agent acts in such a way as significantly to compromise his
22
A quick glance at the use of the term sōtēria elsewhere does not settle the matter. In tragedy sōtēria is
often something wished for; it is simple survival in the face of a particular threat (e.g. Eur. Or. 778,
1173). A similar use can be found in Thucydides (e.g. Thuc. 1.65.3, 3.20.4). A broader meaning of
‘preservation (sc. of one’s current good state)’ can be found elsewhere, including elsewhere in Plato
(e.g. Laws 960d1–4).
overall wellbeing. The cases are not those in which an agent merely falls just
short of maximising pleasure. On the other hand, it seems that, once
acquired, this art of measurement could be applied as and when the agent
thinks fit and, as Socrates comments, if our wellbeing did depend on
counting correctly then this art would indeed determine the goodness of
our lives (357a5–b3).
Commentators have wondered whether the measuring skill is suggested
to Protagoras in part because it allows Socrates cheekily to allude to the
sophist’s most famous pronouncement that ‘man is the measure’.23 But
Socrates’ use of the term coupled with the description of its being the
‘salvation of life’ is also an allusion to another Protagorean idea. As part of
his great speech earlier in the dialogue, Protagoras told a story of how
Epimetheus set about arranging a division of powers between the various
new species of living creatures.
1. 320e3: To some animals he gave claws or horns and to others he gave
some other means for their sōtēria.
2. 321b6: Those species that were preyed upon by others he made more
numerous for the sōtēria of the species.
And mankind too received some assistance. Prometheus saw that they were
struggling to survive and stole gifts for them from Hephaestus and Athene.
3. 321c7ff.: Seeing that they had been left without any other means of
sōtēria, Prometheus gave to mankind fire and technical wisdom (entekh-
nos sophia). This is later referred to as ‘wisdom concerning life’ (peri ton
bion sophia 321d4) and distinguished from the political skill which Zeus
grants to humans, again because otherwise humans seemed doomed to
extinction (322c1–3).
Here, sōtēria seems also to mean survival or preservation and sometimes it
means the survival of the species rather than the survival of any given
member of the species. Some animals have claws in order not to starve;
other animals are numerous so that the species does not become extinct
through predation. Humans were able to survive despite their lack of
physical defences against predation and the elements thanks to intellectual
abilities and skills. And yet, even with these gifts human life was precarious.
Humans were able to cultivate crops but were as yet ill-equipped to ward off
wild beasts (322b1–6). Seeing the danger that humans might still be wiped
out, Zeus sent Hermes to distribute to all humans a form of political
skill – part of which is the skill to make war, which is necessary to ward
off wild animals (322b5) – and the means to organise themselves into cities,
23
E.g. Denyer 2008, 192; cf. Rowett 2013.
form friendships, and the like. It is possible, in that case, that a full account
of the sōtēria tou biou as illustrated in this mythological narrative would
include not only the skills brought by Prometheus that allow humans to
cultivate the land, make clothes, and so on, but also the political skills
granted by Zeus that allow humans to form societies and cities.24
The possession of sharp teeth does not allow each and every lion to live
the best leonine life possible. Rather, the teeth prevent the lion from
starving to death or, perhaps, the teeth that lions have ensure that lions as
a species do not become extinct. A similar case might be made for the sōtēria
tou biou which humans receive as the gifts of first Prometheus and then
Zeus. One might say that for humans these technical abilities and political
associations are necessary means for the preservation of a life or the preser-
vation of the species and are therefore necessary conditions for a good life.
But they are evidently not sufficient conditions for any given human living a
good life and perhaps not even sufficient conditions for the survival of any
particular human individual.
If that is the sense of sōtēria we should carry across to our reading of
Socrates’ weighing and measuring art then we should conclude that the
measuring art is intended to prevent us from falling prey to our own
ignorant or unthinking appraisal of goods; without the measuring art we
could not possibly manage to live or perhaps would live only in a precarious
fashion. The presentation of the role of the measuring art does indeed make
it a means for avoiding a certain kind of peril, namely the errors which a
reliance on the mere power of appearance might generate. Socrates, in that
case, is cleverly turning the possibility of akrasia into a threat to our lives as
pressing as the threat of hunger, cold, thirst, and the attentions of naturally
much better-armed creatures.
Philebus 41e–42c
At Phil. 41e–42c Socrates returns to something like the problem addressed
in the Protagoras. In both dialogues Socrates is interested in exploring ways
in which people might be mistaken in the evaluation of future pleasures and
pains. However, in the Philebus but not in the Protagoras Socrates wishes to
classify the pleasure experienced by someone who is committing the error in
question as a false pleasure. It is possible, Socrates contends, to be misled by
appearances and experience a false pleasure in the act itself of making
the comparative evaluation. This is a significant addition to the overall
24
See also Nussbaum 1986, 100–6.
account of what goes on in such cases of deliberation: the Protagoras had
nothing to say about the affective aspect of the comparative procedure itself
but concentrated solely on the pleasures and pains of the various possible
courses of action being compared. The Philebus, in contrast, is interested
in the pleasures that are involved in the comparative evaluation and
brings to bear a much more developed account of the psychology of desire
and deliberation to shed light on the affective aspect of practical
deliberation.25
The Protagoras makes no use of a distinction between true and false
pleasures, instead treating all pleasures as classifiable relative to one another
solely in terms of size or intensity. In the Philebus Socrates connects the
difficulties involved in these comparative evaluations between pleasures and
pains with the fact that pleasure and pain are both classified as belonging to
‘the unlimited’ (to apeiron): one of the four categories of things introduced
earlier in the dialogue.26 Just what that means is itself a disputed matter. For
now, it suffices to note that this means that both pleasure and pain ‘admit of
the more and the less’ (41b8–9) and therefore there can be relative compar-
isons between pleasures and between pains. The fact that pleasure and pain
vary in this way is just what generates the problems of choosing between
pleasures and between pains because, for example, one of a pair of pleasures
might be more pleasant than the other (41e2–6). This prompts Socrates to
reach once again for an analogy between evaluating the relative intensity of
pleasures and evaluating the relative size of visual objects, and this in turn
invites an analogy between relative distance in the case of the visual objects
and relative temporal distance in the case of pleasures. Socrates explains:
ΣΩ . τί οὖν; ἐν μὲν ὄψει τὸ πόρρωθεν καὶ ἐγγύθεν ὁρᾶν τὰ μεγέθη τὴν ἀλήθειαν
ἀφανίζει καὶ ψευδῆ ποιεῖ δοξάζειν, ἐν λύπαις δ’ ἄρα καὶ ἡδοναῖς οὐκ ἔστι
ταὐτὸν τοῦτο γιγνόμενον;
ΠΡΩ . πολὺ μὲν οὖν μᾶλλον, ὦ Σώκρατες.
ΣΩ . ἐναντίον δὴ τὸ νῦν τῷ σμικρὸν ἔμπροσθε γέγονεν.
ΠΡΩ . τὸ ποῖον λέγεις;
ΣΩ . τότε μὲν αἱ δόξαι ψευδεῖς τε καὶ ἀληθεῖς αὗται γιγνόμεναι τὰς λύπας τε καὶ
ἡδονὰς ἅμα τοῦ παρ’ αὑταῖς παθήματος ἀνεπίμπλασαν.
ΠΡΩ . ἀληθέστατα.
25
Gosling and Taylor 1982, 444–8, argue that Plato fails to produce here a category of false pleasure
distinct from the preceding false pleasures of anticipation. (For my discussion of that first category of
false pleasure, see Chapter 6.) It seems to me that close attention to the experiences involved in
comparative evaluation itself rather than to the simple fact that the pleasures and pains are in the
future does provide a distinct category of false pleasures in this case.
26
The account of ‘the unlimited’ is at 24a1–25a4. Pleasure and pain are assigned to this class at
27e2–28a4. Cf. Cooper 1999a.
ΣΩ . νῦν δέ γε αὐταὶ διὰ τὸ πόρρωθέν τε καὶ ἐγγύθεν ἑκάστοτε μεταβαλλόμεναι

θεωρεῖσθαι, καὶ ἅμα τιθέμεναι παρ’ ἀλλήλας, αἱ μὲν ἡδοναὶ παρὰ τὸ λυπηρὸν
μείζους φαίνονται καὶ σφοδρότεραι, λῦπαι δ’ αὖ διὰ τὸ παρ’ ἡδονὰς
τοὐναντίον ἐκείναις.
ΠΡΩ . ἀνάγκη γίγνεσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτα διὰ ταῦτα.
ΣΩ . οὐκοῦν ὅσῳ μείζους τῶν οὐσῶν ἑκάτεραι καὶ ἐλάττους φαίνονται, τοῦτο
ἀποτεμόμενος ἑκατέρων τὸ φαινόμενον ἀλλ’ οὐκ ὄν, οὔτε αὐτὸ ὀρθῶς
φαινόμενον ἐρεῖς, οὐδ’ αὖ ποτε τὸ ἐπὶ τούτῳ μέρος τῆς ἡδονῆς καὶ λύπης
γιγνόμενον ὀρθόν τε καὶ ἀληθὲς τολμήσεις λέγειν.
ΠΡΩ . οὐ γὰρ οὖν. (Phileb. 41e9–42c4)
soc.: Well, then. Is it the case that in viewing, seeing magnitudes from near and
far off clouds the truth and makes us make false judgements, but in pleasures
and pains the same phenomenon does not arise?
prot.: No, Socrates, it happens more so.
soc.: So that’s the opposite result to what we said just now.
prot.: What do you mean?
soc.: Then it was true and false opinions that filled pleasures and pains
straightaway with their own state.
prot.: Very true.
soc.: But now, because of the fact of being seen from nearby and then far away in
turn and, at that same time, being set against one another, the pleasures
appear greater and more intense when compared with pain, while the pains
seem the opposite when compared with pleasures.
prot.: Yes, it must be that that sort of thing happens for those reasons.
soc.: So, to the extent that each of these appears greater and smaller than they
really are, separating off this amount from each which is merely apparent and
not real, you will not say that this appearance is correct, nor will you ever dare
to say that this portion of the pleasure and pain that arises is correct and true.
prot.: Not at all.
The differences between this passage and the Protagoras are best shown by
carefully analysing the complex situation which Socrates outlines at Phileb.
42b2–6. First of all, we are asked to imagine comparisons between pleasures
and pains. As a result of these comparisons, pains tend to look more moderate
than they really are in comparison with pleasures and pleasures tend to look
larger and more intense than they really are in comparison with pains (42b4–6).
It is not made clear why the comparison should be between pleasures and pains
and not, as in the Protagoras, between pleasures near at hand and those far away
or between pains near at hand and those far away. Most likely, Socrates is
interested in cases in which an agent is faced with a choice which involves a
pair of pleasures and pains: perhaps a near-at-hand pleasure together with a
consequent pain or a near-at-hand pain together with a consequent
pleasure. The second point to remember is that Socrates is here interested not
in how judgements might affect experiences of pleasure and pain but instead
in how experiences of pleasure and pain are affected by differences of
perspective and may lead to distorted judgements about their relative values.
The most important difference between the interests of the two dialogues
is that the Protagoras is concerned with the correct evaluation of alternative
courses of action in terms of the pleasure and pain involved and with
offering a means to ensure that such evaluations are correct and free from
the distorting effects of temporal perspective. The Philebus, by contrast, is
interested in the correct experience of pleasure and pain and in discrim-
inating between cases in which the pleasure itself is ‘true’ and those in which
it is ‘false’. Of course, there is a complicated relationship involved between
the pleasure itself and some form of judgement and Socrates wishes to insist,
notoriously, that we should say that the pleasure itself is true or false and not
merely that some underlying judgement is true or false; the best accounts of
his view insist that the pleasure itself has some kind of propositional content
so it can have a truth value. But, however we understand the notion of ‘true’
and ‘false’ pleasures, we must remember that Socrates and Protarchus are
here concerned with the possible distorting effects of relative temporal
proximity because they are interested in deciding which pleasures might
be candidates for inclusion in the mixture that will constitute the best
human life. Socrates and Protarchus have already discarded the notion
that the maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation of pain is the goal
of all our choices.
In the Protagoras Socrates is interested in offering a means to gauge
correctly which of two alternative courses of action will, overall, produce
the greatest pleasure by avoiding the potentially distorting effects of the
available pleasure of one course of action being closer in time than the other.
What matters is that the agent is capable of determining accurately which of
the alternatives is the better choice overall, since Socrates insists that the
agent will always choose the option that he thinks is better overall, where
‘better overall’ is understood in terms of maximising pleasure and minimis-
ing pain. In the Philebus, by contrast, the problem is not how to determine
which alternative is better and therefore to be pursued. Rather, Socrates is
more interested in how perspectival distortions may adversely affect the
present experience of pleasure or pain and, in turn, an agent’s judgements
about his current and likely future affective states. His attention is not
directed towards mistaken evaluations of pleasures and pains because such
mistakes lead to incorrect hedonic prudential choices and actions. Instead,
he is interested in the affective aspect of the mistaken evaluations as such.
In the Protagoras ‘the many’ think that people sometimes make bad
choices because of being overcome by pleasure, or anger, or love, or some
such: our feelings and emotions can distort our decisions and choices.
Socrates offers the alternative diagnosis that people make such choices
because of a rational misevaluation of the relative values of the relevant
available objects. At Phileb. 42a5–9, however, Socrates introduces this
second kind of false pleasure by drawing a contrast with the first kind: the
false pleasures of anticipation. In the case of false pleasures of anticipation,
he says, true and false opinions filled up the pains and pleasures with their
own condition. In the second case, by contrast, the false pleasure or pain
somehow infects an opinion with its own condition.27 The cause of the
error is a certain kind of pleasure or pain which is then held responsible for a
mistaken belief. In both the Philebus and the Protagoras, then, the ultimate
cause of any error is an appearance of some sort. But in the Philebus the
appearance causes a false pleasure, let us say, which is then responsible for a
false belief and, in turn, this is responsible for an action.28
Lastly, it is also worth noting that just a few pages earlier in the Philebus
Socrates has already been interested in the difficulties of making correct
judgements based on viewing things from a distance. At 38c Socrates
is trying to persuade Protarchus that just as there can be true and false
judgements, there can also be true and false pleasures. Protarchus is under-
standably resistant to the idea and thinks instead that we should say that the
judgement that gives rise to a pleasure is true or false. Socrates has insisted
that the structure of taking pleasure in something is analogous to that of
making a judgement about something; in both there is the act of taking
pleasure or judging, there is the object of the pleasure or judgement, and
there is the content of the pleasure or judgement: ‘what is enjoyed or
judged’ (37a–38b).29 Next Socrates asks us to think of judgements and
pleasures as a kind of internal statement in the soul. He imagines someone
looking at a figure in the distance and trying to work out what the figure is.
The verb used is krinein (38c6): the person is trying to decide what the figure
is or perhaps distinguish whether the figure is a human or a statue. He asks
himself: ‘Is that a human or a statue?’ and must make a choice – a krisis –
between the alternatives. If in company, the person might announce out
27
Compare the interpretations of Delcomminette 2006, 406–7, and Gosling and Taylor 1982,
447–8.
28
The account of this kind of false pleasure in the Philebus is therefore close to the interpretation of
Aristotle’s account of akratic action defended in Moss 2012a, 100–33, which emphasises the role
played by illusory appearances of some object as pleasant and good.
29
See Delcomminette 2003.
loud ‘That’s a human.’ If alone, the person might say it silently to himself.
In either case the person is making a judgement.
At 41e a similar situation is imagined: the problem at hand is again one of
making a choice or discrimination (krisis, 41e2, 41e8). We should think of
the situation as one in which the internal dialogue is provoked by a
question: ‘Is this pleasure greater or less than this pain?’ or ‘Is this pleasure
greater or less than that pleasure?’ (This is the counterpart of the question:
‘Is that figure in the distance a human or a statue?’ but the question is
comparative because we are dealing with pleasures and pains and they
belong to the class of the apeiron.)30 A response to this question is given
in the form of the internal statement which is the judgement the agent
makes. Just as in the case of the identification of the figure, things are much
harder if the object of the choice is further away. And, what is more, it is
harder still to answer comparative questions about whether A or B is larger
when A and B are at different distances away.
In his diagnosis of the problem that gives rise to this new class of false
pleasures, Socrates describes two contributing factors (42b2–6). The first
concerns the alternate viewing of pleasures and pains first at a distance and
then close up. The second concerns the simultaneous viewing of pleasures
and pains in comparison with one another. Somehow the combination of
these two factors leads to the acceptance of a false appearance of a particular
pleasure or pain as being greater and more intense or smaller and less intense
than it really is. The thought is rather compressed and, unlike in the case of
false pleasures of anticipation, Socrates does not give an example of a
situation of the kind envisaged.
As an example of what Socrates might have in mind at Phileb. 41b,
consider the following situation. John is about to leave a party when
John’s friend tries to persuade him to stay for another drink. John has to
decide whether to stay or to head home now and he begins to wonder what
to do. He thinks about the pleasure of another drink and the pain of a sore
head. As Socrates has insisted, the anticipation of a pleasure or a pain can
itself be pleasant or painful and John will experience such pleasures and
pains as he considers his options, thinking now of the pleasure and now of
the pain. His attention shifts from one to the other: from the pleasure of
drinking now to the expected pain tomorrow and back again. The
30
Cf. Delcomminette 2006, 400–1. Delcomminette goes on (401–12) to argue that in the remainder of
the passage it is the nature of the pleasures and pains as apeira that causes the difficulties of misleading
appearances and not their relative temporal distance from the present. It seems to me that both factors
are significant.
anticipated pleasure of the drink is closer and the anticipated later pain of a
sore head is more remote. Perhaps John is still thirsty and this desire also
contributes to the way in which he pictures the alternative courses of action.
We can see in this example what Socrates means by pleasures and pains
‘being seen first from nearby and then far away in turn’: John thinks about the
pleasure of the drink (nearby) and the pain of the next morning (further
away) and turns his attention from one to the other. But he is also thinking of
two things side by side, as it were, comparing side by side the pleasure of a
drink and the pain of a sore head. John also experiences pleasure and pain in
anticipating the future pleasure and pain. The result of this complicated series
of comparative assessments of the two is that John ‘over-enjoys’ the prospect
of another drink: he takes greater pleasure in it than it genuinely warrants.
Perhaps he also is ‘under-pained’ by the prospect of the sore head tomorrow.31
We can explain why John over-enjoys the anticipated pleasure: he takes
too great a pleasure in anticipating the nearby drink just because it is nearer
at hand and the associated pain is further away. Perhaps this exaggerated
pleasure then leads him to form the false belief that it would, all things
considered, be better to stay. The extent to which the appearance is greater
than the reality is the extent to which the pleasure is a false pleasure. As we
should expect, given the detailed psychological picture that has been
assembled in the dialogue up to this point, the situation involves a very
close connection between John’s experiences of pleasure and pain and
John’s beliefs about the relevant pleasures and pains he is experiencing or
expects to experience. In John’s case, the contrast and comparison between
the near-at-hand pleasure and the more remote pain affects the present
pleasure itself. The appearance of the nearer pleasure being more intense
than it really is ensures that John takes more pleasure in considering it than
it really merits and also forms a false belief about its value as a result.
Socrates’ analysis could remain neutral about the relative effects of
pleasure and pain in such situations. We can imagine cases in which some-
one is over-pained by anticipating a nearer over a more remote pain such
that perhaps we would say that a false pain is being experienced. (Someone
might mistakenly be so pained by the thought of a dental procedure that he
31
This example requires some extrapolation from what we have in the text. In particular, it is not stated
explicitly that the pleasure and pain being considered in these cases are to be linked as they are in
John’s case where the future pain is taken to be caused by the nearer pleasure. Nevertheless, this
appears to be a reasonable addition and will make best sense of what Socrates has to say. Compare
Frede 1992b, 447: on Esau: ‘Driven by hunger . . . Esau was induced to overrate the worthwhileness of
filling himself with a dish of lentils to the point where he thought the pleasure was worth the price of
his primogeniture, that is, the future pain of its loss.’ Also see Wolfsdorf 2013a, 84–7.
forms the false belief that a lesser pain awaits from neglecting one’s dental
health.) But Socrates claims that in a situation of this sort pleasures, when
set alongside pains, tend to appear greater and more intense than they are and
pains, when set beside pleasures, tend to appear ‘the opposite’ (42b4–6). This
might be taken to mean that nearer pains tend to seem less intense than they
are when set beside later pleasures. But this is not very plausible. More likely,
by ‘the opposite’ Socrates means that pains appear more intense than they are,
imagining that a more intense pain is the opposite of a more intense
pleasure.32 Perhaps we might agree that, carried away by the moment and
the pleasures at hand, we enjoy the current experience more than it really
warrants. But the same might be said for pains. We sometimes experience the
closer pain more intensely than it really warrants just because it is nearer at
hand. We sometimes fail to see accurately the later pleasure that will come
from this present pain and experience the nearer pain more intensely in
comparison. At the limiting case, we experience present pain more intensely
just because it is present; it is what we are feeling now.33
Why the bias to the near? To secure assent to the existence of false
pleasures, Socrates needs to claim only that perspectival distortions can
adversely affect our evaluations, not that they affect them in a particular
way. For example, it seems that I might well feel less pain than I otherwise
would at some present or near-at-hand distress if I am bearing in mind some
later pleasure that will be a consequence of the present or near-at-hand
distress. If I bear in mind, as I struggle through sleeting rain on the journey
home that I am undergoing my present discomfort in order to get home and
dry off by the fire with a nice cup of tea, then the present discomfort may
itself not feel as bad as it warrants. Present physical discomfort might be
lessened if I have in mind throughout some later pleasure or relief that it will
bring about. In these cases, therefore, either the present pleasure is
overvalued or the present pain is undervalued, just as Socrates maintains.
The relevant bias in these cases is not a bias to the nearer over the further
future, but a bias towards the pleasant – whether in the nearer or further
future – over the painful.
32
This was pointed out to me by Mehmet Erginel. He suggests parallel passages at Rep. 586c1–2, 584a7–
10, and 584e8–5a5.
33
Cf. Gosling 1975, 219–20. Damascius comments at In Phileb. §187: ‘Just as in sense perception the
same things are seen larger when near and smaller when far away, so it is also with things pleasant and
painful: what is present always appears greater than what is absent: pain greater than pain, pleasure
than pleasure, pleasure than pain, and pain than pleasure’ (trans. Westerink) (ὅτι ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν
αἰσθητῶν τὰ μὲν ἐγγύθεν ὁρᾶται μείζω, τὰ δὲ πόρρωθεν ἐλάττω, τὰ αὐτὰ ὄντα, οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν
ἡδέων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λυπηρῶν· τὸ γὰρ παρὸν ἀεὶ μεῖζον εἶναι δοκεῖ τοῦ ἀπόντος, καὶ <λυπηρὸν>
λυπηροῦ καὶ ἡδὺ ἡδέος καὶ ἡδὺ λυπηροῦ καὶ λυπηρὸν ἡδέος).
Conclusions 127
Elsewhere, Socrates considers cases in which present pain makes some-
one overvalue the past or future mere absence of pain, sometimes to the
extent that the absence of pain is thought to be the ideal state. One such case
is that of the sick people at Rep. 583c–585a who, because of their current
painful illness, are led to argue that there is no intermediate state between
pleasure and pain: the absence of pain – their prior healthy state – now
appears to be the greatest pleasure possible. This is an interesting case
because the patients appear now to have a distorted and false evaluation
of a prior state because of a present pain, although they are also no doubt
looking ahead to a longed-for return to health.34
There is no particular reason why Socrates could not have considered a
case in which a pleasure is false because it is undervalued as a result of a
comparison with a later pain. Perhaps I fail to enjoy the last day of my
summer holiday as much as is genuinely warranted because I am also
thinking about my painful first day back at work.35 This is a simple omission
that could be easily remedied. But it does point to two interesting character-
istics common in Plato’s discussions of pleasures and pains. First, there is
not much interest in cases in which something is enjoyed less than it should
be. There seems to be a background assumption that we humans are prone
to overestimating pleasures much more than we are to underestimating
them. True, perhaps we tend not to think pleasurable at all some things that
are in fact extremely pleasant. For example, people who are not philosophers
simply cannot see the pleasures involved in the rational part of the soul
grasping its proper intelligible objects. But there is relatively little interest in
cases in which an agent takes pleasure in something, but to a lesser degree
than it truly deserves. Second, there is an overwhelming concentration on
pleasures rather than pains. There is no discussion in the Philebus of false
pains, nor whether we should prefer our pains to be true or false.
Conclusions
Both the Protagoras and the Philebus are interested in the ways in which our
human ability to think ahead and to consider our future experiences of
34
For my account of this argument see Warren 2011b; cf. Wolfsdorf 2013b, esp. 111–19. Compare Phileb.
43c13–44a11, where Socrates considers the view that the absence of pain is itself a pleasure.
35
And consider the possibility that a pleasure is false because it is undervalued as a result of a comparison
with a later pleasure: I fail to enjoy my delicious starter as much as is genuinely warranted because I am
thinking about the even more delicious main course. Compare also the Cyrenaics’ practice of
praemeditatio mali, discussed in Chapter 8 below. There, the idea is that focussing one’s attention
on a future pain will help to diminish its harm when it comes.
pleasure and pain may lead us into errors of various kinds. And they also
note how this same ability can be harnessed and corrected to ensure that we
make the best choices and live overall the best lives possible. They agree that
considering future experiences is an activity prone to being misled by
appearances and they explore the nature of the illusion both in terms of
the adoption of a false belief that a worse course of action is preferable to a
better course of action and also in terms of the experience of a false pleasure
in the overenjoyment of a chosen course of action.
In both cases the advice offered for avoiding these errors is the culti-
vation of a clear and reliable standard of evaluation that is not distorted by
misleading appearances. A good agent will take an appropriate view of the
whole of a life – or at least will do the best to take a view of as much of a life
as is possible – and try to make sure that it is as good as possible without
being unduly swayed by what goods and bads or pleasures and pains
happen to be nearer at hand. This ideal stance makes use of the
same human capacities for anticipation and evaluation that can easily
otherwise be misled; the same capacity for anticipation that is prone to
illusion and error can, if properly directed, either – according to the
Protagoras – maximise the pleasure in the whole of a life or – according
to the Philebus – avoid the experience of this kind of false pleasure. Ideally,
the agent will not regret any choices and will retain a consistent evaluation
of the various pleasures and pains he experiences throughout his life.
chapter 6
Anticipation, character, and piety

in Plato’s Philebus
In Chapter 2 I suggested that we can use insights from the discussion of

certain kinds of pleasures and pains in Plato’s Philebus to assist in resolving
a puzzle about the pleasures and pains of the philosophical life as it is
described in the Republic. And in Chapter 5 I suggested that the Philebus also
contains an elaboration of the pleasures and pains involved in the compa-
rative assessment of alternative courses of action and builds on the idea of
misleading appearances explored in the Protagoras. Here I turn to consider
yet another aspect of the Philebus. It famously contains a discussion of what
we can call ‘the pleasures of anticipation’. These are used by Socrates in his
first example in support of the controversial thesis that there are false
pleasures. The pleasures of anticipation are interesting here for two reasons.
First, coming to understand Socrates’ account of these pleasures will once
again require us to come to grips with the complex relationship in a human
life between the activities of logismos and the experience of pleasure. Second,
Socrates frames his account of the pleasures of anticipation with remarks
that point to a connection between an agent’s character – specifically, some
notion of piety – and the likelihood of his pleasures of anticipation being
true or false. This connection between memory, anticipation, character, and
pleasure is an example of a theme that we shall also find in Aristotle and the
Hellenistic hedonists and that will be explored further in Chapters 7 and 8.
Anticipation and false pleasure

At Phileb. 40a9–12 Socrates and Protarchus consider a case of a person
taking pleasure in anticipating the future pleasure of coming into a lot of
money. Socrates uses the example to try to win Protarchus’ approval for the
claim that there are such things as false pleasures. Protarchus initially thinks
that pleasures cannot be false while Socrates thinks that they can. Roughly
129
130 Anticipation and character in the Philebus
speaking, the most plausible explanation for Socrates’ view is that he thinks
that pleasures involve some kind of propositional content. For Socrates, in
cases where the content is false, the pleasure is false. It is not clear whether
Protarchus says that pleasures cannot be false because he thinks that it is
incorrect to assign a truth value of any sort to pleasures or because he thinks
that all pleasures are true. If the former, Protarchus thinks that pleasures are
not ‘truth-apt’ but accepts that the beliefs which are in many cases the object
or cause of a pleasure are true or false. If the latter, Protarchus is happy to
think of pleasures as being ‘truth-apt’ but thinks that it is sufficient to
guarantee the truth of the pleasure that one is indeed pleased.1 We can call
the thesis that all pleasures are true ‘Protagorean hedonism’, after the sophist
who is credited with the claim that ‘all beliefs are true’.2
Plenty has been written about the case of false anticipated pleasure. Less
often remarked upon is the fact that, immediately prior to this famous
example, Socrates claims without much explanation that the kind of false
pleasures he is about to discuss, for the most part, is not experienced by
those who are just and pious (39e10–11). And, immediately after the exam-
ple, he and Protarchus agree swiftly that for good men, the hopes, antici-
pations, and pleasures they have ‘painted in the soul’ are for the most part
true because of their being loved by the gods, offering a clear explanation of
the truth of the pleasures he experiences by the fact of a person’s possession
of a certain kind of divinely approved character (διὰ τὸ θεοφιλεῖς εἶναι,
40b3–4). These passages are sometimes thought to be merely ancillary to
the main point of the example.3 But they are not: they indicate a significant
1
Harte 2004, 118: ‘In sum, what Protarchus thinks, I suggest, is this: a pleasure is true insofar as that in
which it is taken is truly pleasant; and a thing being truly pleasant is a function of my finding it so.’ She
also points out that the distinction between the two interpretations of Protarchus’ view is not
particularly important (118): ‘While Protarchus’ position is not that pleasure is not truth-apt, his
position has an underlying affinity with this view, although, for reasons of space, I will not be exploring
it. (As a quick alternative, one may note that Protarchus’ position quickly collapses into the other, by
making talk of the truth of pleasure redundant at best.)’ Cf. Teiserrenc 1999, 272–3.
2
Cf. Delcomminette 2003, 219–20. (I return to Protagorean hedonism below.)
3
E.g. Mooradian 1996, 98: ‘The argument is brought to a close with the help of an auxiliary point that
good men are friends of the gods, while bad men are their enemies.’ Gosling 1975 ad loc. dubs this a
‘moralistic digression’. Hackforth 1945, 73, comments: ‘Plato is doubtless hinting at false value-
judgments, which spring not from the weakness of our bodily eyes but from the blindness of our
spiritual vision. The man who is θεοφιλής, and therefore blessed with true judgment, is one who like
Socrates himself has followed after God by “tending his own soul” so as to heal himself of spiritual
blindness.’ Cf. Frede 1985, 167 n. 34, who lists other Platonic claims that those who are loved by the
gods are successful: cf. Prot. 345c; Symp. 212a–b; Phdr. 273e; Tim. 53c; Laws 730c. Teisserenc 1999,
288–93, is a notable exception to the general disregard. See also Delcomminette 2006, 391–6. The most
expansive discussion of these passages is Carpenter 2006 (cf. Carpenter 2011, 88).
aspect of Socrates’ conception of the good, virtuous, and – importantly – pious
life that runs throughout the dialogue. Understanding that conception in
turn helps us to understand the puzzling example of false pleasures of
anticipation. Furthermore, it helps us to understand what Socrates has in
mind as the most important factors determining how various different
kinds of human agents anticipate their respective future experiences and,
more generally, the way in which memory and anticipation are important
for questions of the pleasantness and goodness of a life as a whole.
Here is the example which Socrates offers in an attempt to persuade
Protarchus that there are false pleasures:
καί τις ὁρᾷ πολλάκις ἑαυτῷ χρυσὸν γιγνόμενον ἄφθονον καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ
πολλὰς ἡδονάς· καὶ δὴ καὶ ἐνεζωγραφημένον αὐτὸν ἐφ’ αὑτῷ χαίροντα
σφόδρα καθορᾷ. (Phileb. 40a9–12)
And someone often pictures himself coming into the possession of a large
amount of gold and obtaining many pleasures as a result. Moreover, he
contemplates himself in this internal picture being particularly pleased with
himself.
This example has given rise to a number of competing interpretations, partly
because it leaves a number of important aspects under-determined. Although
it is evident that this is offered as a possible case of ‘false pleasure’, Socrates
himself does not make clear precisely where any falsehood enters into the
imagined situation. We presume that something goes wrong and the imag-
ined scene of enjoying a future windfall does not correspond with what in
fact turns out to be the case, but this mismatch between anticipation and
outcome can arise in a number of different ways. The differences between
interpretations of the example will affect the interpretation of the framing
comments on the relationship between character and false pleasure and vice
versa.
At 40a9–12 the following picture is offered: a person is pleased because he
views, as it were, an internal picture of himself at some time in the future
enjoying new-found wealth. A complex set of attitudes is being described,
which can be split into present attitudes and future attitudes. Most impor-
tantly, two episodes of pleasure are involved in the example, the first
experienced in the present and the second imagined taking place at some
time in the future. The person in question not only imagines the future
possession of wealth; he also imagines the many pleasures that this will bring
about and pictures himself rejoicing at some future time.
The picturing falls into the general class of what Socrates calls ‘hopes’
(elpides), a class which seems to include any imagining of some future state of
affairs or, perhaps more restrictedly, imaginings which involve the person in
question in picturing themselves and their future hedonic state.4 Discussions
of memory sometimes distinguish a class of ‘introversive’ experiential mem-
ories: memories concerned with the past experiences of the person doing
the remembering. Introversive memory is what we engage in when we are
recalling our own past propositional attitudes, including attitudes taken
towards past experiences. Examples of introversive memory include, for
example, remembering how much I enjoyed my last birthday party or how
I was afraid as a child when I watched a particular film. Socrates evidently
has in mind in this example a mirror image of this kind of memory; the
anticipation being considered is what we can call ‘introversive anticipation’.
And just as it is a familiar fact that when we recall introversively we often
experience certain affective states (for example, being pleased when we think
back to a past pleasure) so too something similar can happen in the case of
introversive anticipation. Thus, what Socrates calls ‘hopes’ appears to include
cases of feeling not only ‘pre-pleasure’ (to prokhairein) but also ‘pre-pain’ (to
prolupeisthai), not only pleasure at anticipating a future pleasure but also
pain at anticipating a future pain (39d3–4). Although Socrates does not seem
to notice this, in fact the pair of related present and future experiences need
not be both painful or both pleasant. It is possible to think of cases in which
imagining in this introversive way some future experience of pleasure could
be the object of a present experience of pain.5 For example, someone
attempting to give up smoking might find painful in the present moment
the picturing of some future time when he is enjoying a cigarette. Or he
might take pleasure in the present at the thought of some later time when he
finds cigarette smoke disgusting. In both of these cases there is an important
sense of a discontinuity between the present and future character and desires
of the person concerned. This notion of continuity will become more
important as the discussion progresses but let us continue for the moment
with the case at hand, namely that of the person who pictures himself
enjoying at some later time the acquisition of a lot of money. This imagined
future state is the object of his present prospective pleasure. Consider the
following example:
John and the anticipated lottery win. On Monday John imagines winning
the next mid-week lottery. He pictures himself accepting on Wednesday a
4
Compare Laws 644c9–d3, where fear (phobos) and ‘confidence’ (tharros) are species of elpis. For
discussion see Meyer 2012.
5
Just as it is possible to anticipate with pleasure someone else’s pleasure, it is also clearly possible to
anticipate with pleasure someone else’s pain or anticipate with pain someone else’s pleasure.
cheque for millions of pounds and imagines the pleasure he will feel in doing
so. Imagining this on Monday gives him a great deal of pleasure.
There are two episodes of pleasure in this example. First, there is a present
pleasure, a pleasure experienced on Monday. This is a pleasure experienced
in the present but which is generated by the internal impression of a future
state of affairs; it is what Socrates refers to as ‘pre-pleasure’, to prokhairein.6
That future state of affairs is: the person himself in possession of a large
amount of money and, as a result, experiencing a great deal of pleasure.
Socrates takes care to draw attention to this last point; what is being
pictured, or – as Socrates might say – depicted by the painter in the soul,
is some future experience of pleasure (40a10) and not just some future
acquisition of wealth. Second, there is this future pleasure which, in John’s
case, is the pleasure thought to occur on Wednesday. This is the pleasure
being depicted in the imagining and is the object of Monday’s present
pleasure; it is what Socrates refers to at 40a9–12 as the ‘many pleasures’
which the person sees himself ‘pictured as enjoying’.
Socrates wishes to argue that John’s pleasure on Monday is a false
pleasure. But just why that pleasure is false is less clear. We might explain
the overall structure of this kind of anticipation as follows. It involves two
important relationships: the first is the relationship between the content of
the anticipation (the content of John’s anticipation on Monday) and the
anticipated attitude (the anticipated Wednesday pleasure). The second is
between the anticipated attitude and the object of that anticipated attitude
(the anticipated Wednesday attitude and the actual state of affairs on
Wednesday). There are therefore two ways in which the anticipation may
be false since each of the two relationships may not display the required kind
of ‘fit’.
It is perhaps easier to understand this structure if we consider instead
a case of remembering, since we are comfortable with the assumption that
‘remember’ is a success word; in many ways, the conditions necessary for an
instance of remembering will be analogous to the conditions necessary for
an instance of ‘true’ anticipation. And although Socrates concentrates on
anticipation, it is evident that he thinks a similar analysis can be offered of
pleasures taken in past or present states of affairs. It is possible, in that case,
for there to be true and false pleasures taken in past and present states of
affairs.7 Recall that the relevant kind of memory is ‘introversive’ memory:
6
On the account given here of such internal representations, see the helpful discussion in
Delcomminette 2003.
7
Cf. Frede 1992b, 446.
memory of the person’s own past including, importantly, past attitudes.
Consider the following example:
John and the remembered lottery win. On Friday John remembers winning the
Wednesday mid-week lottery. He pictures himself accepting on Wednesday
a cheque for millions of pounds and recalls the pleasure he felt in doing so.
Recalling this on Friday gives him a great deal of pleasure.
For John on Friday to enjoy remembering enjoying going to pick up the
cheque on Wednesday it must be the case both that on Friday John has the
belief ‘I enjoyed going to pick up the cheque on Wednesday’ and also that
on Wednesday John did in fact enjoy picking up the cheque. The relation-
ship between the memory and the past must hold in two ways. First, when
John thinks ‘I enjoyed picking up the cheque on Wednesday’ it must be the
case that he did pick up the cheque on Wednesday; there must be sufficient
content preservation. And second, it must also be the case that he did enjoy
picking up the cheque on Wednesday; therefore there must also be suffi-
cient attitude preservation. If both of these obtain we might say that John’s
memory is authentic.8 If, on the other hand, John takes pleasure on Friday in
thinking that he enjoyed picking up a winner’s cheque on Wednesday but
either he did not pick up a cheque on Wednesday or he did pick up a cheque
on Wednesday but did not enjoy doing so, then this experience on Friday is
a false pleasure.
The conditions necessary for someone to ‘enjoy remembering’ in this
authentic fashion are the counterparts of the conditions necessary for
what Socrates will call a ‘true pleasure of anticipation’. For John authen-
tically to enjoy anticipating on Monday that he will enjoy winning the
lottery then it must be the case that (i) on Monday John enjoys thinking
that on Wednesday he will enjoy winning the lottery, (ii) on Wednesday
John wins the lottery, and (iii) on Wednesday John enjoys winning
the lottery. Socrates thinks that an authentic anticipation of a pleasant
experience will be pleasant and that an inauthentic anticipation of a
pleasant experience might be pleasant too. The latter kind will be a false
pleasure.
8
Cf. Bernecker 2010, 213–17; 214: ‘The direction of fit of memory is twofold: mind-to-world as well as
mind-in-the-present-to-mind-in-the-past. Just as the faithful reproduction of a false proposition
doesn’t qualify as memory, neither does the inaccurate reproduction of a true proposition. For this
reason there needs to be a content condition and past representation condition in addition to the
truth-condition.’ He discusses the important notion of attitudinal identity later in the same chapter,
focussing on the claim that the psychological attitude attributed to one’s former self need only be
sufficiently similar to the past attitude for authenticity to hold (231–9).
The twofold condition shows clearly the two possibilities that might
prevent this anticipation from being authentic in the desired way and
therefore lead to there being a false rather than a true pleasure of anticipation.
First, it might be false that John comes into a lot of money on Wednesday
((ii) is false). Alternatively, perhaps it is not true that new-found wealth will
generate pleasure; perhaps when it arrives it generates anxiety ((iii) is false). In
that case, although it is true that John wins the lottery, the pleasure on
Monday he had in imagining how much he would enjoy it is false. The two
possible reasons for the existence of a false pleasure point to two possible
interpretations of how we should explain the presence of such false pleasures
in terms of the general moral character of the agent in question. Assessing
the relative plausibility of those explanations might then give us a means to
decide between the competing reasons for the falsehood of the anticipated
pleasure.
Interpretation 1
John is experiencing false pleasure in the present because John will not
become rich. As a result he will feel no future pleasure. The imagined
event of winning the lottery simply does not occur. Any present pleasure
taken in the imagination of this future pleasure is therefore, according to
Socrates, false. The failure, in this case, is in predicting what will or will not
happen and so is a failure of ‘content preservation’. The person takes pleasure
in anticipating enjoying an event which never in fact takes place.9
Interpretation 2
John is experiencing false pleasure in the present even though it is true that
some of what he anticipates does in fact occur. It is true that John will win the
lottery, but there is nevertheless a reason for the pleasure taken in the present
anticipation of enjoying that event to be false. The pleasure is false because,
although John does in the future come upon some new wealth, it is not the
pleasant experience he imagined it to be and, remember, part of what John
anticipates on Monday is later his taking pleasure in the wealth. (Perhaps the
new-found wealth merely creates anxiety and unwanted attention.) John
takes pleasure in the present thought ‘I will enjoy winning the lottery’ but,
when the wealth comes, finds that in fact it brings no pleasure. So, the
present anticipated pleasure is false. The failure in this case is a failure of
‘attitude preservation’. The pleasure in the present is false because it is based
9
See e.g. Hackforth 1945, 72–3; Penner 1970; Frede 1985; Ogihara 2012 and cf. Williams 1959, Gosling
1975, 111–12. Thein 2012, 132 n. 40, also appears to favour this view, while noting the important
connection with character: ‘[S]ome persons, in virtue of their moral qualities, are good at calculating
the future course of those events that concern their own well-being.’ Evans 2008 offers qualified
support for what he calls the ‘Old School’ view and a helpful guide to the dispute.
on the mistaken description as pleasant of some future event which, when it
arrives, is not in fact pleasant.10
Both interpretations note an absence of the future pleasant experience
which is the object of the present pleasure.11 Socrates is not in this example
interested in the pleasures of anticipation, if this means the pleasure we
might take in the very prospect of some future state of affairs.12 However,
the two interpretations differ in the explanation they give for the absence
of that future pleasure. While Interpretation 1 finds fault with a person for
taking anticipated pleasure in an event which will not in fact happen,
Interpretation 2 finds fault with a person for taking anticipated pleasure
in an event which, although it will happen, will not turn out to be the
pleasant event it was imagined to be.
True and false pleasures and piety

Immediately before the example at 40a9–12 Socrates and Protarchus agree
to some important premises (39e10–40a1):
ΣΩ . δίκαιος ἀνὴρ καὶ εὐσεβὴς καὶ ἀγαθὸς πάντως ἆρ’ οὐ θεοφιλής ἐστιν;
ΠΡΩ . τί μήν;
ΣΩ . τί δέ; ἄδικός τε καὶ παντάπασι κακὸς ἆρ’ οὐ τοὐναντίον ἐκείνῳ;
ΠΡΩ . πῶς δ’ οὔ;
soc.: A just and pious and overall good man is loved by the gods, isn’t he?
prot.: Of course.
soc.: And the unjust and altogether bad man? Isn’t he the opposite of this one?
prot.: How not?
These two characters – the all-round good man and the altogether bad one –
return at 40b2–c2, immediately after the example:
ΣΩ . τούτων οὖν πότερα φῶμεν τοῖς μὲν ἀγαθοῖς ὡς τὸ πολὺ τὰ γεγραμμένα
παρατίθεσθαι ἀληθῆ διὰ τὸ θεοφιλεῖς εἶναι, τοῖς δὲ κακοῖς ὡς αὖ <τὸ> πολὺ
τοὐναντίον, ἢ μὴ φῶμεν;
ΠΡΩ . καὶ μάλα φατέον.
ΣΩ . οὐκοῦν καὶ τοῖς κακοῖς ἡδοναί γε οὐδὲν ἧττον πάρεισιν ἐζωγραφημέναι,
ψευδεῖς δὲ αὗταί που.
10
Cf. Lovibond 1989–90; Harte 2004, 121 and 125–8; Russell 2005, 181–2 and n. 26; cf. Moss 2012b,
269 n. 21.
11
Delcomminette 2003, 229: ‘Actually, even though the anticipatory pleasure and the anticipated
pleasure are not strictly identical, the falsity of the latter necessarily implies that of the first. For, as
we have seen, the anticipated pleasure corresponds to the content of the anticipatory pleasure.’
12
Harte 2004, 120–4. Cf. Russell 2005, 179–80.
ΠΡΩ . τί μήν;
ΣΩ . ψευδέσιν ἄρα ἡδοναῖς τὰ πολλὰ οἱ πονηροὶ χαίρουσιν, οἱ δ’ ἀγαθοὶ τῶν
ἀνθρώπων ἀληθέσιν.
soc.: Of these depicted images, should we say or not that for the most part those
set before good men are true because such men are loved by the gods, but
those before bad men are mostly the opposite?
prot.: We certainly should say that.
soc.: So also, the depicted pleasures which are present to bad men are no less
pleasures, but they are false in some way.
prot.: Yes.
soc.: Therefore, wicked men mostly rejoice in false pleasures, but good men in
true pleasures.
These framing passages ought to help us to understand the example of false
pleasures which they surround. However, both interpretations of the exam-
ple of anticipated wealth can claim to be compatible with the framing
passages. For Interpretation 1, the frame should be read as follows: wicked
people generally conjure up improbable or unlikely states of affairs and take
pleasure in them. Because the states of affairs they imagine are false, they
will not experience any future pleasure, and therefore any present pleasure
taken in the contemplation of such future states of affairs is false. On this
view, the mistake is in predicting various external states of affairs: the person
mistakenly predicts the occurrence of some state of affairs in the future
which he will find pleasant. He enjoys in the present imagining that state of
affairs and the pleasures it will bring and, in doing so, derives pleasure in
advance. However, the fact that the imagined future state of affairs turns
out not to be true casts a shadow over the pleasure felt in the present at
imagining it. (John, for example, is just a daydreamer. He spends his time
imagining the pleasure that a lottery win will bring, but he never in fact wins
the lottery.)13
This interpretation seems to me to be the less plausible of the two. It
offers an unsatisfactory reason to cast doubt on such pleasures since it holds
that the mistake involved is not a specifically ethical failure in the person’s
character so much as a simple mistake in his expectations about what is and
13
See e.g. Mooradian 1996, 98 n. 10: ‘[A]ccording to Plato’s conception of a good person, this may be
appropriate. The intense, mixed pleasures are connected with folly and this type of pleasure is the object
of present prognostication. It is also unclear what evidence the person would have for this hope. Hence,
Plato is probably connecting the false anticipatory pleasures with folly as well. This would not be
impossible either, since, at the very least, folly would interfere with sober and careful thinking.’ Ogihara
2012, esp. 304–8, argues similarly: good people tend to hope for things that are more easily realized and
also have a genuine concern for what is anticipated; bad people have no genuine concern for what they
conjure up in their imagination and also often day-dream about very unlikely states of affairs.
is not likely to happen to him in the future. Wicked people, after all, are not
necessarily poor planners and predictors in this very general sense; in fact,
their ability to plan and scheme is often rather good and that is why they can
cause such harm to themselves and others.14 The people in question here in
the Philebus who are most likely to experience false pleasures of anticipation
are not ‘bad’ in some vague or unspecified way; in fact, Socrates – crucially,
it will turn out – is careful to spell out that the good people he has in mind are
‘just’ and ‘pious’, so we can assume these bad people are not only ‘unjust’, as
Socrates makes clear, but also ‘impious’. But it is not at all clear why impiety
should be connected with a propensity to anticipate states of affairs that will
not in fact occur.15 It may well be true that good and pious and just people
tend to think with pleasure about things that are not very far-fetched and are
not unlikely to occur. But there is no sign in the text that the example at
40a9–12 is of a kind of pleasant anticipation that a good and just and pious
person either could not or will not enjoy. Socrates does not commit himself
to the claim that anyone who experiences pleasure in predicting a future
enjoyment of new wealth must be one of the ‘wicked’ people mentioned in
the frame. The case in 40a is meant rather as one in which the pleasure could
be false, not one in which the pleasure must be false and the weaker thesis
is enough for Socrates to answer Protarchus. Socrates specifies that hopes
such as the one described in the example at 40a9–12 will be true in the case of
good and pious people and false in the case of unjust and impious people
(τούτων, 40b2), so the content of the hope in the example is itself, we might
say, neutral with regard to the character of the person whose hope it is.16 We
should not infer that since the picture’s being imagined is somehow
‘unlikely’ to happen then it points to some kind of day-dreaming or other-
wise unrealistic set of hopes that should be assigned to people of dubious
14
For example, the oligarchic man in the Republic has a badly corrupted set of desires and has a rational
part of the soul subservient to the appetite for making money. But he is able to make clear and
consistent plans to this unfortunate end (553a–555a); see Lorenz 2006a, 46–7.
15
Cf. Gosling 1975, 112 (ad 39e8–40c2): ‘It may still be that reliance is being put on the fact that the gods’
favourites will not be affected with many false hopes, while at the same time Plato is relying on normal
piety to insert a point in favour of justice. Alternatively, Plato is taking it that he can show ordinary
virtues to be part of a man in good working order, and clearly a man in constant error is not in good
working order.’ Carpenter 2006, 9–14, rightly insists on the close association between reason and
divinity and on the possibility that there is a strong connection between divine favour and reasoning
about one’s future pleasures realistically, accurately, and perspicuously, and with a sure and consistent
appraisal of oneself.
16
This is noted well by Carpenter 2006, 11. Perhaps it is also true that good and pious and just people
have a better grip on what is genuinely valuable for a human than do their bad and impious and unjust
counterparts. But this points towards the truth of Interpretation 2 below: the failure in that case is not
one of simply taking pleasure in an event which is assumed to be going to take place but in fact does
not; the failure is rather in thinking that a certain event will bring pleasure when in fact it does not.
character or whose expectations are insufficiently guided by a proper rational
grasp of how the world works.17
And finally, the imagined situation of coming upon the money, while
perhaps not likely, is not impossible. What will we say if it turns out that a
wicked person, having anticipated with pleasure the pleasant discovery of
this wealth, does indeed come upon the money? Interpretation 1 leaves us
no alternative than to say that in this case the anticipated pleasure was a
true pleasure since it locates the determination of its truth or falsehood
solely in the occurrence or not of the event of coming upon the money.
So, had he found a treasure chest or won the lottery then even the wicked
person’s earlier imagining would have been a true rather than false antici-
pated pleasure. Interpretation 1 would leave the determination over the
truth or falsehood of the anticipated pleasure to external contingencies;
there would be no direct and necessary connection to the character of the
agent concerned.
For Interpretation 2, the framing passages should be read as follows:
wicked people generally conjure up states of affairs which, if they do come
to be, do not produce the pleasure they had imagined. Because there is no
future experience of pleasure, any present pleasure taken in the thought
of such future enjoyment is false. On this view, the mistake is not one of
failing accurately to predict external states of affairs. Instead the mistake is in
imagining some future state of affairs to be pleasant. This makes better sense
of the surrounding context, since such misconceptions about what is in fact
pleasant might well be a plausible symptom of some sort of failing in one’s
character. On this view, John’s mistake is in failing to see that his current
imagination of what will be pleasant may not in fact be consistent with
what he will find pleasant when it finally occurs. Perhaps he has a poor grasp
on what he does in fact enjoy. Or perhaps between the moment of his
imagining and the occurrence of the imagined event his priorities and
preferences have changed sufficiently to make the once anticipated pleasant
experience no longer the sort of thing he enjoys.18 John’s preferences and
17
Carpenter 2006, 7–8, notes that it is not hard to imagine that Plato’s audience might see a link
between a case of new-found wealth and some sort of divine favour even if it is implausible to see a
regular and reliable correlation between moral character and fortune of this sort.
18
Cf. Carpenter 2006, 12–13, who argues that a wicked person is unable to anticipate what attaining the
imagined future will be like phenomenologically. I think this is right in the sense that the wicked
person cannot properly anticipate what, for example, finding all this gold will feel like, that is, whether
or not it will indeed be pleasant as imagined. It does not mean, I think, that he mistakenly anticipates
how a future pleasure will feel. Carpenter is certainly right to point out that the wicked person’s failure
is tied to a failure in some form of self-consistency. She expands the notion of consistency in terms of
‘mental holism’ (16–18); for my account, see below.
pleasures are sufficiently mutable that he first enjoys the thought of some-
thing which, when it later occurs, he does not in fact enjoy. Compare the
‘tyrannical man’ imagined by Socrates in the Republic: he too is described
as ‘impious’ (anosios), ‘unjust’ (adikos), and thoroughly wicked (580a4). But
Socrates characterises him as miserable not because he is constantly sur-
prised by unforeseen events or because his expectations are regularly con-
founded; rather, the tyrant is miserable because his soul is in thrall to his
lawless appetites and, what is more, cannot properly satisfy even those
desires it happens to have (577d–578a, 579d–e). In brief, the problem is
not that the tyrant is simply unable to plan and predict adequately, but that
his goals – what he is trying to plan and predict for – are too changeable and
inconsistent for him ever to be successful.19
Interpretation 2 seems to me to be correct. But consideration of the
example at 40a on its own will not be enough to show that it is. Looking just
at the example at 40a it is certainly unclear why anyone would necessarily
accept Socrates’ attempt to attribute such mutability – and the false pleas-
ures it tends to produce – to faults in an agent’s ethical character. A full
defence of this interpretation requires a much more expansive consideration
of the dialogue up to this point and will explain why Protarchus agrees so
readily to Socrates’ suggestion.
The unity of a life

Three claims are made in the Philebus that count in favour of Interpretation 2:
(i) a good human life is one which involves the retrospective and prospective
consideration by an agent of his or her own life and character; (ii) a good
human life is a temporally extended whole formed by reason into a good and
harmonious unity; (iii) a harmonious and good life is a pious and virtuous
life, while a life which fails to exhibit such harmony and unity is impious and
wicked. All three claims also illuminate further Socrates’ understanding of
the relationship between pleasure and reason in a human life and the further
relationship between human lives and divinity.
Before the examination of false pleasures, the dialogue has been building
a picture of the nature of piety, justice, and goodness that lies behind
Socrates’ assertion and Protarchus’ agreement that the impious and the
unjust are the kinds of people likely to experience false anticipated pleasures.
To assemble this picture, it is important to begin with some general
19
A similar point might be made about the democratic man: 561d–e. Both he and the tyrant lack the
focus and consistency found even in the oligarchic man. See Scott 2000.
considerations about the dialogue’s conception of a human life most gen-
erally from which we can then proceed to consider more specifically the
characteristic of a pious human life. It is not coincidental that this con-
ception makes significant use of precisely the capacities of anticipation and
memory that are evidently much to the fore in the example of false pleasure
sketched at 40a.
Protarchus had conceded early in the discussion that their primary focus
of attention should be on the ‘mixed’ life, a life combining the activities of
reason and pleasure (22a). Further, he also accepted that a life without any
rational activity at all would not be choiceworthy. This is the rejection of the
‘life of a mollusc’ at 21a–d. Most important for our purposes is Socrates’
summing up of such a life at 21c1–8 since this will begin to fill in the picture
of what must be involved in a human life from which we can go on to ask
what must be involved in a good human life:
καὶ μὴν ὡσαύτως μνήμην μὴ κεκτημένον ἀνάγκη δήπου μηδ’ ὅτι ποτὲ
ἔχαιρες μεμνῆσθαι, τῆς τ’ ἐν τῷ παραχρῆμα ἡδονῆς προσπιπτούσης μηδ’
ἡντινοῦν μνήμην ὑπομένειν· δόξαν δ’ αὖ μὴ κεκτημένον ἀληθῆ μὴ δοξάζειν
χαίρειν χαίροντα, λογισμοῦ δὲ στερόμενον μηδ’ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον ὡς
χαιρήσεις δυνατὸν εἶναι λογίζεσθαι, ζῆν δὲ οὐκ ἀνθρώπου βίον, ἀλλά τινος
πλεύμονος ἢ τῶν ὅσα θαλάττια μετ’ ὀστρεΐνων ἔμψυχά ἐστι σωμάτων.
(Phileb. 21c1–8)
Indeed, without memory it is impossible to remember that you felt pleasure
in the past, since as a pleasure falls away into the past not even the slightest
memory of it remains. And without true opinion, then you would not think
truly that you are experiencing pleasure when you do. And without reason-
ing, it is impossible to reason how you will experience pleasure in the future,
living not a human life, but the life of a sea-slug or some other of the many
shelled sea-creatures.
At the very beginning of the dialogue Socrates listed a number of things
he considered better than pleasure for anything able to share in them. The
list at 11b6–c2 included being wise (phronein), understanding (noein),
remembering (memnēsthai), correct belief (orthē doxa), and true calculations
(alētheis logismoi). Some of them return at 21c – memory (mnēmē), opinion
(doxa), reasoning (logismos) – together with understanding (nous) in a list of
the capacities missing from a life without phronēsis (cf. 21b6–9) and all are
allowed to be present in the other candidate life: the life devoid of pleasure
(21d9–e2). Together, as 21c1–8 makes clear, they allow an agent to consider
and reflect upon pleasures that are being experienced, have been experi-
enced, and will be experienced in various stages of his life. And at 39c–d, in
preparation for his argument for the existence of false pleasures, Socrates
will make a point of reminding Protarchus that pleasures and pains too can
apply in all tenses. In the extreme case of the mollusc life, the total absence
of rational capacities makes it impossible for a mollusc to form the thought
‘I was pleased that P’. In the present, it prevents a mollusc conceiving ‘I am
pleased that P’. For the future, the most directly relevant case for our interest
in false pleasures, the absence of rational capacities makes it impossible for
the mollusc to form the thought ‘I will be pleased that P’. Note that at this
very early stage of his discussion with Protarchus, when trying to extract a
commitment to the mixed life and the rejection of the mollusc life of
pleasure, Socrates leaves entirely unexplored the question of whether these
judgements about one’s experience can themselves be sources of pleasure,
although that is precisely the issue which he wants to explore later. He also
leaves open the question of whether some of these capacities are present in
some other non-human animals. Later he insists that memory, for example,
does have a role in non-human animal desire as well as human desire.20 For
the moment, Protarchus simply recognises that a life without these capaci-
ties, however pleasant, is not a human life and not a life we would choose
to live.21
The mollusc simply cannot conceive any thought in the form ‘I will be
pleased that P’. Perhaps molluscs have no shell-fish analogue for the scribe
20
See 35c9–10 and 36b8–9. At 22b3–8 Socrates repeats that neither of the two lives contains the good by
itself and neither is choiceworthy for a human (ἡμῶν 22b6). However, at 22b4–6 he adds that if either
life were to contain the good then it would be sufficient, complete, or choiceworthy also for any
animal or plant capable of always living a life of that kind (ἦν γὰρ ἂν ἱκανὸς καὶ τέλεος καὶ πᾶσι
φυτοῖς καὶ ζῴοις αἱρετὸς, οἷσπερ δυνατὸν ἦν οὕτως ἀεὶ διὰ βίου ζῆν). This is sometimes thought
to be an odd addition (see Gosling 1975, 89). The proviso: ‘for those things capable of always living
such a life’ restates the qualification made twice by Socrates at the beginning of the dialogue
when declaring his initial disagreement with Protarchus (11b6–c2). Cf. Frede 1997, 177 n. 111;
Delcomminette 2006, 178–9.
21
Compare Nussbaum 1995, 98–102. An alternative interpretation makes the absence of rational
capacities prevent something like prudential reasoning and therefore diminish the pleasure of the
life being considered. The diminished pleasure in turn leads Protarchus to see the necessity – if only in
an instrumental sense – of reason for a good life, even if a good life is understood in hedonist terms.
This view imagines that such a life is rejected because it cannot accommodate the possibility of
forming plans about how to set about attaining some future pleasure. For μηδ’ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον
ὡς χαιρήσεις δυνατὸν εἶναι λογίζεσθαι at 21c5–6 translators offer ‘you couldn’t even calculate that you
would enjoy yourself later on’ (Hackforth 1945); ‘lacking the ability to predict you would be unable to
predict your future pleasures’ (Gosling 1975); ‘being unable to calculate, you could not figure out any
future pleasures for yourself’ (Frede 1993). Unfortunately, the summary of this argument at the end of
the dialogue (60d3–e5) refers only to the recognition of present and recollection of past pleasures. (See
also Moore 1903, III §52, who interprets the message of the argument to be that it is the ‘conscious-
ness’ of a pleasure that is valuable rather than the pleasure itself. His translation of 21c5–6 has: ‘you
cannot even have the power to reckon that you will be pleased in the future’.) See Evans 2007c, esp.
348–52, and Harte 2014b for excellent discussions of this passage. For the distinction between the
‘reformable’ Protarchus and the irredeemable Philebus see Frede 1996a.
and painter we are asked to imagine at work in a human soul. This means that
a mollusc cannot engage in any of the activities of recollection or prediction
which are integral to human desire and our human experience of pleasure. If
so, the comparison with the mollusc helps only to a limited extent, namely
with the observation that a mollusc cannot do such things either well or
badly since it cannot do them at all; it will not of itself allow us to distinguish
between better and worse agents who are capable of forming such thoughts.
What the comparison with the mollusc does reveal, however, is that these
capacities are taken by Socrates and Protarchus to be essential to a human life
and that the good use of them will therefore presumably be part of a good
human life.22
Having established at the outset that the ability to consider tempo-
rally remote experiences is a necessary characteristic of a choiceworthy
human life, Socrates goes on to build a more detailed picture of human
psychology which gives a central role to both memory and anticipation.
The intense interest in the example of false anticipated pleasure has
perhaps led to a relative neglect of the important role played by retro-
spection and memory in the Philebus’ account of human psychology. It
is clear, nevertheless, that a notable feature of the picture as it develops
in the run-up to the discussion of false pleasures is the prominent role
granted to memory even in the analysis of desire in general and humans’
hopes for the future in particular. Socrates himself seems preoccupied
with arguing for a division between the roles of the body and of the
soul in desire, but he says that he thinks all desires and impulses which
initiate a drive for the removal or replenishment involve some sort of
memory (35c–d).23
ΣΩ . ἡ δ’ ὁρμή γε ἐπὶ τοὐναντίον ἄγουσα ἢ τὰ παθήματα δηλοῖ που μνήμην οὖσαν
τῶν τοῖς παθήμασιν ἐναντίων.
ΠΡΩ . πάνυ γε.
ΣΩ . τὴν ἄρα ἐπάγουσαν ἐπὶ τὰ ἐπιθυμούμενα ἀποδείξας μνήμην ὁ λόγος ψυχῆς
σύμπασαν τήν τε ὁρμὴν καὶ ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ ζῴου παντὸς
ἀπέφηνεν. (Phileb. 35c12–d3)
22
See Lang 2010, 155–9, who notes that pure pleasures will also require some kind of cognitive activity
since they will require the perceiver to abstract pure whiteness, say, from other properties of a
perceived object.
23
Note that the general analysis of desire is intended to cover in general terms not only humans but also
other animals which have the appropriate capacities for perception or memory. See e.g. Phileb. 35c9–
10 and 36b8–9; this is emphasized by Lorenz 2006a, 102. (The mollusc of 21c which has no capacity
for memory at all will presumably not be able to form a desire.)
soc: The impulse that drives [the animal] to the opposite of its current experi-
ences makes clear, I suppose, that there is a memory of the opposites of these
experiences.
prot.: Quite right.
soc.: Then having shown that it is memory which drives the animal towards the
objects of desire, the argument has revealed that every impulse and desire and
the rule over every animal belong to the soul.
Specifically, the memory involved in desire is a memory of the state opposite
to that in which the animal currently finds itself. The desire when a person
is thirsty, for example, involves the memory of the state of not being thirsty.
Presumably, the drive to find a drink to remove a thirst involves the
conjuring from memory of some appropriate representation of the proper
object of desire or perhaps of the proper state of that desire being fulfilled.
Socrates then distinguishes two cases involving a person who is in pain but
can remember the pleasant things he lacks. Socrates puts his point here
in terms of a case concerning ‘one of us’ (tis hēmōn), which suggests that this
is a phenomenon restricted to human animals, although he later seems to
include other animals too (36b8–9). In any case, in the first example the
person concerned has a ‘clear hope’ (elpis phanera, 36a8) of attaining what he
lacks. In that case, the memory provides some pleasure while he is also
experiencing pain (36a–b).24 In the second, he is both in pain and also aware
that there is no hope of replenishment. In that case his suffering is twofold
(36b–c). Socrates and Protarchus go on to emphasise further the importance
of such psychological capacities immediately prior to the discussion of false
pleasures. At 40a3–4 Socrates asserts that ‘every human (pas anthrōpos) is
full of many hopes’ and these hopes in ‘us humans’ (hēmōn, 40a6) are then
quickly agreed to take the form of statements (logoi, 40a6) and ‘painted
images’ (phantasmata ezōgraphēmena, 40a9). This specification and the
24
What is the force of the qualification phanera at 36a8? There are two possibilities. First, it shows that
to the hoper, as it were, the hope is clear and vivid. That clear and vivid character of the hope is what
allows it to be a source of pleasure even though the hoper is also in pain. And the clear and vivid
character of the hope is irrespective of whether in actual fact what is being hoped for is likely to be
attained. It could be a very vivid and arresting sort of hope for something that is extremely unlikely to
happen. Alternatively, the hope is phanera just when the object that is being hoped for is indeed likely
to be obtained. (The same might be said of despair: I might have a ‘clear’ desperation both in cases
where I merely think that what I need is unlikely to come my way although in fact it is not at all
unlikely, and also in cases where I accurately recognise the unlikelihood of my getting what I need.)
There is little in the text that points one way rather than the other for certain. And perhaps that is not
a surprise. After all, it is in the next four pages or so that Socrates tries to persuade Protarchus that
there is a very important distinction to be made between the pleasures to be had from hoping that are
true and those that are false, although they may both seem pleasant enough to the hoper.
explicit connection with the earlier famous description of the scribe and
painter within the soul show that Socrates has now moved from an account
of desire that covers all animals to the discussion of a capacity present in
humans alone and which is particularly relevant for understanding the kinds
of pleasures proper for a good human life.
There is a lot more to be said about the complicated psychological picture
which Socrates assembles, including its famous depiction of an internal
scribe and an internal painter who have the jobs of composing and then
depicting these logoi respectively.25 But for now I want to take from it a
relatively simple point. The picture of human psychology which emerges,
both from the rejection of the ‘mollusc life’ and also from the extended
analysis of the psychology of desire, gives a prominent place to the capacities
of memory and hope. Importantly, Socrates is prepared to see memory and
hope working in combination because he makes memory play an important
role in future-directed attitudes such as hope and desire in general. In short,
human psychology necessarily involves the use and combination of atti-
tudes to both the past and the future since humans are animals who are
aware of their living through time or, to put it most concisely, of living a
human life. This temporal perspective has to be taken into account since the
entire conversation is, after all, meant to determine which ‘state or con-
dition of the soul is able to provide all people with a happy life (eudaimōn
bios)’ (11d4–6). A good human life, evidently, is one in which the past and
future of that life also must somehow be taken into account and is a life in
which the person is able to take into account his own past and future in an
appropriate way.26
Character and false pleasure

It might be thought at this point that Socrates has expended a great deal of
time in developing what is on the face of it not a particularly surprising idea.
However, the case of the false pleasures of anticipation is the first testing
ground for the ramifications of this view of human psychology and of the
nature of a human life. And whichever interpretation of the example at 40a
is preferred, the error involved stems from some inconsistency between the
25
For further discussion and comment see Russell 2005, 177–9; Evans 2007a, 86–90; Carpenter 2010;
Moss 2012a, 265–7 and 2012b; Thein 2012; and Harte 2014a.
26
Cf. Russell 2005, 198: ‘The mistake that worries Plato about this way of valuing pleasure is a mistake
about self-conception: what matters in life is the way in which one intelligently constructs a life, a
future, and a self by one’s actions and goals, in a way that will fulfil one’s deepest needs as a human,
and the view that pleasure makes one’s life happy cannot make sense of that.’
present depiction of some future experience in the person’s life and how
that future experience turns out to be. There is, in short, some inconsistency
between the agent’s present and the agent’s future or, more precisely,
between the agent’s present conception of his future and the agent’s future
conception of his present. Moreover, since we have now learned that the
presence of a desire also involves the faculty of memory, in the full explan-
ation of what goes wrong even in cases of false anticipated pleasure there must
also be a part played by the agent’s past. Since the depiction of the anticipated
pleasure is conjured by the painter and scribe in the soul from the agent’s
store of memories, it must be derived to some extent from a past experience of
pleasure. The inconsistency also involves, therefore, some relation between
the agent now and his past.
It is no surprise that such an inconsistency should strike Socrates as a
serious problem and might indeed be thought to be so significant as to cast
doubt on the agent’s moral character in general. After all, he is working with
a conception of a human life as something temporally extended and there-
fore of a good human life as something to be evaluated not in terms of some
episodic or moment-by-moment assessment of a person’s state of wellbeing
but rather in terms of its value as a temporally extended whole. A similar
concern with the overall shape or structure of a life lies behind Solon’s
famous advice that we should ‘call no man happy until he is dead’ and
Aristotle’s more extended consideration of what sort of completeness we are
right to demand from a good life. In the Philebus a similar concern can be
detected, founded on a particular conception of human nature and, above
all, the capacities for memory and anticipation that we all possess. But the
Philebus also introduces two additional and sophisticated elements to this
basic picture. First, Socrates adds the thought that human psychological
powers allow us as agents considering the past and future to be aware of and
concerned with the temporal extension of our lives. We can think about our
lives from within, as it were, and indeed in cases when thinking or planning
for the future are involved we are necessarily also involved in reaching
back through memory to the past. Second, these capacities for memory
and anticipation are themselves coupled with a more general conception of
the role of reason in generating goodness in unities formed by systems and
mixtures of various kinds, of which a human life and the cosmos as a whole
are two prominent examples.
Before the consideration of the different kinds of pleasure and the argu-
ment for the possibility of false pleasure, the Philebus has seen Socrates and
Protarchus spend considerable time and effort in drawing a link between
divine and human reason and their respective products. Socrates’ assertion,
therefore, in the argument at 40b–c that good men are loved by the gods and
as a result generally experience true pleasure, is neither mere rhetoric nor a
nod to traditional theology. For example, early in the dialogue at 26b7–10
Socrates asserts that it is ‘the goddess’ who sees that there is no intrinsic limit
to pleasures and sets an order and limit to them.27 Moreover, she is said to
do so with an eye to preventing hubris and every kind of wickedness and
the resulting mixture of a limit applied to pleasures is listed along with good
climate and ‘all other things we have that are kala’ (26b1–2), including
health, beauty, strength, and fine characteristics of the soul (26b5–7).
That comment appears close to the beginning of the cosmological section
of the dialogue where there is perhaps the most interesting evidence of
Socrates’ insistence on a moral and pious aspect to the business of living
a life containing a properly and rationally determined set of pleasures.
Pleasure is, of course, one of the necessary elements of the mixture that is
characteristic of a good human life. But it is the task of reason to determine
the kind and amount of pleasure to allow in. To illustrate this point, Socrates
famously makes use of an analogy between a human life and the cosmos as a
whole. An individual human body and soul should be thought of as parts of
a greater cosmic body and soul and they ought to be ordered and arranged by
our individual human reason as the cosmos as a whole has been well ordered
and arranged by divine reason. In both the cosmos at large and also in a
human life, one of the consequences of the proper activity of reason is the
production of an ordered whole and this order is assumed to obtain not only
at a moment but also to be an order over time.28
There is a clear temporal aspect to Socrates’ two examples of good
mixtures produced in this way: music and climate (26a–b).29 The first of
these involves the notion of a well-ordered unity across a temporal extension
since Socrates makes explicit mention of the need to ensure the right
combinations not only of high and low pitch but also of the fast and the
slow (26a2). A good and unified piece of music must contain not only
various correctly pitched notes but they must also be played in the correct
order and each for the right amount of time. What determines the rightness
27
There has been some discussion about the identity of the goddess. Frede 1993, 23 n. 1, insists it must
be Aphrodite, despite Socrates’ instructive caution about using a name which Philebus had hijacked
to refer to pleasure (12b–c).
28
For a good explanation of this relationship see Russell 2005, 145–9 and 171–4; for a wide-ranging
discussion of the section see also McCabe 2000, 165–93.
29
There is an excellent discussion of the notion of composition and unity in the Philebus in Harte 2002,
177–212.
of all these various variables is, of course, the desired final goal of a good and
unified piece of music. Since a good piece of music has a unity that extends
over time, that characteristic determines the proper arrangement of the
various elements involved.
For the case of climate too, we might insist upon a necessary temporal
dimension to proper unity, even though it is much less explicit in Socrates’
presentation. Nevertheless, it is clear that the climate is moderated and
harmonious not only because of a limit placed on the extent of the extremes
of frosts and summers but also because of their being ordered in a particular
way and being made to last the right amount of time so as to allow things
to grow and flourish (26a6–b4). Socrates more than once insists that the
order he sees being imposed upon otherwise indeterminate things is not
only an ordered arrangement at some particular point in time but is also
an ordered arrangement of things over time. For example, at 28e Protarchus
takes as strong evidence against the possibility that the universe as a whole
is governed merely by chance, not only the appearance (opsis, 28e3) of the
sun, moon, and stars, but also their revolutions (periphora, 28e5). Together,
these two characteristics are meant to demonstrate the fact that things
are ordered by intelligence (nous). They point to both the beauty and
order visible at any one time and also the rationality of the way in which
their relative positions alter through various periods of time. The order of
the universe and the ordered changes of the universe over years, seasons,
and months are said at 30c2–7 to be the product of wisdom (sophia) and
intelligence (nous).
From these analogies we are supposed to infer something about the
characteristics of the mixture that is thought necessary for a good human
life. Since a life is a temporally extended and ordered whole, that order will
also require a proper relationship between its parts or stages. Perhaps the
minimum requirement of order is consistency – the parts of an ordered
whole must not be in conflict with one another – and so an ordered life will
have to exhibit a consistency across its temporal extension. Furthermore,
that order will be the product of a person’s reason and intelligence operating
on the various otherwise indeterminate elements (such as pleasures) that
are components of a human life. In fact, Socrates famously claims that the
relationship between a human and the cosmos when considered in this way
is not merely analogical. Rather, he makes it clear that he considers humans
to be microcosms of the greater whole (29a–30d). Both an individual human
and the cosmos at large are to be thought of as ensouled bodies. And just as
an individual human body is composed of and nourished by elements taken
from the greater cosmic body, so too is the human soul derived from the soul
of the cosmos.30 Later we learn that the more familiar Olympian god, Zeus,
possesses a supremely kingly intelligence and a supremely kingly soul
(basilikē psykhē and basilikos nous, 30d1–4) in so far as he is the regulator of
the whole cosmos. We can infer, in that case, that just as we should consider
Zeus himself – or perhaps more specifically, Zeus’s intelligence – to dem-
onstrate his kingly virtue in the excellent governance of the cosmos, so too
we should think that there is a relevantly similar, if inferior, virtue of kingship
in the souls of those individual humans who are able to regulate and order
their microcosmic selves to the best of their nature’s capacities.31 Socrates also
makes it clear that we are craftsmen of our lives (dēmiourgoi, 59d10–e3) and
encourages us to pray to whichever god is in charge of such mixtures when
we try to create the correct blend of pleasure and intelligence, as though
mixing water and wine to get the best drink (61b–c). The analogy of micro-
cosm and macrocosm is invoked again at the end of the dialogue at 64b6–7
when Socrates declares that their current argument seems to have generated
a kind of ‘bodiless ordering (kosmos tis asōmatos) that rules well an ensouled
body’. Since their topic throughout has been the kind of ordering required
to produce the mixture that is necessary for a good and choiceworthy human
life, it seems quite clear that here again we are asked to draw direct parallels
between the good and rational ordering of the macrocosm – itself an
ensouled body – and the similarly good and rational ordering of the micro-
cosm of an individual human life.32
Reason, both human reason and divine reason, is the cause of good
mixture. Divine reason is the cause of good mixture on a large scale, namely
that of the cosmos itself. Human reason is the cause of good mixture on
the smaller scale of a human life. The overall mixture produced by reason on
either scale is supposed to be harmonious and the specification of such a
mixture is supposed to be indicative of what is good both in the cosmos at
large and in the life of humans. And a human who is able to order his life
well will be acting as Zeus acts. It is reasonable to think of this as another
example of the familiar Platonic notion that in living a good life a human
will become in some sense like a god. Since it is an activity that allows us to
imitate the divine, we may also think that this ability to regulate one’s own
self is the characteristic of someone who is pious. Certainly, the Philebus
30
All the wise men agree that nous is the king (basileus) of heaven and earth (28c6–8). In fact, the wise
men ‘say in harmony’ (συμφωνοῦσιν) that he is. Presumably, since this is the truth, the wise men will
not only harmonise with each other but also, in so far as they are wise, they will also harmonise with
Zeus’s divine intelligence to the extent that this is possible for a human. For the claim that the sophoi
here are intended to recall Anaxagoras’ conception of nous see Pepe 2002, 113–28.
31
Cf. Frede 1997, 220; Carone 2005, 96–100; Delcomminette 2006, 264. 32 Cf. Frede 1997, 355.
regularly demonstrates a rather expansive notion of what might count as
proper pious behaviour, including even the possession of a proper under-
standing of the fundamental structure of the cosmos itself. For example, at
28a4–6 Socrates remarks that they should all take care not to place reason,
understanding, and intelligence in the incorrect category of things. To make
a mistake in this way would be a kind of impiety (asebeia). And at 28e1–2
Protarchus agrees that it would not be pious (hosion) to think that the
cosmos is ruled by irrationality and chance.
Throughout the dialogue, in fact, it is possible to find support for the
close connection between piety and the enjoyment of true pleasures. In the
final summing-up of the results of the dialogue, for example, it is made clear
that certain pleasures are not at all to be admitted into the good human life.
That is hardly surprising, but it is important to note the reason why they
ought not to be admitted. The pleasures themselves see that they would
be benefited by a proper blending with the activities of reason. This gives
another reason why certain pleasures cannot be part of the best blend and,
moreover, it is a reason that has the support of the pleasures themselves.
Certain intense and violent pleasures cannot be part of a good life because
they are incompatible with a harmonious blending with reason and intelli-
gence. The same result is reached when Socrates imagines turning to reason
and intelligence and asking how they would assess the pleasures with which
they are happy to associate. The answer he imagines they would give – an
answer that is also supposed to be given on behalf of memory and true
opinion (64a4–5) – is telling.
ἀλλ’ ἅς τε ἡδονὰς ἀληθεῖς καὶ καθαρὰς [ἃς] εἶπες, σχεδὸν οἰκείας ἡμῖν νόμιζε,
καὶ πρὸς ταύταις τὰς μεθ’ ὑγιείας καὶ τοῦ σωφρονεῖν, καὶ δὴ καὶ συμπάσης
ἀρετῆς ὁπόσαι καθάπερ θεοῦ ὀπαδοὶ γιγνόμεναι αὐτῇ συνακολουθοῦσι
πάντῃ, ταύτας μείγνυ· τὰς δ’ ἀεὶ μετ’ ἀφροσύνης καὶ τῆς ἄλλης κακίας
ἑπομένας πολλή που ἀλογία τῷ νῷ μειγνύναι τὸν βουλόμενον ὅτι
καλλίστην ἰδόντα καὶ ἀστασιαστοτάτην μεῖξιν καὶ κρᾶσιν, ἐν ταύτῃ μαθεῖν
πειρᾶσθαι τί ποτε ἔν τ’ ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ τῷ παντὶ πέφυκεν ἀγαθὸν καὶ τίνα
ἰδέαν αὐτὴν εἶναί ποτε μαντευτέον. (Phileb. 63e3–64a3)
The true and pure pleasures you mentioned, consider them more or less
appropriate for us and, in addition, the pleasures that come with health and
temperance and all those belonging to every virtue which, like attendants
of god, follow it around everywhere.33 Mix these in. But those that always
33
It is not clear who the θεός is. Many translators (e.g. Gosling 1975) read it as a reference to a goddess,
given the feminine ἀρετή, but this is not obligatory. If a particular divinity is intended, the main
contenders will be Aphrodite or Virtue or, if it is not a goddess, Zeus. (Compare the similar
uncertainty about the identity of the goddess at 26b8.)
follow foolishness and other wickedness, it would be entirely irrational to
mix them with intelligence if you want to see what the most beautiful and
harmonious mixture and blend might be and to try to learn from it what is by
nature good both in a human and in the universe and to divine its very form.
The harmony and beauty of a life can be produced only by reason mixing in
the right kinds of pleasures. It is hardly surprising that the pleasures which
are allowed in by reason and intelligence are those which derive from such
things as health, temperance, and other kinds of virtue. Here at 63e5–6
reason says it is happy to welcome those pleasures which ‘like attendants of
god follow it around everywhere’; the point apparently being that virtue is
always accompanied by pure and true pleasures.34 Just as in 39e–40c, true
and pure pleasures are associated with divinity and virtuous characters
while mixed and false pleasures are associated with foolishness and wicked
characters.35
The most pious human lives are most like the divine macrocosm of which
each human is a microcosmic part. Pious human lives are the human lives
that are best unified and made harmonious by the operation of reason, since
this is the way in which they most closely approximate the excellent order-
ing of the cosmos by divine reason. And a pious life will not contain false
pleasures of anticipation because the person concerned is in this way
‘loved by the gods’ (40b3). False pleasures of anticipation, in so far as they
are generated by an insufficient mastery on the part of human reason over
a person’s life as a whole, are therefore plausibly taken by Socrates and
Protarchus to be symptomatic of impious and non-virtuous human lives.36
Protagorean hedonism and consistency

We can now return to the question whether Protarchus thinks that all
pleasures are true. Let us assume for the moment that Protarchus is a
‘Protagorean hedonist’ who accepts that all pleasures are true. If this is indeed
Protarchus’ position, then it is not a very promising stance for him to take.
But a brief consideration of the problems that it is likely to generate will allow
us to return to consider Socrates’ picture of a good and pious human life with
34
Frede 1993, 78 n. 1 (cf. Frede 1997, 354) also remarks that if Socrates is consistent in his notion that
pleasures are always somehow remedial then these ought to be the pleasures involved only in the
pursuit of virtue and not its possession and exercise. Cf. Delcomminette 2006, 555. The problem is
analogous to one often detected for the pleasures of the philosopher in Republic book 9, on which see
Chapter 2 above.
35
A connection noted by Frede 1997, 354.
36
Cf. Russell 2005, 145–8, on ‘becoming like god’ in the Philebus.
Protagorean hedonism from a new perspective since Socrates’ pious life and a
Protagorean hedonist life share the characteristic of being free from false
pleasures of anticipation.
A Protagorean hedonist faces a problem in accounting for pleasures
such as those involved in the anticipation of future pleasures. To put the
problem in the more familiar terms of beliefs: if all beliefs are true then all
predictions – including an agent’s predictions about his own later beliefs
or experiences – must be infallible. This difficulty is familiar from Socrates’
exploration of Protagorean accounts of the truth of beliefs in the
Theaetetus, where a problem is raised at 178a–179b concerning the rela-
tionship between predictions and later beliefs with specific reference to
the notion of expertise. We want to say that some people are more reliable
predictors of what is going to happen than others: a farmer is a better guide
than a lyre-player to whether this year’s grape harvest will produce sweet
wine (178c9–d2). Another of Socrates’ examples in that dialogue involves
predictions about pleasure. In the Theaetetus Socrates argues that a cook is
a better predictor than a dinner guest of whether a meal will be pleasant:
οὐκοῦν καὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἑστιάσεσθαι μὴ μαγειρικοῦ ὄντος, σκευαζομένης
θοίνης, ἀκυροτέρα ἡ κρίσις τῆς τοῦ ὀψοποιοῦ περὶ τῆς ἐσομένης ἡδονῆς.
περὶ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ ἤδη ὄντος ἑκάστῳ ἡδέος ἢ γεγονότος μηδέν πω τῷ λόγῳ
διαμαχώμεθα, ἀλλὰ περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἑκάστῳ καὶ δόξειν καὶ ἔσεσθαι
πότερον αὐτὸς αὑτῷ ἄριστος κριτής ἢ σύ, ὦ Πρωταγόρα, τό γε περὶ
λόγους πιθανὸν ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν ἐσόμενον εἰς δικαστήριον βέλτιον ἂν
προδοξάσαις ἢ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν ὁστισοῦν; (Theaet. 178d8–e6)
And suppose a feast is being made ready. The person who is about to eat it,
if he is not a cook, will have a less authoritative judgement than the chef’s
concerning the pleasure to come. (For let us not get into a fight over the
discussion of the pleasure that each person has right now or that each person
had in the past, but only over what is to come.) Will each person be the best
judge for himself of what will seem and be in the future or would you,
Protagoras, be better than some other private individual at predicting what
speech will be persuasive for each of us in the law court?
We might find this argument peculiar since, after all, de gustibus nil dispu-
tandum. I am not inclined to think that if I dislike a meal at a restaurant I
should defer to the chef’s opinion that it is in fact delicious. But Socrates is
less reticent in affirming that matters of gastronomic pleasure are analogous
to matters of health, for example, in being the province of a kind of expertise.
An uneducated palate might well not take pleasure in something it should.
And in any case, Socrates is carefully restricting his discussion to what a guest
will enjoy. Perhaps we are not so reticent to believe that, personal preferences
notwithstanding, a chef is a better judge of which flavour combinations will
produce a pleasant dish than a non-expert diner. Be that as it may, Socrates
and Theaetetus are inclined to think that an individual is not necessarily the
best judge of what will be pleasant to him. The diner might well look at the
menu, see a dish, and form the belief that he will not enjoy it. But when
the dish comes, the brave diner takes a bite and finds that he does enjoy it.
Since therefore the diner is revealed to have been mistaken in his original
prediction, this is a useful example of a false belief to add to the mounting
case against Protagoras’ assertion that ‘man is the measure’.
Consider now the example of false anticipated pleasures at Philebus 40a.
What this adds to the picture in the Theaetetus is simply that the guest’s
anticipation of the experience of eating the meal can itself be pleasant or
painful. While the Theaetetus is interested in finding a false belief in the
diner’s pre-prandial predictions, the Philebus in interested in identifying a
false pleasure in the diner’s pre-prandial anticipation. (Think of someone
who reads a menu, imagines that he will enjoy the starter and takes pleasure
in this anticipation. However, when the starter arrives and he tastes it, it is
much less pleasant that he had imagined.)
If Protarchus is committed to the idea that all pleasures are true, then
when it comes to cases of evaluating his own pleasures, including anticipat-
ing future pleasures, he will face a problem similar to the problem about
beliefs that is faced by Protagoras. If all pleasures are true, then all pleasant
anticipations of future pleasures must be infallible.37 But Protarchus accepts
that, as a matter of fact, it does sometimes happen that we are mistaken
about what will be pleasant and, moreover, take pleasure in anticipating
something which is not pleasant later. He therefore ought not to be a
Protagorean hedonist.
Note that if Protagorean hedonism is taken to hold not only that all
pleasures are true but also that we are infallible about our own pleasures, it
is not only impossible not to feel pleasure at an object one has earlier
anticipated enjoying with pleasure;38 it is also impossible to go on to feel
pleasure at some object which one has anticipated not enjoying. (I
distinguish here ‘anticipating not enjoying’ from ‘not anticipating enjoy-
ing’: I might not anticipate enjoying a surprise party, but that is because I
37
Mooradian 1996 is inclined to attribute Protagorean hedonism to Protarchus: (110) ‘Since Protarchus
is claiming that x is pleasurable for P at t if P takes pleasure in x at t, he will have to admit that there
may be a fact, namely, that P takes pleasure in x at t, and that, if it is predicted that this fact will obtain
or fail to obtain, that prediction will be true or false.’
38
Here I take Protagorean hedonism to claim about pleasures what a certain interpretation of
Protagorean relativism claims about beliefs, namely ‘P is true (for X) if f believes that P’.
have no inkling that it would take place; if I anticipate not enjoying a
party, then the party is no surprise but I might take pleasure in it contrary
to my expectation.) To illustrate: Socrates could equally have made a case
against Protarchus not on the basis of false anticipated pleasure, but on the
basis of something that was expected not to be pleasant. Sometimes I find
myself thinking ahead to an event later in the day without any pleasure.
However, it sometimes turns out that when the event occurs I do in fact –
unexpectedly – enjoy myself. Such errors are also incompatible with
Protagoreanism about pleasure.39
There may be cases in which it is in fact reasonable to think that the
anticipation of enjoyment does indeed itself ensure that we take pleasure in
some future event.40 But even if there are such cases, there seem to be just as
many cases in which the anticipation that something will be pleasant
succeeds only in making the actual event something of a disappointment.
Lastly, as a coda to this section we should note that Aristotle takes a
characteristically sensible and subtle view of the matter when he discusses
pleasure, anticipation, and memory in Rhet. 1.11 1370a27–b28. This is not an
idle comparison, since it would be odd if Aristotle did not have the Philebus
somewhere in his thoughts when composing this chapter: his example of
feverish people who take pleasure in recollecting a drink even as they hope
for something to slake their thirst (1370b15–22) is very like the example
given by Socrates at Phileb. 33c. Aristotle assumes that for the most part the
things we enjoy remembering are those which were pleasant when present;
and for the most part the things we enjoy anticipating are those which will
be pleasant when present. But he offers a minor correction of Plato’s picture
when he notes that there are cases in which we enjoy remembering some-
thing which was not pleasant when present. It can be pleasant to look back
at previous suffering and take pleasure in its current absence (1370b2–10).
We will return to discuss this example in more detail in Chapter 7.
Conclusions
It is not clear whether Protarchus starts the dialogue as a Protagorean
hedonist. But there is a close cousin of Protagorean hedonism to which
Socrates appears committed and this related position will allow us to return
to the question of the pious and good person mentioned at 39e10–40a1 and
39
Cf. Rowett 2013, 204–7.
40
Burnyeat 1990, 40: ‘There are occasions when my belief that I will enjoy a feast (an example from
178de) brings it about that, when the time comes, I do.’
Conclusions 155
40b2–c2. Socrates seems to think that the life of a pious and virtuous human
will lack the false pleasures that many of us do experience. It seems that at
least ‘for the most part’ (40b2–3) a good and pious man will live a life in
which, if he takes pleasure in the thought that he will later enjoy something,
then he will indeed, when the moment comes, take pleasure in it just as
he had anticipated doing. (It is not a necessary condition of his enjoying
something that the good man has anticipated doing so, clearly, but it is ‘for
the most part’ a sufficient condition.) Crucially, Socrates uses the notion
of a good and pious character to explain why there is this consistency and
connection throughout such a person’s life.41 And this consistency and
connection is generated by human psychological capacities for retrospection
and anticipation which Socrates associates with the presence of logismos.
We should insist on an addition to this picture. The degree of consistency
and connection needed between the different parts of a life should not
be such as to require that a good and pious person cannot undergo changes
during his life so that something that does not bring him pleasure at one
point in time can bring him pleasure at another. It is perfectly possible, for
example, for someone as a young man not to enjoy playing bowls and then
as an older man to find it an extremely pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
The objects of a person’s pleasures may well vary across a life in such a way
and it would be both harsh and implausible to say that such variation is a
mark of wickedness. What matters is not that a person’s character must be
unchanged throughout his life but that the different parts of the life should
be tied together and brought into a good and unified whole. The analogy
with music is helpful once more: a good piece of music need not remain
qualitatively the same throughout – indeed, we might say that a good piece
of music must display some variety over its duration – but a good piece of
music must not be disjointed and inconsistent; any variations must be
appropriately integrated into the whole. And as for music, so with life: we
will find it odd if a person’s pleasures do not vary across the length of the
life; it would be very peculiar indeed to remain attracted to the pleasures
of childhood when an adult or when a child to take pleasure only in what
adults enjoy.
For Socrates and Protarchus, by the time they come to consider the
example of false pleasures of anticipation at Phileb. 40a, it is perfectly clear
41
Compare, for example, Epicurus’ characterisation of the sage. The sage can confidently take pleasure
in his anticipation as he considers in thought future parts of his extended life. He is confident that
his character is sufficiently stable that there will be no disjunction between what he now takes pleasure
in anticipating and what he will later take pleasure in when it arrives. See Chapter 8 for further
discussion.
that wicked and god-hated people are those with unstable and inharmo-
nious characters and are therefore those who will for the most part experi-
ence false pleasures of anticipation. The creation of a life that qualifies as a
good mixture, like the creation of a cosmos that is a good mixture, is the
accomplishment of reason and intelligence displaying its kingly virtues.
When a human manages all of that by means of his reason and intelligence
then he is acting in a god-like and pious manner. A stable and harmonious
character is quite capable of thinking about future pleasant occurrences
and taking pleasure in that anticipation, confident that they will indeed
be pleasant to him when they arrive. It is the mark of an unstable and
inharmonious (and therefore impious) person, on the other hand, to be
subject to the kind of misapprehension and inconsistency that leads to false
pleasures of anticipation.
chapter 7
Aristotle on the pleasures and pains

of memory
Aristotle has a lot to say about memory and a lot to say about the nature of
pleasure. He also has something to say about the relationship between
pleasure and memory and expectation. Sometimes it appears that Aristotle
assumes a model like the one at work in Plato’s Philebus. But at other times
Aristotle seems to want to qualify or modify that picture in ways that we
might find rather attractive. The richest passage for discussions of Aristotle’s
views is found in Rhet. 1.11. But there are some important passages in the
Nicomachean Ethics that deserve our attention first.
Memory, character, and pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics

We have already seen indications that Aristotle considers our enjoyment of
memories and expectations to be indications of significant metaphysical
truths about the nature of pleasure (e.g. NE 10.3 1173b13–20, Chapter 3
above). Such pleasures do not, he asserts, fit the model which thinks of
pleasures as replenishments of a lack. But besides these important metaphys-
ical observations and the related arguments about whether pleasure can be
a good, Aristotle is also inclined to think that a subject’s memories and
expectations – again in the sense of ‘autobiographical’ or ‘introversive’ mem-
ory and expectation – reveal something important about that subject’s moral
character. What is more, he is inclined to think that people with depraved
characters will be troubled by memories and expectations because they reveal
the fractures and inconsistencies in their actions and preferences. For exam-
ple, during his account of friendship, he suggests at NE 9.4 that there is a
reflexive relationship of a subject to himself that is an analogue of the inter-
personal relationships of friendship and enmity. In a discussion of people who
are truly bad (phauloi) Aristotle comments that such people are sometimes
driven to suicide or, failing that, try to ‘escape themselves’ in other ways. They
157
158 Aristotle on the pleasures and pains of memory
are tormented, in moments of solitary reflection, by their memories and their
expectations:
ἀναμιμνήσκονται γὰρ πολλῶν καὶ δυσχερῶν, καὶ τοιαῦθ’ ἕτερα ἐλπίζουσι,
καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ὄντες, μεθ’ ἑτέρων δ’ ὄντες ἐπιλανθάνονται. (NE 9.4 1166b15–17)
For when they are alone they recollect many terrible things and they expect
more such besides; but when they are with others they forget them.
Such people are not pleasing to themselves and the constant internal discord
in their character is evident in their being unable to enjoy their memories
and hopes. When such a person looks back to his past experiences, these
cause him distress; when he looks forward to what he expects to do in the
future, this also causes him distress. The best respite for such a person is to
be in the company of others, perhaps because then the tendency to look
backwards and forwards at his own experiences is for the moment lessened
and he can be distracted temporarily from such painful introspection by
‘escaping himself’ and instead concentrating on those around him. This
miserable state contrasts with that of a good person who can truly be said to
be a friend to himself and who will enjoy his own company. He wishes to
spend time with himself and with his memories and expectations and he will
take pleasure in such recollection and expectation:
συνδιάγειν τε ὁ τοιοῦτος ἑαυτῷ βούλεται· ἡδέως γὰρ αὐτὸ ποιεῖ· τῶν τε
γὰρ πεπραγμένων ἐπιτερπεῖς αἱ μνῆμαι, καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐλπίδες ἀγαθαί,
αἱ τοιαῦται δ’ ἡδεῖαι. καὶ θεωρημάτων δ’ εὐπορεῖ τῇ διανοίᾳ. συναλγεῖ τε
καὶ συνήδεται μάλισθ’ ἑαυτῷ πάντοτε γάρ ἐστι τὸ αὐτὸ λυπηρόν τε καὶ
ἡδύ, καὶ οὐκ ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλο· ἀμεταμέλητος γὰρ ὡς εἰπεῖν. (NE 9.4 1166a23–9)
A person like this wants to spend time with himself, for he does this with
pleasure. And the memories of what he has done are enjoyable and his
anticipations of what is to come are good; and those sorts of memories and
anticipations are pleasant. And, what is more, he has plenty of things to
contemplate in his mind. And he shares his pleasures and his pains with
himself in particular, for the same thing is consistently painful or pleasant
and is not pleasant at one time but not another; for, in a word, he is without
regret.
Significantly, the memories and expectations of such a person are pleasant
because they harmonise with his present character and desires. And his
character over the course of his life is such that he consistently takes pleasure
in the same things and is pained by the same things. For a virtuous person,
we should add, it will also be the case that he takes pleasure in what is
genuinely good and pleasant and will be pained by what is genuinely bad
Memory and pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics 159
and painful. Aristotle returns to make this point explicitly at 9.8 1170a8–11.
This explains why Aristotle calls such a person ‘without regret’ since, unlike
the unfortunate wayward characters with whom this person is contrasted,
not only will he take pleasure in what is genuinely good and be pained by
what is genuinely bad, he will also not look back and recall a past pleasure
and think now that it was not something that should have been enjoyed.
Some precision is necessary here because it is not clear just how demand-
ing is this requirement for being ‘without regret’. The requirement is more
demanding if Aristotle means that a person ‘without regret’ would even now
make the very same choices as he made in the past and be pleased and
pained by the same things as he remembers choosing and experiencing in
the past. He looks back and approves of his past choices, pleasures, and
pains, even from the standpoint of the present and with the benefit of
hindsight and intervening experience. It is less demanding if Aristotle
means that this person is simply content with the choices and pleasures
and pains of his past; he is happy that those choices were the best he could
make at the time and the pleasures and pains were reasonable ones for the
person he was then to experience. This is less demanding because it does not
require the agent also to agree that, if he were now faced with the same
choice, he would make exactly the same decision again. Perhaps he has
changed or has learned from his intervening experiences such that he would
now choose differently, but nevertheless neither is he ashamed of nor does
he regret his previous choice.
We can compare a comment made by Socrates at Prot. 356d4–e2. There
Socrates remarks that the power of appearance will sometimes prevent us
from making accurate assessments of value and, if it does, sometimes we will
later come to regret (metamelein) our choices. The regret could be justified
by the mere fact that the choice was incorrect: as a result of the particular
choice, things turned out for the agent worse than they would have done
had he chosen differently. The regret could also be justified by the addi-
tional thought that not only was the choice incorrect but that it would not
have been made if only we had been able to make an accurate assessment of
the true value of the different options available. We can regret making a
wrong choice and we can also regret not having been able to see the true
value of the options that were available at the time. In this context Socrates
is contrasting what happens if we are subject to the power of appearance
with what happens when we are armed with the art of measurement that
will generate accurate measures of the values of the options available.
Equipped with this art the agent will always choose the best option available
and will always choose on the basis of a reliable method of assessment. The
strong implication is that there is no room for regret once the art of
measurement has been mastered.1
Given that ‘being without regret’ appears in NE 9.4 to be a trait of the
very best characters, there is every reason to think that Aristotle is being very
demanding in his account of what is required to be this kind of person. After
all, he seems to say not only that the person ‘without regret’ will not feel
distress at the recollection of past choices and experiences but that he will
feel positive pleasure as he looks back to his own past. To be sure, a virtuous
person will act and choose on the basis of the information available at the
time. There might be occasions when the choice has bad consequences that
could not have been foreseen, but in those cases too, the virtuous person will
not look back and ‘regret’ or be pained by the choice. Aristotle may be
relying on the thought that the past choices in question are themselves
choices made by a virtuous agent: the virtuous person will certainly not look
back at his past virtuous acts thinking that there is room for leniency on the
basis simply of prior inexperience or imperfect character. His character was
as good then as it is now; that is the principal reason why he has no reason
ever to regret what he has done and will instead continue to take pleasure in
recalling those actions and choices.2 We should here recall the good and
pious people of Plato’s Philebus whose pleasures are true because they are
consistent over time.3 Aristotle does not put his point in terms of true and
false pleasures, of course, but he evidently shares Socrates’ assumption that
vicious characters are subject to internal conflict in a way that is revealed by
their memories and expectations. In particular, vicious characters will not
take pleasure in their own memories. Regret (metamaleia) – distress at the
thought of an action or choice in one’s past – is therefore taken to be a sign
of a disordered character.4 We might think here that Aristotle ought also to
1
As we saw in Chapter 5 above, the account in the Protagoras makes no reference either to brute
unpredictable consequences that simply cannot be foreseen even by the best equipped planner nor to
the possibility of unpredictable changes in the agent’s own preferences and character.
2
Pangle 2003, 144, comments: ‘By setting up freedom from regrets as the standard of true virtue and
inner harmony, Aristotle suggests how rare such virtue is, for even most very decent people have
regrets. To escape them entirely, one would have to have a degree of self-understanding that is hard for
most of us even to imagine . . . If one might in retrospect have chosen otherwise in some instance, one
would still have the peace of knowing that one chose the best course in light of everything one knew or
could reasonably have been expected to know at the time.’
3
See above, Chapter 6.
4
Aristotle also discusses regret at NE 3.1 1110b18–24, where it is a sign of a ‘counter-voluntary’ (akousion)
action. And at 7.7 1150a21–2 Aristotle remarks that the wanton (akolastos) person shows no regret and
is therefore incurable; this contrasts with the akratic person who does regret his past choices
(1150b29–31). (This implies that the phaulos discussed in 9.4 is not akolastos; cf. Pakaluk 1998, 177.)
Compare Plat. Rep. 577d13–e2: a tyrannical soul will be full of turmoil and regret.
Memory and pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics 161
leave room for a sense of regret that can be felt by a person of good character
looking back to actions and choices from a time in his past before he became
the good person he now is. It seems right that there is a sense in which
someone might, although no longer a vicious or disordered character, never-
theless look back and regret things in his past. True, even in this case the
presence of regret marks a distinction between the current standpoint and his
character in the past, but Aristotle ought perhaps to leave room nevertheless
for a reformed or improved character to be able to look back and to regret –
and even be pained at the thought of – a less virtuous past.
A little later, in 9.7, Aristotle offers some further remarks that make
reference to the pleasures of memory and expectation. But here the argument
is less clear and less successful. At 9.7 1168a9–19 Aristotle is wondering whether
benefaction is good and pleasant more for the benefactor or for the recipient of
the benefaction. The answer is complicated. In a way it is of course true that
the recipient is benefited and enjoys the benefaction. However, Aristotle
wants to maintain that the benefactor too will take pleasure in the action,
perhaps more so in fact than will the recipient. This is because the benefactor,
in a way, identifies himself with the action. He will love his work because he
loves his own existence and will take pleasure in the fineness of the benefaction
(its being kalon) in the recipient. Further, the recipient will take pleasure in the
usefulness of the benefaction only in the present. The benefactor, on the other
hand, will take pleasure in the memory of the fineness of the benefaction and
the fineness will endure after the usefulness has faded. Here Aristotle notes
that the opposite may be true of expectation: the expectation of receiving
something useful is pleasant whereas the memory of having received some-
thing useful is less so (9.7 1168b18–19). It is not clear why this should be the
case. It is not clear why it is not possible to take pleasure in the expectation of
a fine action at least as much as in the expectation of a useful one. The
benefactor can surely look ahead with pleasure to the fine action he is about to
perform. Furthermore, Aristotle began with the plausible claim that the utility
of a benefaction holds only while the benefaction is present while it is possible
also to take pleasure in the fineness of a past benefaction that one recalls. He
has now moved to the less plausible claim that not only the utility of the
benefaction but also the pleasure at the thought of the benefaction is less when
the benefaction is past. This too seems questionable. Once a benefaction is
in the past, it is of course true that its recipient will no longer feel the benefit of
the benefaction itself. But it seems that the recipient may nevertheless still take
pleasure at recalling its utility at the time.
What begins as a contrast between the temporary goodness of what is
merely useful and the persistent goodness of what is fine becomes complicated
by concerns over whether and when it is appropriate to take pleasure in the
recollection, present thought, or expectation of something useful and some-
thing fine respectively. Clearly, Aristotle wants the benefactor’s appreciation
of his own good deed as something fine to be superior to the recipient’s
appreciation of the benefaction as something useful. And he wants it to be
superior on two accounts. First, in so far as the benefactor appreciates the deed
as fine, this appreciation will not diminish over time since the fineness of the
deed will not be as temporary as its utility. Second, it is apparently the case
that a memory of a deed as fine will be pleasant in a way that the memory of a
deed as useful will not. There is little justification offered for this claim even
though it is evidently part of Aristotle’s preparation for the claim in 9.8 that
the virtuous person will be a ‘self-lover’ in a superlative and morally unob-
jectionable way since such a person will take pleasure in his own virtue and
fineness.5 Indeed, the pleasure taken by the virtuous person in what is fine is
such that, were the choice necessary and he be forced into an act of noble self-
sacrifice, he would prefer to live for only a brief time experiencing this intense
pleasure than a longer time with milder enjoyment (9.7 1169a22–5).
Regardless of the local difficulties of the passage in 9.7, it should be clear
from these two examples that Aristotle, like Plato before him, was interested
in how memory and expectation are sources of pleasure and, more impor-
tantly, how memory and expectation differ in the pleasures and pains they
offer to people of differing moral character and with different evaluative
priorities. In both passages Aristotle is concerned to stress that someone of
noble and virtuous character who takes pleasure in what is truly fine will also
take pleasure in the recollection of fine deeds. Such a person will be able to
take pleasure constantly and consistently in the thought of his past deeds and
will be able to look forwards with confidence and pleasure to his continuing
fine character. There is therefore a close connection between Aristotle’s
account of the pleasures to be had in perceiving and thinking of beautiful
and well-ordered objects and the pleasure that a virtuous person will experi-
ence in looking forwards and backwards and recognising his own well-ordered
life, littered with fine deeds that stem from a noble and consistent virtuous
character. This is another example of the human capacity for enjoyment of
the fineness of something as such.6
The virtuous person can, through memory and expectation, appreciate the
fine nature of his life and deeds almost as an object of aesthetic enjoyment; the
beauty and fineness (kallos) of his good and ordered life is something that will
5
For similar dissatisfaction with this argument in 9.7 see Pakaluk 1998, 188–9.
6
See above, Chapter 3.
be a cause of significant pleasure. In chapter 9.9 Aristotle develops the analogy
between the fineness of the virtuous life and the aesthetic fineness of a piece of
music even further (9.9 1169b30–1170a11). In fact, he says, a virtuous person
will take pleasure in fine actions whether or not they are his own just as a
musician is pleased by fine music, whether or not he is playing the music
himself. This is one way in which Aristotle defends the claim that the virtuous
and happy person will still need friends, although the virtuous person is as self-
sufficient as any human can be. He does not have friends in order to
experience pleasure in their company but, since he does share his activities
and his life with others, he will take pleasure in their fine deeds and be pained
by vicious deeds, just as he is pleased by his own fine actions.7
Memory and phantasia

Rhetoric 1.11 offers one of the most interesting discussions in the corpus of
the relationship between pleasure and memory. The chapter begins with the
assertion that pleasure is a certain motion or change of the soul – a claim it
shares with Phys. 7.3 and which notoriously seems at odds with his consid-
ered view in the Ethics – and then relates pleasure to desire (1.11 1369b33–
1370a27).8 Aristotle next turns to address the connection between pleasure
and perception. He first notes that experiencing pleasure depends on the
perception of a certain kind of pathos. Next he adds the idea that imagi-
nation (phantasia), being a kind of weak perception of what is remembered
or anticipated, always accompanies an act of remembering or anticipating
since whenever we recall or anticipate something we must engage our
capacity for imagination (1.11 1370a27–30). This allows Aristotle to note
that all pleasures must come about either directly via perception itself (when
the object is present) or via memory or anticipation (when the object is past
or future respectively). In the latter case, therefore, they will come about via
phantasia. This reference to the psychological faculty of imagination is
7
For more on the role of the fine in the Nicomachean Ethics and elsewhere see Richardson Lear 2006,
who emphasises the sense in which Aristotle thinks there is a particular delight and pleasure to be
found by the virtuous agent in the enjoyment of the fine as such. Moss 2012a, 206–19, discusses the
argument in NE 9.9 and emphasises how Aristotle describes the pleasures as pleasures of perception. In
so far as this is sensory perception then, like human sensory enjoyment of beautiful objects, this is a
perceptual pleasure available to us as rational perceivers. It is harder to understand the pleasures from
memories and anticipations described at 9.4 1166a23–9 as strictly sensory in the same way. See also
Coope 2012, 155–7, for an argument that this is a pleasure of the rational part of the soul.
8
For discussion see Gosling and Taylor 1982, 194–9; Frede 1996b and 2009; Dow 2011, 61–71. For a
discussion of the passage in Phys. 7.3 see Wardy 1990, 220–7.
worth further consideration before we press on with the remainder of the
account in Rhet. 1.11.
Much of the general model that emerges from Aristotle’s account is
relatively familiar from the Platonic texts we have considered previously,
although we need to be cautious in determining the precise commitments of
Aristotle’s own theory. The Philebus, as we noted, explains the experience of
pleasant anticipation in terms of a ‘painter in the soul’ generating images on
the basis of statements written down by a ‘scribe’; those images may include
depictions of the anticipator at some time in the future taking pleasure at
some imagined object. Aristotle himself in his psychological works insists on
the close connection between both the faculty of imagination and that of
perception (although these two are to be kept distinct) and also between the
faculty of imagination and the human capacity for the deliberate recollec-
tion or deliberate anticipation of non-present events and experiences.9 The
overall picture seems to be something like the following. Aristotle agrees that
we can experience pleasure or pain as a result of the form of weak perception
that is involved when we engage our capacity to recall or anticipate our
experiences. Furthermore, he is inclined to agree that for the most part –
and we shall see that this qualification is important – things that are pleasant
when present are also pleasant when anticipated or remembered (1.11 1370b9–
10). This allows him to explain why it is that people who are suffering from a
fever can take pleasure in remembering or looking forward to a cool drink and
why people in love can take pleasure in talking or writing about their beloved
since in engaging in this recollection of the beloved they think that they are in
a way perceiving him (1.11 1370b15–22).10
Other passages point in a similar direction. For example, Aristotle com-
ments at De Mem. 1 450a29–32 that memory is the retention of ‘a sort of
picture’ (zōgraphēma ti), and that this imprint left by a perception is similar
to those left by signet rings.11 And in the De Motu Animalium he seems to
9
However, in so far as Aristotle makes phantasia central to the workings of memory, he is happy to
assign this capacity to some non-rational animals. In this sense, memory in general is not for Aristotle
an exclusively rational capacity. For a recent account of the nature and scope of phantasia see
Johansen 2012, 199–220. See also Schofield 1978 and Frede 1992a.
10
Cf. Moss 2012a, 78–84.
11
Cf. Sorabji 2004, 2–8. Lorenz 2006a, 161 n. 34, is right to detect allusions here to both the Philebus and
the Theaetetus while noting that Aristotle adopts neither dialogue’s account without qualification.
Compare also De Mem. 1 449b22–3 for the claim that memory is ‘a statement in the soul’ and note the
use of a ‘wax block’ analogy for memory at 450a25–b11. Scheiter 2012 develops an interpretation of
Aristotle’s account of phantasia in De An. 3.3 that emphasises this Platonic background (cf. Moss
2012a, 85–7). At In Phileb. §175 Damascius compares the scribe and painter in Plato’s Philebus with
Aristotle’s characterisation of the soul as a blank writing-slate at De An. 3.4 429b31–430a2.
entertain the view that when we conceive of, remember, or anticipate some
experience then we also on occasion come to feel as we would were the
imagined scenario genuinely happening in the present. For example, he
writes:
αἱ μὲν γὰρ αἰσθήσεις εὐθὺς ὑπάρχουσιν ἀλλοιώσεις τινὲς οὖσαι, ἡ δὲ
φαντασία καὶ ἡ νόησις τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων ἔχουσι δύναμιν· τρόπον γάρ
τινα τὸ εἶδος τὸ νοούμενον τὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ ἢ ψυχροῦ ἢ ἡδέος ἢ φοβεροῦ
τοιοῦτον τυγχάνει ὂν οἷόν περ καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἕκαστον, διὸ καὶ
φρίττουσι καὶ φοβοῦνται νοήσαντες μόνον. (MA 7 701b17–22; cf. 8 702a5–
7 and 11 703b18–20)
For perceptions are immediately alterations of a kind, but imagination and
thinking have the power of the things themselves; for in a way the form of
what is hot or cold or pleasant or frightening that is being thought of is in fact
just like each of the things themselves. And that is why people shiver and are
afraid just from thinking of something.
Aristotle is sometimes prepared to explain or illustrate the workings of
memory and anticipation in terms that involve the internal viewing of
representations of some object experience. Certainly, memory involves
the use of phantasmata (see De Mem. 1 450a19–25) and Aristotle sometimes
seems to describe the role of phantasmata in terms of images of some kind in
the soul.12 Nevertheless, it is not certain at all that these phantasmata should
be understood in fact to be internal images. Perhaps it would be better to say
that Aristotle often borrows Plato’s means of explaining the workings of
phantasia without being committed to the literal truth of a kind of internal
theatre of the mind.13 All the same, these phantasmata that are involved in
memory can sometimes produce the same kind of effects – and produce the
same pleasures and pains – as simple direct perception of the external world,
although Aristotle allows that the intensity of these effects may not be quite
the same.
There are two texts which offer important further perspectives on this
familiar picture. First, in his discussion of phantasia in De An. 3.3, Aristotle
12
On De Mem. 1 450a19–25, see also Caston 1998, 257–9 and esp. n. 21. At 450a29–30 Aristotle also
compares memory to the possession of a picture (zōgraphēma) in the soul.
13
There has been considerable discussion and disagreement over the nature of Aristotelian phantasia
and whether phantasmata are thought by him to be like a viewed picture. For a brief summary of
recent debates see Sorabji 2004, xi–xx and King 2009, 40–62, who comments: (58): ‘Aristotle
nowhere says that representations are images but in several places he compares them with pictures
or images.’ For examples of such comparisons: De An. 3.3 427b21–4 (see below), 3.8 432a7–14 and De
Mem. 1 450a1–451a8. See also Nussbaum 1978, 222–31; Wedin 1988, 90–9; Caston 1998, 281–4; Caston
2009, 323–6, which has a concise introduction to recent discussions; and Johansen 2012, 199. See
Warnock 1987, 15–36, for a critical survey of the theme of memory images in modern philosophy.
distinguishes phantasia from other psychic capacities such as perception
(aisthēsis), thinking (dianoia), and supposing (hypolēpsis).14 He offers two
reasons for distinguishing phantasia from belief that deserve our attention
(427b17–24). His first reason points towards the connection between phan-
tasia and memory; he observes that phantasia is ‘up to us’ (eph’ hēmin) in a
way that belief is not since we can call up this experience (pathos) at will.
Here Aristotle notes that it is possible to use phantasia to bring things
‘before our eyes’ (pro ommatōn), as is shown by the practice of those who use
mnemonic techniques that involve the generation of images.15 His second
reason is worth more detailed consideration.
ἔτι δὲ ὅταν μὲν δοξάσωμεν δεινόν τι ἢ φοβερόν, εὐθὺς συμπάσχομεν, ὁμοίως
δὲ κἂν θαρραλέον· κατὰ δὲ τὴν φαντασίαν ὡσαύτως ἔχομεν ὥσπερ ἂν εἰ
θεώμενοι ἐν γραφῇ τὰ δεινὰ ἢ θαρραλέα. (De An. 3.3 427b21–4)
Whenever we have a belief that something is terrible or frightening, we
immediately feel the accompanying pathos, and similarly for something
encouraging; but in the case of phantasia we are like people looking at
something terrible or alarming in a picture.16
This comment is evidently concerned with the connection between phan-
tasia and pathē and therefore should shed some light on the relationship
between memory and pleasure and pain.17 Aristotle seems to say that, while
believing that something is terrible will immediately generate the feeling of
fear and perhaps an associated pain, choosing to call up a phantasma of
something terrible may well not generate a similar affective response.18
If this applies also to the kinds of images generated by recalling past
experiences – that is, to the deliberate use of the capacity of memory to
call up such phantasmata – then it will follow that there is no reason to
assume that if some past experience was, for example, frightening and
painful, then the deliberate recollection of that experience will once again
generate the same pathos. Certainly, it will sometimes be the case that a
phantasma will generate an immediate physiological effect but this is not
14
On this passage see Caston 1996, 43–6. Cf. 431b7: ‘as if seeing’ (ὥσπερ ὁρῶν) and De Mem. 1 450a5.
15
On these techniques see Sorabji 2004, 22–34, and Small 1997, 81–137. On this passage in De An. 3.3 cf.
Wedin 1988: 74–5. Cic. Fin. 2.104–5 offers reasons to think that our powers of memory are not entirely
‘up to us’: see below, p. 198.
16
Cf. De An. 3.9 432b29–433a1 and 1.1 403a23–4: it is possible to be frightened when nothing frightening
is present.
17
See also Dow 2009, 164–5.
18
Compare De An. 3.9 432b29–433a1: when someone contemplates (θεωρῇ) something there is not
necessarily any call to pursuit or avoidance; even when someone thinks (διανοεῖται) about something
fearful it is not necessary that the person experience fear. Cf. Caston 1996, 46–52.
always the case, and perhaps most notably this often fails to happen when
the phantasma is conjured up deliberately.19 Note also that, presumably in
part to explain the difference between the affective reactions to beliefs and
recollections, Aristotle compares the latter with what we experience when
we are looking at something in a picture. He is often tempted to explain the
working of memory as a kind of deliberate contemplation of a representa-
tion of a past experience. By observing that when we call things to mind
with phantasia then we stand to those contents as we do when viewing
a picture – presumably, seeing what we call to mind in some way as a
depiction – he can allow the possibility of such a state of mind’s having a
different effect from the direct perception of whatever it is that is depicted in
this way. No doubt, there are pleasures and pains involved in viewing
depictions of things. (And we can even identify pleasures and pains involved
in viewing depictions of ourselves experiencing past experiences; think of
the feelings conjured up by looking at pictures of yourself in a photograph
album.) But these should be distinguished from the pleasures and pains
involved in the direct experience of the kind of thing being depicted.
When we choose to cast our minds back to some past experience and
thereby conjure up a phantasma, there is no necessary connection between
any affective response that the phantasma might generate in us and how
we would normally – perhaps necessarily – feel were we directly faced with
experiencing in the present what the phantasma represents. So, while I will
feel terror, break out into a cold sweat, find my heart racing, and so on, if
I am confronted by a tiger or – perhaps more precisely – believe that I am
confronted by a tiger, there is no sufficient reason to think that I will
always experience those same responses when later on I choose to recall
that incident. And even if I choose to recall my past experience of being
terrified when I saw the tiger, there is again no sufficient reason to expect
that that act of recollection will itself generate the same affective responses
as were involved in the original object experience. For these reasons, it
should be clear that there is no necessary connection between, for exam-
ple, a past experience that was painful and a particular affective response
that a person will feel when he or she chooses to recall that past
experience.20
19
MA 7 701b17–22, cited above, stresses how phantasia and belief sometimes have the same effect as a
perception. My imagining that there is a dangerous animal hiding in the bushes is likely to cause
various physiological effects. See also Schofield 2011, 131–2.
20
Hamlyn 1968, 131 ad loc. comments briefly and approvingly: ‘What Aristotle says in the latter half of
the passage seems quite correct.’
The memories of Eumaeus
The second qualification to the simple picture can be found in Rhet. 1.11,
this time with more explicit reference to the pleasures and pains of memory
in particular. Aristotle observes that while it is usually the case that we take
pleasure in remembering things that were pleasant when originally experi-
enced and we are pained by remembering things that were painful when
originally experienced, this is not always the case. Sometimes we recall with
pleasure a past pain. There are therefore circumstances in which the
affective response to something recollected may be different from the
response that the recollected events originally provoked. For example,
there is no simple and direct connection between what it is pleasant to
experience now in the present and what it might be pleasant to remember
having experienced:
τὰ μὲν οὖν μνημονευτὰ ἡδέα ἐστὶν οὐ μόνον ὅσα ἐν τῷ παρόντι, ὅτε παρῆν,
ἡδέα ἦν, ἀλλ’ ἔνια καὶ οὐχ ἡδέα, ἂν ᾖ ὕστερον καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν τὸ μετὰ
τοῦτο. (Rhet. 1.11 1370a35–b3)
But things that are pleasant when remembered are not only those that were
pleasant when they were present. But sometimes also things that were not
pleasant [sc. when present are pleasant when remembered], provided that
what comes after this was fine and good.
The thought is characteristically compressed and provokes a number of

immediate questions which turn on the proper understanding of the
important qualification ‘. . . provided that what comes after this (to meta
touto) was fine and good’. For example, does Aristotle mean that we can
recall with pleasure some painful experiences provided that they are
merely followed by something fine and good? Alternatively, does
Aristotle mean just that we can recall with pleasure some painful experi-
ences provided that their consequences were pleasant? In that case, is he
claiming that we can recall the prior pain with pleasure because in doing so
we also bring to mind, as it were, the causal connection between that prior
pleasure and our current positive state? Such an interpretation of the
qualification ‘provided that what comes after this was fine and good’
makes the originally painful experience somehow instrumentally pleasant:
had we not undergone those toils we would not have experienced the
consequent pleasure. But this seems odd. It is not, after all, the conse-
quences we are said to remember with pleasure but the originally painful
experience itself. Nor does it seem that Aristotle means that what was
originally thought painful is now revealed as pleasant in comparison with
the present state of affairs, as is claimed by the opponents whom Socrates
dismisses in Republic book 9.21
We need to determine the precise relationship between the memory and
pleasure. Why is it that what was originally a painful experience can some-
times be pleasant when recalled later? There are various options:
(a) It is now pleasant to recall the event because we recall the pleasant
excitement and intensity of the experience rather than the pain and
struggle.
(b) It is now pleasant to recall the event because, although painful at the
time, it is now over. When we recall the event our attention is drawn
to its past-ness and that is a pleasant thought.
(c) It is now pleasant to recall the event because, although it was painful at
the time, when we recall the event our attention is drawn to our
comparatively positive state now and that is a pleasant thought.
(d) It is now pleasant to recall the event because, although painful at the
time, it had beneficial consequences which are pleasant.
(e) It is now pleasant to recall the event because, although it was painful at
the time, in retrospect we see the event itself – not just its consequences –
as something positive and beneficial.
Some of these possibilities can be ruled out rather swiftly. Option (a) is
inspired by a remark by Sidgwick. He writes:
To this case it seems due that past hardships, toils, and anxieties often appear
pleasurable when we look back upon them, after some interval; for the
excitement, the heightened sense of life that accompanies the painful strug-
gle, would have been pleasurable if taken by itself; and it is that that we recall
rather than the pain.22
This seems to be a rather implausible claim in itself but it reveals never-
theless how Sidgwick is evidently tempted to look for some pleasant aspect
in the original experience itself which is now being recalled with pleasure in
the present. His intuition seems to be that, if it is pleasant to recall some past
experience, then there must originally have been some pleasant aspect of
that experience which is responsible now for the pleasure of the recollection.
This is not, I think, what Aristotle has in mind. Rather, he is envisaging a
case in which we recall with pleasure an experience which, when it was
originally present, was in no way pleasant.
Option (b) might put us in mind of A. N. Prior’s claim that the fact that
we can reasonably say ‘Thank goodness, that’s over!’ about some past event
21 22
See Warren 2011b. Sidgwick 1907, 144.
suggests that there is indeed some genuine property of past-ness to which we
are now referring and which can be the cause of relief or even positive
pleasure. Prior goes on to claim, notoriously, that we cannot give a complete
tenseless equivalent for such statements and that this in turn suggests that
time does indeed flow.23 The metaphysics of time that this kind of locution
may or may not imply can be left aside on this occasion, provided that we
notice only that we do indeed seem to be able to take pleasure in an event’s
past-ness, however we choose to analyse what ‘past-ness’ amounts to. In
other words, what we take pleasure in or express relief at is not so much the
content of the past experience as the fact of its being a past experience.24
However, I think it is not likely that this is what is on Aristotle’s mind
either.
The examples that follow Aristotle’s comments in Rhet. 1.11, drawn from
epic poetry and tragedy, shed some more light on what he means. It seems
to me that they might fit options (c), (d), and (e) above, although Aristotle
does not make their precise sense explicit.25 For his first example, Aristotle
simply cites a line from Euripides’ Andromeda (fr. 133 Nauck2): ‘Pleasant it is
when rescued to remember toils (ponoi)’ (ἀλλ’ ἡδύ τοι σωθέντα μεμνῆσθαι
πόνων). It is a succinct example of an interesting exception to the general
rule that things that are pleasant when remembered were pleasant when first
experienced. Sometimes, as a result of some intervening event, we might
remember with pleasure something – here, the toil – that was painful when
present.26
The other example comes from Homer, Od. 15.400–1: Eumaeus the
swineherd is addressing the disguised Odysseus and is about to tell the
story of how he was taken from his birthplace as a young boy by some
Phoenicians and later bought as a slave by Laërtes, Odysseus’ father. He says
to Odysseus, ‘Let us cheer one another by both recalling our sad cares’, and
23
See Prior 1959. Cf. Mellor 1981, which provoked various other pieces helpfully collected in Oaklander
and Smith 1994, Part III.
24
Seneca, for example, seems to be pointing to this possibility at Ep. Mor. 78.14: ‘Eventually, what was
bitter to undergo is pleasant to have undergone: it is natural to take pleasure at the ending of one’s
harm’ (deinde quod acerbum fuit ferre, tulisse iucundum est: naturale est mali sui fine gaudere).
25
Option (c) seems to be the likely force of some of the Epicureans’ comments collected by Plutarch at
Non Posse 1091a–b (Usener 423 and Metrodorus fr. 28 Körte). Indeed, to Plutarch’s annoyance, the
Epicureans appear to claim that this is the greatest pleasure possible. But Plutarch does report the
Epicureans’ insistence that it is not sufficient merely to have suffered and to be suffering no longer. It
is also important to recall the past suffering, recognise it, and feel gratitude at its absence. See further
below, Chapter 8.
26
The plot of the lost Andromeda is not certain, but it is possible that the line was spoken by Perseus,
perhaps recounting his relief at having escaped his encounter with the Gorgon. See Webster 1967,
192–9, esp. 195, and Wright 2005, 121–33.
then in the lines which Aristotle cites Eumaeus explains the apparent
paradox of this recommendation.
κήδεσιν ἀλλήλων τερπώμεθα λευγαλέοισι,
μνωομένω· μετὰ γάρ τε καὶ ἄλγεσι τέρπεται ἀνήρ,
ὅς τις δὴ μάλα πολλὰ πάθῃ καὶ πόλλ’ ἐπαληθῇ. (Od. 15.399–401)27
Let us two cheer one another with recollections of our wretched sorrows. For
a man who has undergone many sufferings and has wandered far is cheered
even by his pains.
A closer look at the Odyssey will help to explain why Aristotle may have
thought that this an interesting illustration of his point since the situation to
which Aristotle alludes by citing these lines is complicated not only by the
narrative of disguise, sincerity, and concealment that is at work at this point
of the epic but also by the characters themselves drawing attention to that
very complexity. The broader context of Eumaeus’ claim suggests an
interest on the part of the epic poet in the effects that stories of past
sufferings – both truthful and deceitful – may have on the audience and
on the speaker. Remember that Eumaeus not only asserts that it can be
pleasant to recall what were painful experiences but also that he imagines
this taking place within a context of mutual exchange: ‘Let us cheer one
another by sharing our sad tales.’28 But the exchange is not quite the fair and
sincere one that Eumaeus expects.
In telling his story, Eumaeus is answering the Cretan story concocted by
the disguised Odysseus and recounted in the previous book (beginning at
14.192): a false story that nevertheless managed to generate an emotional
response in Eumaeus who says that his ‘heart was stirred’ by the tale
(14.361–2). We might wonder whether, given that this was a deliberately
false story, it can have had the same sort of cheering effect on Odysseus
himself as he told it. When Eumaeus’ turn comes to tell a story in return,
the old man hopes that recounting his own story will have such an effect on
both Odysseus and himself; he hopes that the mutual sharing of stories will
27
It is also possible to use this idea as a means of consolation during periods of suffering by offering the
thought that in the future perhaps the recollection of even these present sufferings may bring
pleasure: cf. Sen. Ep. Mor. 78.15, where he cites Virgil, Aeneid 1.203: ‘perhaps there will be a time
when it will be pleasant to recall even this’ (forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit). Plotinus, Enneads
4.3.28 offers as an indication that the memory of having a desire is not retained in the desiring part of
the soul the fact that something which was originally pleasant when experienced is not always pleasant
to recall. See King 2009, 167–8.
28
Aristotle also comments at Rhet. 2.13 1390a6–11 that the elderly are more likely to spend time engaged
in – and enjoying – such reminiscences. The young are more inclined to dwell on the future and for
the most part live ‘in anticipation’ (ζῶσι τὰ πλεῖστα ἐλπίδι) (2.12 1389a20–4).
be positive for both speaker and audience. But this is where the effects of
two speeches diverge since Eumaeus’ sincere recollection and Odysseus’
artifice, although perhaps indistinguishable to their respective audiences,
will presumably differ in the effects each has on its own speaker. Eumaeus
begins his account with the lines cited by Aristotle, setting out his hope of
some positive emotional benefit as a frame for his tale. But when he
concludes his tale at 15.484 with his first arrival on Ithaca, he makes no
further comment on whether he has in fact experienced any present emo-
tional impact in recalling those events, so we are left perhaps simply to
remember his opening statement and infer that this has indeed been a
positive experience. Odysseus, on the other hand, replies by noting that
Eumaeus’ story has moved him, more or less repeating the pair of lines with
which Eumaeus had responded to Odysseus’ first – and deceitful – tale
(15.486–7, cf. 14.361–2). Odysseus also comments that although Eumaeus’
story – like his own – included many sufferings, it ended well with
Eumaeus’ arrival at the home of a good master and a long and happy life
(15.488–92).
The situation in the epic is perfect for Aristotle to use as an example for a
very specific point and a very specific qualification of his general thesis.
Aristotle does not appear to cast any doubt on the truth of the memory
involved in the recollection of one’s past experiences. By the ‘truth of the
memory’ I mean only that the situation recalled did happen in just the way
in which it is remembered. In Eumaeus’ case this will amount to the claim
that Eumaeus remembers truly the events of his being taken and enslaved
and brought to Ithaca. Furthermore, Aristotle presumably will also allow
that Eumaeus’ memory might be authentic in the sense that in addition the
old man recalls correctly that he was afraid and distressed at the time by
those events.29 Nevertheless, something about Eumaeus’ affective response
to recalling these events and these attitudes is distinctive and that is why his
situation interests Aristotle. For Eumaeus reports that he remembers being
enslaved, remembers how it felt at the time but nevertheless now is pleased
when he thinks back to those events. There must be some important
characteristic of this situation that will make sense of this unusual aspect.
It is likely that Eumaeus’ original claim that such reminiscences can bring
pleasure is licensed not simply by the fact that the sufferings in question
have ended but rather by the fact that they have ended well. Indeed, this is
likely to be what Aristotle has in mind when he insists that the phenomenon
in question is dependent on some subsequent or consequent good coming
29
See Bernecker 2010, 215–17.
from the painful past experience (ἂν ᾖ ὕστερον καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν τὸ μετὰ
τοῦτο). For Eumaeus, we might say that it is pleasant to recall his prior
sufferings because they resulted in his arrival in Ithaca and the good life he
was able to live there. What is important for Aristotle is that this allows
Eumaeus to recall the prior sufferings themselves and not the later positive
consequences of those sufferings and to take pleasure in that recollection.
Eumaeus can, with hindsight, now see those sufferings as leading to a later
good whereas obviously this was not possible at the time when he was
originally experiencing the toils. And it is because he now recalls the toils as
leading to a later good that he can now take pleasure in recalling them and
not just in recalling their later good results. Eumaeus therefore provides an
example of option (e) above and perhaps also of option (d): the painful
events led to good consequences and therefore can themselves now be
considered in hindsight to be good. It is therefore pleasant now to remem-
ber them.
In the case of the line from Euripides’ Andromeda we are hampered by a
lack of the original context. Perhaps here too the character in question is
expressing an appreciation for the positive results that came from prior
perils. But the emphasis seems different: it is the simple fact of now being
safe that matters rather than some additional positive result. To be sure, in
some way or other it is necessary to be in peril in order later to be rescued
and in this way the rescue and the pleasure of being rescued may well be
thought of as resulting from being first imperilled. Just as it was necessary
for Eumaeus to be snatched from his home for him to arrive in Ithaca so too
it was necessary for Perseus, let us say, to undergo various perils before he
could be rescued from them. And in this sense we can say that the good of
being saved is a consequence of the prior dangers. We might even go so far
as to identify a particular pleasure in being saved from danger at the very last
moment: a euphoric feeling of unexpected salvation. But it would be a little
perverse to imagine that prior peril is a necessary precondition of enjoying
being safe and sound. Rather, Perseus can look back and recall the various
toils which he has undergone and which are now in his past. As a result, he is
able to take special pleasure in his current safety since he realises that things
might not have turned out as they did. Perseus therefore might be an
example of option (c) above.
In both cases, Aristotle shows that he is not prepared to be shackled by a
simple account according to which phantasia always brings along with it the
affective response occasioned by the original experience upon which it is
based. And he is right to do so. He can also offer a reasonable account of
how this can happen in terms of his own moral psychology since it is likely
that he considered human perceptions and our consequent ability to
‘envisage’ both prospects and also our own pasts to be conceptually rich.
It is therefore correct to say that now Eumaeus ‘sees’ the events in his past
differently from the way in which he originally saw them (or, they ‘appear to
him’ differently) and hence he now experiences pleasures as he re-envisages
them whereas he originally experienced pains. He now sees and understands
those events as being beneficial and good – hence pleasant – whereas he
originally saw them as harmful and painful.
chapter 8
Epicureans and Cyrenaics on anticipating

and recollecting pleasures
Just as the Hellenistic philosophers and their later Roman commentators

were interested in the pleasures of learning and knowing, so too were they
interested in prudential planning and in the pleasures of memory and
anticipation. In particular, the Hellenistic hedonist schools of Epicureans
and Cyrenaics were interested in the power and limits of our ability to look
ahead and look back in order to maintain a life of pleasure. They agree that
the best human life is the most pleasant life and also that we should arrange
our desires and choices so as to experience as much pleasure and as little pain
as possible. However, they disagree about the possibility of maximising
pleasure over time by means of a prudential calculus of the kind we have
already seen examined in Plato’s Protagoras (Chapter 5). They also disagree
about the efficacy of our powers of memory and anticipation in establishing
and maintaining a life of pleasure. This second disagreement continues the
interest in the relationship between pleasure, anticipation, memory, and
character that we saw in Plato (Chapter 6) and Aristotle (Chapter 7).
Epicurean prudential reasoning

The principal evidence for the Epicurean version of the hedonistic pruden-
tial calculus comes from Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus. Here Epicurus
describes how his theory allows the hedonist to be sensitive to and strive
to attain long-term goals of maximising pleasure, by forgoing more prox-
imate but lesser or potentially damaging pleasures. In brief outline, this is a
recipe for temporally sensitive hedonistic choice-making.1 I have divided the
passage into four parts for ease of reference.
1
Critics who have looked previously at this passage tend to find it unsatisfying. Mitsis 1988, 28, finds it
‘disappointingly vague’, while Annas 1993, 190, allows that ‘[a]s often, Epicurus uses misleadingly crude
language for a position which is in fact not crude’. I argue below that the language used is not, in fact, crude.
175
176 Epicureans and Cyrenaics
[1] ταύτην [sc. ἡδονήν] γὰρ ἀγαθὸν πρῶτον καὶ συγγενικὸν ἔγνωμεν, καὶ
ἀπὸ ταύτης καταρχόμεθα πάσης αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτην
καταντῶμεν ὡς κανόνι τῷ πάθει πᾶν ἀγαθὸν κρίνοντες. [2a] καὶ ἐπεὶ
πρῶτον ἀγαθὸν τοῦτο καὶ σύμφυτον, διὰ τοῦτο καὶ οὐ πᾶσαν ἡδονὴν
αἱρούμεθα, [2b] ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ὅτε πολλὰς ἡδονὰς ὑπερβαίνομεν, ὅταν πλεῖον
ἡμῖν τὸ δυσχερὲς ἐκ τούτων ἕπηται· [2c] καὶ πολλὰς ἀλγηδόνας ἡδονῶν
κρείττους νομίζομεν, ἐπειδὰν μείζων ἡμῖν ἡδονὴ παρακολουθῇ πολὺν
χρόνον ὑπομείνασι τὰς ἀλγηδόνας. [3] πᾶσα οὖν ἡδονὴ διὰ τὸ φύσιν ἔχειν
οἰκείαν ἀγαθόν, οὐ πᾶσα μέντοι αἱρετή· καθάπερ καὶ ἀλγηδὼν πᾶσα κακόν,
οὐ πᾶσα δὲ ἀεὶ φευκτὴ πεφυκυῖα. [4] τῇ μέντοι συμμετρήσει καὶ
συμφερόντων καὶ ἀσυμφόρων βλέψει ταῦτα πάντα κρίνειν καθήκει.
χρώμεθα γὰρ τῷ μὲν ἀγαθῷ κατά τινας χρόνους ὡς κακῷ, τῷ δὲ κακῷ
τοὔμπαλιν ὡς ἀγαθῷ. (Ep. Men. 129–30)
[1] For we have recognised this [pleasure] as the first and natural good, and
we begin every choice and avoidance from this starting point and we return
to it when we judge every good by feeling, like a yardstick. [2a] And since
this is the first and connate good, for this reason we also do not choose
every pleasure, [2b] but on occasion we pass over many pleasures when the
discomfort to us which follows from them is greater, [2c] and we consider
many pains to be better than pleasures, when a greater pleasure over a long
period comes to us after undergoing those pains. [3] So every pleasure is a
good because it has an appropriate nature, but not every pleasure is choice-
worthy. Just so, every pain is also a bad, but not every pain is always by
nature to be avoided. [4] However, it is right to judge all of them by
comparative measurement and by the recognition of both advantages and
disadvantages. For we sometimes treat the good as a bad, and conversely
the bad as a good.
This argument follows Epicurus’ identification of pleasure as the single
natural good and his insistence that it should be treated as the criterion by
which we measure the goodness of an action. Section [1] introduces the
metaphor of a yardstick, a measurement against which we can compare
various possible courses of action and the pleasure or pain likely to result
from them.2 The text then proceeds to offer an elaboration of this claim,
perhaps aware that as it stands the imperative to pursue pleasure might raise
strong objections. Epicurus explains that we should take a long-term view of
pleasure-seeking. Sometimes we should knowingly forgo pleasure and
sometimes we should undergo pain, but this does not jeopardise the overall
hedonistic structure of choice-making since this is always done with a view
2
There are analogies with Epicurean epistemology, which uses three sources of information as ‘criteria’
of truth – standards on which we must base all beliefs. Indeed, the pathē are criteria of truth: DL 10.31.
Cf. Gosling and Taylor 1982, 397–9.
to maximising pleasure and reducing pain in the longer term. Section [2]
gives the substance of this claim, and it is generalised in section [3] where
Epicurus also restates that it is consistent with his claim that pleasure is the
only good. Section [4] promises to offer some help in understanding how
this calculus is to be achieved.
It is unclear whether the first-person verbs throughout this section refer
to people in general or to the Epicureans in particular. If the former, then
Epicurus is here advocating psychological hedonism: all agents do act in this
way in order to maximise pleasure. It is certainly true that the Epicureans
claim elsewhere that infants and non-rational animals instinctively seek after
pleasure (the so-called ‘Cradle Argument’), and it may also be true that the
argument is intended to endorse the feeling which remains even in the case
of adults that pleasure is something to be pursued.3 However, although
Epicurus asserts that sometimes even non-Epicureans act in order to secure
pleasure, it is not so clear whether he thinks that non-Epicurean adults also
always seek after pleasure – but are mistaken about how to obtain and
maximise that pleasure, and so aim for money, power, and the like – or that
they occasionally replace a drive for pleasure with a drive for these other
goods per se, without thinking that money, power, and the like are routes to
securing pleasure.4
In the preceding paragraph of the Letter (§128), Epicurus first asserts
that ‘we’ do everything ‘for the sake of being neither in pain nor in terror’.
This sounds like a special Epicurean doctrine. Further on in that same
section Epicurus asserts that ‘we say’ (legomen) that pleasure is the begin-
ning (arkhē) and goal (telos) of life. This too is not an assertion made by
everyone, even if there are non-Epicureans such as Eudoxus who may
endorse some version of it. However, the picture is confused a little by the
tense of ‘egnōmen’ (‘we have recognised’) in [1]. This may indeed be a
reference to a prior stage in life, namely infancy, in which everyone does
act in order to secure pleasure and which the Epicureans take to be prime
evidence for their hedonistic thesis. But again, this contrast in tense with
the verbs used to describe the present employment of correct prudential
reasoning may suggest that although we (in this case perhaps we all, but
the Epicureans are therefore included too) once recognised the connate
good, we certainly do not all do so now. In any case, whether or not in
3
On these cradle arguments see: DL 10.137, Sext. Emp. PH 3.194, and Brunschwig 1986, 113–44. Cf.
Sedley 1996, 313–39, at 321 n. 15. Compare Eudoxus’ argument at Arist. NE 10.2 1172b9–15 and cf.
Warren 2009, 252–65.
4
For an argument against ascribing psychological hedonism to Epicurus, see Cooper 1999b, 486–90.
Woolf 2004 replies in favour of a psychological hedonist interpretation.
adulthood everyone, in their various ways, aims for pleasure is not the
primary concern of this passage, and Epicurus does not make clear his
position on this question. Instead, Epicurus is interested in telling his
reader – a budding Epicurean – how to go about maximising true
katastematic pleasure. Likewise, the fact that a depressingly large number
of people may use similar prudential reasoning in order mistakenly to
maximise fame, power, and so on, is also of no concern at this stage.5
Epicurus’ treatment includes two characteristics we have already
noted in Socrates’ version of the hedonic calculus discussed in
Chapter 5. First, Epicurus assumes a situation in which it is possible to
know all the relevant information concerning the pleasure and pain
provided by different situations, even those in the future. Second,
Epicurus’ argument refuses to offer anything other than the most general
and imprecise characterisation of the various quantities of pleasure, pain,
and time involved. Epicurus speaks only of ‘greater’ pain or pleasure or
‘long’ periods of time.
In [2c] he argues that on occasion we should undergo a pain in order to
secure a greater pleasure over a longer period. In general terms a good may
be preferred either because it is greater (a more intense pleasure, perhaps)
or longer lasting (a pleasure lasting several hours is preferable to an equally
intense pleasure which lasts only minutes). Consequently, a more intense
and longer-lasting pleasure is preferable on two counts. In Epicurean
terms, however, this scheme may be complicated by the Epicureans’
controversial view that once a state of painlessness has been reached, the
value of that state is not increased by mere prolongation.6 KD 19 offers the
claim that a finite and an infinite amount of time contain the same
amount of pleasure, if you measure it correctly. This might make it appear
that Epicurus should not, as he does here in Ep. Men. 129, be recommend-
ing that we prefer longer-lasting to brief pleasures. Nevertheless he can
5
Compare Cic. Fin. 1.32–3. This passage asserts that no one rejects pleasure per se and that the pursuit of
pleasure has been criticised because of the painful results which arise from imprudent choices. This
falls short of asserting that everyone does in fact always pursue pleasure. Torquatus’ remarks at Fin.
1.47–8 similarly suggest that people can be overcome by the enticements of present pleasure but, again,
this falls short of asserting that everyone always acts in pursuit of pleasure. Perhaps the closest
suggestion of something like psychological hedonism can be found in one of the later Epicurean
defences of the assertion that pleasure is the telos at Fin. 1.31: ‘So they say that there is as it were a natural
and ingrained idea in our souls such that we feel that pleasure is to be pursued and pain is to be
avoided’ (itaque aiunt hanc quasi naturalem atque insitam in animis nostris inesse notionem, ut alterum
[sc. voluptatem] esse appetendum, alterum [sc. dolorem] esse aspernandum sentiamus).
6
See Epic. Ep. Men. 131, KD 3, and KD 18; Cic. Fin. 1.37–8.
argue that it is better to maximise as far as possible the ratio of pleasure to
pain within a life. The less time within a life spent feeling pain the better.7
There remains the problem of evaluating a lesser but longer-lasting
pleasure over a greater but briefer pleasure (or a lesser but longer-lasting
pain over a greater but briefer pain). The brief treatment of the ‘hedonic
calculus’ in the Letter to Menoeceus does not delve into such questions, and
perhaps understandably so. As we have noted before, there lingers over such
accounts of hedonist calculation the concern that the pleasures and pains
being evaluated vary in incommensurable ways. If this suspicion is true,
then perhaps there is no way in which two goods which differ in both of
these characteristics might be comparatively ranked. Further, even on the
assumption that the pleasures and pains are commensurable, for practical
purposes in most cases the comparanda will in all likelihood differ both in
pleasantness and in duration. We might well think we are owed some more
extensive remarks by Epicurus, perhaps just some sketchy rules of thumb,
for the sort of comparisons which an agent is likely to have to make. Of
course, the Letter to Menoeceus is something of a protreptic epitome of
Epicurean ethics, and an omission here is not necessarily a sign of an
omission in Epicurus’ theory as a whole. Nevertheless a theory of this sort
of reasoning cannot ignore such difficulties and this must be regarded as an
important and potentially damaging lacuna in the overall theory. (Epicurus
cannot, of course, take the escape route available to Socrates and Plato of
saying that this hedonist calculus is nothing more than a dialectical device
aimed at ‘the many’; he is a self-confessed hedonist and is offering this
account in propria persona.) Notably, Epicurus does not take the route
advocated by Aristotle of explicitly denying that there is much sense to this
sort of legislation, given that practical reasoning will be employed in
circumstances for which the relevant factors to be taken into account are
so many and variable that any rule offered would be subject to innumerable
exceptions and qualifications.8 Either Epicurus did not see this problem or
7
Compare Gosling and Taylor 1982, 350, who ascribe to Epicurus the implausible claim that there is
nothing to choose between a year of pleasure followed by one month of pain, and two years of pleasure
followed by one month of pain. The important question here is: what will happen in the year
following the period of the first comparandum? There will follow either a year of pleasure (in which
case the two are alike), or a year which contains some pain (in which case the first is obviously
preferable), or death (and the question of what this would mean for the choice between the two is a
more difficult question. See e.g. Warren 2000, 242; 2004, 110–15.
8
See NE 2.2 1104a3–10 and 5.10 1137b27–32: ‘The rule for what is indefinite is itself indefinite, like the
lead rule used for Lesbian masonry’ (τοῦ γὰρ ἀορίστου ἀόριστος καὶ ὁ κανών, ὥσπερ καὶ τῆς Λεσβίας
οἰκοδομίας ὁ μολίβδινος κανών). Lesbian polygonal masonry is formed by interlocking irregularly
shaped blocks. A flexible kanōn is required which can be moulded to the shape of the previous block
and then used as a template for shaping the next block to fit exactly. Cf. Wiggins 1987, 229.
he felt that this was sufficiently obvious to require no mention. In any case,
he offers only a highly generalised account of the sort of reasoning
involved.9
Certainly, Epicurus’ version of hedonism recommends the occasional
avoidance of a pleasure. Section [4] expands on this theme. Sometimes a
hedonist avoids a pleasure as though it were a bad (although pleasures are
good per se) and sometimes suffers pain as though it were a good
(although pains are bad per se).10 Epicurus claims that I should not
always act to promote what at that particular time will produce the
most pleasure. Rather, I should act in order to produce the most pleasure
over time. Epicurus endorses a form of temporal neutrality about value;
closer pleasures are not to be preferred merely because they are closer. In
Cicero’s De Finibus the Epicurean Torquatus notes how people fall for
the ‘enticements of present pleasures’ (Fin. 1.33), suggesting that the
Epicureans also thought that the temporal proximity of a pleasure or
pain was irrelevant to its value. Although Torquatus describes such
people as ‘blinded by desire’ (occaecati cupiditate), which sounds rather
like the explanation of this behaviour offered by those whom Socrates is
criticising through his intellectualist account in the Protagoras, the
Epicurean account of desire firmly links it to beliefs and more specifically
to beliefs concerning value. Epicurean therapy is aimed at the removal of
‘false beliefs’ and the re-education of desires, which is an intellectual
process. I therefore suspect that the Epicurean diagnosis of a bias towards
nearer pleasures would be just as intellectualist as that offered by
Socrates.
9
It may be that further advice on specific matters was contained in Epicurus’ work On Lives. Diogenes
Laertius 10.117–21 provides a collection of specific pieces of advice (such as: ‘a wise man will not marry’)
which come from a number of sources (Diogenes’ Epitome of Epicurus’ Ethical Thoughts: 10.118 and
Epilekta 10.119; Epicurus’ Puzzles (Diaporiai), On Nature, Symposium, and On Lives: 10.119).
10
Aristocles ap. Euseb. PE 14.21.1–4 mistakenly argues that there is an inconsistency in Epicurus’ system
between (1) pleasure is the criterion for choice and avoidance and (2) not all pleasures are to be
pursued. Aristocles concludes that, for Epicurus, reason (λόγος) – as opposed to the pathē – judges
what to pursue and what to avoid. This confusion is all the more surprising give that Aristocles himself
provides statements by Epicurus which make clear the hedonist motivation for this doctrine: ‘It is
better to withstand these pains in order for us to enjoy greater pleasures’ (ἄμεινόν ἐστιν ὑπομεῖναι
τούσδε τινὰς τοὺς πόνους ὅπως ἡσθείημεν ἡδονὰς μείζους) and ‘It is advantageous to forgo these
pleasures so that we do not suffer more distressing pains’ (συμφέρει τῶνδέ τινων ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν
ἡδονῶν, ἵνα μὴ ἀλγῶμεν ἀλγηδόνας χαλεπωτέρας). Aristocles seems caught between trying to attack
the consistency of Epicurus’ hedonism, and trying to argue that Epicurus too relies on reason (sc.
rather than feelings) in matters of choice and avoidance. Even this latter criticism is ill-aimed. Reason
is the instrument by which an Epicurean can weigh up alternative courses of action, but they are
always evaluated in terms of resulting pleasure and pain.
At Fin. 1.48 Torquatus draws a further consequence from this explan-
ation of hedonistic prudential reasoning:
ex quo intellegitur nec intemperantiam propter se esse fugiendam, temper-
antiamque expetendam non quia voluptates fugiat sed quia maiores
consequatur.
It is understood from this that intemperance is not to be avoided for its own
sake, and temperance is to be pursued not because it avoids pleasures but
because it pursues greater ones.
A critic of hedonism could otherwise have pointed to the Epicureans’
approval of this sort of reasoning to argue that they are in fact, and contrary
to their hedonist principles, praising the avoidance of pleasures for its own
sake. After all, they do agree that sometimes it is right to forgo pleasures.
Torquatus here makes it clear that although the Epicureans do indeed
recommend temperance, they do so not because there is anything intrinsi-
cally valuable in forgoing pleasures. Rather, the temperance they promote is
an instrument towards the promotion of greater pleasure overall.
[2b] and [2c] also make clear another facet of Epicurus’ theory.
Sometimes an agent will forgo a pleasure because of the pains which follow
from it. Sometimes he will suffer discomforts in order to secure the pleasures
which follow from those discomforts.11 Importantly, Epicurus is interested
in the causal connections between pleasures and pains: pleasures which
produce pains, and pains which produce pleasures. He is concerned with
the consequences of choices of action, and especially the long-term effects of
choices which at first glance appear either to be consistent with hedonism
but are indirectly opposed to the maximisation of pleasure, or which appear
to be inconsistent with hedonism but indirectly produce the maximisation
of pleasure.
It emerges that in order to perform the correct ‘calculation’ the ideal
Epicurean agent will have to have a clear and comprehensive understanding
of the various causal relationships between objects of pursuit and avoidance
and subsequent effects. In order to assess correctly a particular course of
action he will need to be able to foresee the likely consequences of each
11
Cf. Cic. Fin. 1.32: ‘For no one rejects or hates or avoids pleasure itself because it is pleasant, but
because there follow from it great pains . . . Nor is there indeed anyone who loves, pursues or wishes to
obtain pain itself, because it is a pain, but only because sometimes circumstances are such that he
might pursue some great pleasure through toil and pain’ (nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas
sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores . . . neque porro quisquam est, qui
dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora
incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaeret voluptatem).
choice. How far into the future such foresight must reach is not clear and
presumably will depend upon the sort of choice under consideration. When
deciding what to eat for lunch I need not look very far ahead, but when
choosing a particular career I may need to take into account the whole of my
lifetime. Any wrong decisions about such choices can therefore have one or
both of the following causes. First, it may be that the agent incorrectly
assesses the amount or duration of pleasure and pain brought about by the
object of pursuit or avoidance or of any consequent pleasure or pain.
Second, it is possible that the agent is mistaken in his assessment of the
likely consequences of any choice. Glancing ahead to section [4] once again,
there may be a distinction between the two instruments by which the
Epicurean is said to regulate his choice-making: symmetrēsis and blepsis.
The first of these is the faculty by which the agent compares and evaluates
various outcomes. And blepsis is the faculty by which he considers and
foresees the various chains of consequence which follow on from the
individual choices, recognising the possible advantages and disadvantages
which follow from each. Only if both of these faculties are employed
correctly will the correct decision knowingly be made.
Epicurus does not stress the second possible source of error (the lack of
foresight of the consequences of a particular choice), but it is a clear
implication of his brief presentation that an awareness of such ‘rules of
consequence’ is an important part of the pattern of practical decision
making. It is also noteworthy that in its predecessor – Plato, Prot. 354e–
357e – the concern is entirely with the relative assessment of individual
potential objects of pursuit, and the distortion which temporal distance
creates. This new emphasis on the consequences of particular choices is an
important addition to Epicurus’ version of the theory.12
There are signs also in this brief passage that Epicurus has thought about
other possible objections. We noted in discussing the Protagoras that it
might be thought that such systems require an impossible form of quanti-
tative precision in the assessment of the value of the pleasures and pains
under consideration.13 No quantitative precision is required by Epicurus’
12
Cf. Cic. Fin. 1.47: Torquatus describes those who mistakenly opt for present blandishments as
‘conquered and overcome by the apparent hope of pleasure’ (victi et debilitati obiecta specie voluptatis).
Their mistake is compounded by a lack of foresight (nec . . . provident) concerning the consequences
of their actions. Compare 1.48, which similarly notes those who are minded to pursue pleasures that
do not produce subsequent pains, retain their judgement and are not overcome by pleasures. These
people often obtain the greatest pleasure by forgoing pleasures (qui autem ita frui voluptatibus, ut nulli
propter eas consequantur dolores, et qui suum iudicium retinent, ne voluptate victi faciant id, quod sentiant
non esse faciendum, ii voluptatem maximam adipiscuntur praetermittenda voluptate).
13
See e.g. Taylor 1991, 197.
model in the sense that the task does not involve assessing various courses of
action by assigning to each of them some unit of pleasure-production.
Rather, the question is one of preference between different courses of
action. Plato termed the particular skill involved in assessing courses of
action a tekhnē metrētikē. Epicurus, however, in section [4] uses a more
specific term: symmetrēsis. The prefix (sym-) makes clear that the process
envisaged is not the measurement of one choice and then the measurement
of another, but rather a comparative sizing up of two or more possibilities
against one another. There is no need, for example, to assign a quantity of
‘hedons’ to each of the various possibilities before making a comparative
assessment of which is the more pleasant. Instead, they are to be compared
immediately against one another for their chances of producing the desired
result. Epicurus’ use of the word symmetrēsis is a clear signal that he wishes to
stress the thoroughly comparative nature of the procedure.14
Indeed, the metaphor introduced in section [1] of a yardstick (kanōn),
which also is put to use in Epicurean epistemological theory, confirms this
approach. It should not be understood to imply any quantitative assessment
(and if the translation ‘yardstick’ encourages such an understanding then it
is misleading) since a kanōn seems originally to have been something like a
straight-edge. A kanōn is a standard against which things are compared and
evaluated accordingly.15 At NE 3.4 1113a31–3 Aristotle uses the term in a
metaphorical way similar to that found in Epicurus:16
καθ’ ἑκάστην γὰρ ἕξιν ἴδιά ἐστι καλὰ καὶ ἡδέα, καὶ διαφέρει πλεῖστον ἴσως ὁ
σπουδαῖος τῷ τἀληθὲς ἐν ἑκάστοις ὁρᾶν, ὥσπερ κανὼν καὶ μέτρον αὐτῶν ὤν.
For according to each disposition there are particular goods and pleasures,
and perhaps the good man is especially good at seeing the truth in each, being
like a standard and measure of them.
Clearly, the idea here is not that the good man is able to quantify these
goods, nor that he must serve in some sense as a unit of measure for such
things. Rather, in each case what the good man determines to be good and
pleasant is in fact good and pleasant. He and his conception of value should
serve as a correct standard for any other evaluation. By comparing our
conceptions against those of the good man and aligning them with his, we
can be sure of being right. This model of the kanōn as a standard or
14
It is not clear that the Protagoras requires or implies quantitative precision either, of course, but
Epicurus has certainly been explicit in casting the procedure he envisages in simple comparative
terms. Annas 1993, 334–5 and n. 3, agrees that Epicurus does not intend to offer a quantitative calculus
but seems to think that in this passage (and this passage alone) he writes as if he does.
15
See Striker 1996b, 31–3. 16 And compare NE 5.10 1137b29–31.
touchstone is also at work in Epicurean epistemology. By remaining con-
sistent with the content of sense perceptions, pathē, and prolēpseis, we can
ensure that any beliefs we infer are reliable (Ep. Hdt. 38, 63). Again there is
no notion of absolute quantification, only of the use of an agreed standard
of relative assessment.
Of course, there remains the problem that two pleasures may not be
directly comparable. If the two pleasures under consideration differ both in
intensity and in duration (i.e. the choice is between a shorter but greater
pleasure and a longer but lesser pleasure), then how can a choice be made
between them? Nothing in the brief passage from the Letter to Menoeceus
even alludes to this possibility, nor is there any extant discussion of the
problem in other surviving Epicurean sources. On that basis, not only are
we in no position to conclude that Epicurus did in fact consider and discuss
the issue, we are also – and for the same reasons – in no position to declare
that he did not, or could not.
Apart from Epicurus’ own writings, other sources expand on the
demands and methods required by such prudential reasoning and also
outline various ways in which people might fail to maximise pleasure in
this way. In Cicero’s Fin. 1.33, for example, the Epicurean Torquatus offers a
criticism of people who make mistakes in such choices.
at vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis
praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas moles-
tias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa
qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga.
On the other hand, we denounce and think worthy of the greatest opprobrium
those who through the enticements of present pleasures are led astray and
corrupted. Blinded by desire they fail to see the pains and discomforts which
they are going to face. Similarly blameworthy are those who desert their duties
and chores through mental weakness, i.e. in flight from toils and pains.
Torquatus does mention the attraction of present pleasures, but the emphasis
here is on a lack of foresight and a lack of awareness of the consequences of
certain choices.17 The Epicureans endorse the general assumption that Socrates
is keen to press in the Protagoras that the damaging desire for present pleasures
ought to be understood as a cognitive failure; the people being criticised here are
mistaken in pursuing a lesser but apparently greater pleasure over what is
genuinely preferable. We might nevertheless contrast the way in which present
pleasures are here said to ‘blind’ the agent to later but greater pleasures that he
17
Cf. Cic. Fin. 1.47.
might otherwise attain with the metaphor from the Protagoras of the ‘power of
appearance’ leading people astray. While for Socrates the danger is that people,
as it were, are overly impressed by the sight of pleasures, for Torquatus – as we
might expect from an Epicurean committed to the truth of all sense impres-
sions – the metaphor has a different force: we would act rightly if only we could
see clearly the various pleasures available.
A work sometimes attributed to Philodemus, perhaps entitled On Choices
and Avoidances (PHerc. 1251), includes one passage which indicates that
there was something of a disagreement on this matter between different
members of the Epicurean school.
[ὃ | διὰ] τὰ π[ε]ρὶ τῶ[ν] τεττάρω[ν εἰ|ρ]η̣μέν̣α λέγεται, το[ῦ] τὴ[ν
περί]|λη̣ψιν τὴν περὶ τῶν κυρι[ωτ]ά̣ |[τ]ων καὶ τὴν μνήμην π̣[ολ]|λὰ
συμβάλλεσθαι πρ̣ὸς τὰς | οὔσας αἱρέσεις καὶ φύγας οὐ|κ̣ ἴσου τιθεμένου,
καθάπερ | ἐξεδέξαντό τινες ἀγροί|κως, τῶι τινας ἀναφέρε̣ σ|θαι τῶν αἱρέσεων
καὶ φυ̣γῶν | ἐπὶ τὰς περὶ τούτων ἀτα|ραξίας, ἀλλὰ τῶι κ[α]τ̣ ορθοῦσ|θαι μὲν
αὐτὰς τοῖς τέλεσι | τοῖς τῆς φύσεως παραμ̣ ε|τ[ρ]ούντων . . . (XI.5–20)
This is said because of what has been stated about the four cardinal princi-
ples; for the thesis that the understanding and the memorisation of the
cardinal tenets contribute greatly to actual choices and avoidances is not
equal to claiming that some choices and avoidances are traced back to the
states of tranquillity concerning them [sc. the cardinal tenets] – as some have
clumsily stated – but to claiming that they [sc. the choices and avoidances]
are accomplished successfully when we measure them by the ends laid down
by nature . . . (trans. Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan).
Here the author agrees with some unnamed but unsophisticated opponents
that a memorisation of the four cardinal doctrines, the tetrapharmakos, is an
essential and powerful tool for producing happiness. However, he does not
agree that the cardinal doctrines are directly relevant merely for the pro-
duction of tranquillity about the subjects which they specifically address.
Presumably he means the view that they are useful merely in that they
remove fear of the gods or death or for the chance of avoiding pain. Instead,
he claims that they also can be used in constructing choices concerning what
to pursue and what to avoid – choices always taken with a view to the
connate goal of life.18 The author unfortunately does not, at least in the
surviving text, elaborate on how he envisages this practical application.
There is one further piece of evidence for the Epicurean conception of this
sort of reasoning. Part of Diogenes of Oinoanda’s enormous Epicurean
inscription describes how most people are not convinced by the Epicurean
18
See Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan 1995, 48–51, 160–6.
claim that the pleasures of the soul are greater and more valuable than those of
the body.
ἀλλ’ ὅταν μὲν ἐν τ̣ αῖς | σωματικαῖς ἀλγηδόσι | τυνχάνῃ τις, φησὶ ταύ|τας τῶν
ψυχικῶν εἶναι | μείζονας, ὅταν δ’ ἐν | [ταῖς ψυχικαῖς, ἐκείνων] | μ̣ [ε]ί̣ [ζονας
εἶναί φησι] | ταύτας. τ̣ [ῶν γὰρ ἀπόν]|των αἰεὶ τὰ [παρόντα πι]|θανώτερα
κα̣[ὶ ἐπίδοξος] | ἕκαστός ἐστιν ἢ̣ δ̣[ι’ ἀνάν]|κην ἢ διὰ ἡδονὴν τῷ̣ | κατέχοντι
αὐτὸν πά̣ |θει τὴν ὑπεροχὴν ἀπ̣[ο]|δεδωκέναι. σοφὸς | δὲ ἀνὴρ τὸ
δυσεπιλό̣ |γιστον τοῦτο τοῖς πολ̣ |λοῖς ἐξ ἄλλων τε ἀν[α]|λογιζεται
πολλῶν . . . (fr. 44.ii.10–iii.14)
Instead, when someone encounters bodily pains, he says that these are
greater than those of the soul; and when [he encounters those of the soul
he says that] they [are greater than the others. For] what [is present is]
invariably more convincing [than what is absent], and each person is [likely],
either through [necessity] or through pleasure, to confer pre-eminence on
the feeling which has hold of him. However, this matter, which is difficult for
ordinary people to gauge, a wise man calculates on the basis of many
factors . . . (trans. M. F. Smith).
Unfortunately the text breaks off before Diogenes can tell us just how the
Epicurean wise man manages to perform this difficult task and fr. 45 –
which Smith suggests follows on directly – is extremely badly preserved.
Nevertheless Diogenes offers some clues. First, he offers a version of the
observation that pleasures which are at hand seem to be more valuable than
those which are more distant. In this case, he uses the principle to character-
ise the unreflective majority as inconstant in their assessment of the relative
merits of bodily and psychic pleasures. At any given moment, the pleasure
they are currently experiencing appears to be the most valuable, simply as a
result of its proximity. Second, Diogenes is the first Epicurean source to
note that the task of the wise man in counteracting and mitigating this
tendency is a difficult one. Furthermore, the adjective he uses to describe
the task, dysepilogiston – coupled with the related verb analogizetai – suggests
that the procedure to be followed – although difficult – is one of rational
calculation and comparative evaluation.19
The limits of prudential reasoning

The brief account of prudential reasoning in the Letter to Menoeceus offers a
boldly optimistic account of how, through clear foresight and understanding
19
See Schofield 1996, esp. 229. Schofield surveys appearances of epilogismos and its cognates in
Epicurean texts and concludes that the primary significance is that of ‘comparative appraisal’.
coupled with an ability to evaluate different options comparatively, we might
be able to arrange our choices to maximise pleasure over time. The procedure
being recommended involves the imaginative consideration and comparison
of different possible future experiences and therefore – as we have noticed
before – involves considerations of our future preferences and desires. This
might be problematic, particularly for accounts which advocate general
neutrality with regard to future pleasures and pains such that the different
temporal location of these experiences is irrelevant to their respective values.20
There is no explicit reference in the text of the Letter to Menoeceus to any
specific time range across which this sort of comparison of goods is to be
exercised. I assume, therefore, that Epicurus’ account is intended to be
flexible. In some contexts the relevant decision will concern different
options and their consequences in only the next few minutes or hours.
But sometimes it will concern years, even a whole lifetime. Kyria Doxa 16
certainly claims that logismos, which in this context is apparently a reasoning
capacity able to direct and guide the most important facets of a life, is a
faculty which operates throughout one’s life.21 Epicurus bases much of his
discussion of the reasons for prudential action on the thought that there
always should be an overarching desire to promote one’s natural good. The
pursuit of ataraxia is constant and should underpin any other desires an
agent may conceive. The desire for ataraxia is more akin to a general
principle of prudential reasoning: that one should always act in one’s best
interests. The pursuit of ataraxia is the Epicurean specification of what is in
fact in one’s best interests.
An Epicurean must always ensure that any beliefs he does conceive are
consistent with this natural and necessary drive for mental painlessness.
Certainly, an Epicurean may conceive new desires – he may decide to travel
to Lampsacus or write a new poem – but these are all geared towards the
fulfilment of this overarching desire and are therefore in this sense inter-
changeable. If they do come into conflict, therefore, the conflict is not a
serious one. They will certainly never be in conflict with the Epicurean’s
one major concern. This final goal is so dominant, in fact, that it may be
seen as the only project to which the Epicurean is intensely dedicated; all
20
The Epicureans hold, in broad terms, a common-sense view of personal identity, although this is to
some extent complicated by consequences of their atomist cosmology – consequences which I have
discussed elsewhere. See Warren 2001c.
21
KD 16: ‘Chance hinders the wise man only to a small degree, but reason has arranged the greatest and
most important matters and does and will manage them throughout his whole life’ (βραχέα σοφῷ
τύχη παρεμπίπτει, τὰ δὲ μέγιστα καὶ κυριώτατα ὁ λογισμὸς διῴκηκε καὶ κατὰ τὸν συνεχῆ χρόνον
τοῦ βίου διοικεῖ καὶ διοικήσει).
other desires and projects are instrumental and subordinate to that goal.
The upshot of all this is that, once someone has become a committed
Epicurean and has arranged his desires as Epicurus recommends, there is no
reason at all for any of those goals and desires to alter as the Epicurean ages.
We might object by insisting that the projects of a young man are quite
unlike those of an elderly person and, moreover, that this is how things
ought to be. This stance is often captured by talking about the ‘shape’ of a
life, a conception which not only embraces this idea that certain projects are
appropriate for certain stages in a life but also includes the notion that the
overall goodness of a life is not provided merely by the sum of momentary
states of wellbeing. An important additional factor is the supervening
structure and narrative shape of a person’s life.22 Epicurus, however, claims
that so far as the desires appropriate for attaining eudaimonia are concerned,
there is no difference at all between stages in a life. Young and old alike may
attain happiness by removing pain and discarding unnatural and unneces-
sary desires. In that respect, an Epicurean life does not necessarily have a
narrative shape. A good life for an Epicurean is a life without pain. And the
beliefs which best promote that particular end are the same no matter how
old one is. An Epicurean, for the whole of his or her life, will have the same
overarching desire and any contrary beliefs and desires which were held
before becoming an Epicurean are discarded as false or groundless.
οὐ νέος μακαριστὸς ἀλλὰ γέρων βεβιωκὼς καλῶς· ὁ γὰρ νέος ἀκμῇ πολὺς
ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης ἑτεροφρονῶν πλάζεται· ὁ δὲ γέρων καθάπερ ἐν λιμένι τῷ
γήρᾳ καθώρμικεν, τὰ πρότερον δυσελπιστούμενα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀσφαλεῖ
κατακλείσας χάριτι. (SV 17)
We should think blessed not the youth but the old man who has lived well.
For a young man in his prime is manipulated and caused to wander by
chance. But the old man has docked in old age as if in a port and has secured
those goods formerly despaired of with a sure joy.
The only relevant criterion for the comparative assessment of the lives of the
young and the old is that the former have a greater period of life ahead of
them and therefore there is a greater opportunity for chance to take a hand
and upset matters. The young person is also liable to have his head turned
22
See Bigelow, Campbell, and Pargetter 1990; Velleman 1991; Feldman 2004, 124–41, and – with
reference to Epicureanism – Striker 1988 and Warren 2004, 115–53. Compare also Rawls 1971, 420–1
and Slote 1983, 24 on whether we might prefer goods to be in the future rather than the past because
we take more pleasure in anticipating than recollecting goods. The Epicureans, I suggest, see no such
asymmetry; indeed, they might prefer the pleasures to be had from the security of goods being in the
past to the uncertainty of possible goods in the future.
and lose sight of what is valuable. What the young man may despair of
achieving in the future, the old man has already achieved.23 To a degree,
therefore, Epicurus agrees with the intuition behind the old maxim ‘Call no
man happy until he is dead.’ The young person, however well he is doing,
might nevertheless be anxious about his future and be pained by worrying
that he will fail to achieve what he hopes for. And there is always the danger
that even when one is an old and successful man, chance will take a hand
and overturn the original assessment of the good of one’s life.24 But
Epicurus is not committed to the thought that a young man cannot yet
be happy simply because he is young and has not yet lived a full and mature
life. Indeed, the Epicureans sometimes cite the example of one especially
prodigious student, Pythocles, who was thought to have attained happiness
at a very young age.25
Here we should contrast the view of the competing Hellenistic hedonists:
the Cyrenaics. The state of the surviving evidence for the Cyrenaics is not
good. Above all, we are without any accounts written by the Cyrenaics
themselves of their view of a good life. It is also often difficult to disentangle
two probably distinct phases of Cyrenaicism: that propounded by
Aristippus ‘the Elder’ and that propounded by his grandson, who was
also – infuriatingly – named Aristippus. It is sometimes claimed that
Cyrenaicism did not become a full-blown hedonistic theory until the time
of the younger Aristippus. It is also not always clear to which Aristippus our
sources are referring, and even discussions of the elder Aristippus may be
contaminated with the philosophy of the later Cyrenaics. (This may be the
case for DL 2.66.)26
23
Here τὰ δυσελπιστούμενα τῶν ἀγαθῶν must mean ‘the goods that the young man expects not to
achieve’ (but which the old man did achieve). The young man is anxious because he expects not to get
them; the old man takes pleasure in recalling that he did achieve them. Contrast ἀπελπίζωμεν in Ep.
Men. 127 (cited below) and cf. Damascius, In Phileb. §147, which categorises δυσελπιστία as the
positive expectation that some harm will be incurred.
24
This is the thought lying behind the famous discussion between Solon and Croesus related by Arist.
NE 1.9 1100a4–1.10 1101a21. Aristotle insists that happiness requires not only complete virtue but also
a complete life (although he too resists the idea that this latter commits one to saying that only at or
after death can someone rightly be called happy).
25
See Philodemus, De Morte XII.36–XIII.1 and Plut. Adv. Col. 1124c. This view also helps Epicurus to
claim that death cannot be premature, provided one has attained the Epicurean telos. See Warren
2000 and 2004, 109–59. Diogenes of Oinoanda seems to have composed a treatise On Old Age (frs.
137–77 Smith) but the remains are extremely fragmentary and what does survive indicates that
Diogenes was keen to insist that old age was no different from other stages of life, certainly as regards
the chances of becoming sick, decrepit, or handicapped.
26
See Giannantoni 1958, 55–73; Annas 1993, 229; Tsouna-McKirahan 1994, 377–82; Long 1999, 632–9;
Zilioli 2012, 17–46; Warren 2014.
A common conception of the ethical theory of the Cyrenaic school holds
that a Cyrenaic lives only for present pleasure and does not take into
account any view of his life as a whole.27 Diogenes Laertius suggests that
this is just what Aristippus the Elder did:
ἀπέλαυε μὲν γὰρ ἡδονῆς τῶν παρόντων, οὐκ ἐθήρα δὲ πόνῳ τὴν ἀπόλαυσιν
τῶν οὐ παρόντων. (DL 2.66)
For, he revelled in the pleasure of the present and did not toil in seeking out
the enjoyment of what was not present.
Epicurus might have agreed with this in part. Vatican Saying 14 also tells us
not to lose present pleasure in chasing more remote goals. Further, Epicurus
would advise us to take into account the amount of toil involved in seeking
out other pleasures: if the amount of work involved is not sufficiently offset
by the rewards, then do not bother. Aristippus here emphasises the pain and
toil involved (πόνῳ θηρᾶν): a characterisation no doubt designed to dis-
suade anyone from such a clearly arduous, difficult, and quite possibly
fruitless search. If the process of pursuing non-present pleasures is described
in this way, it is easy to see why a hedonist might be attracted to Aristippus’
view.
Cyrenaics appear to recommend that we concentrate on enjoying the
present rather than toiling in the promise of some future benefit or being
overly concerned with what is in the past. But their reasons for such a
recommendation are less clear. I think that the Cyrenaic concentration on
the present is the result of their generally pessimistic view of the chances of
being able to employ prudential reasoning effectively; their position is
therefore primarily a pragmatic one. Even from the little evidence we
have, it is clear that the Cyrenaics who followed the younger Aristippus –
and who would have been best known to Epicurus – were not entirely
dismissive of practical reasoning. The Cyrenaics themselves, we are told,
praised phronēsis as an instrument of providing pleasure, just as the
Epicureans did.28 All the same, they did not place a great deal of confidence
in the chances of such practical reasoning guaranteeing a happy life. And
they were aware of the consequences of their position, particularly for the
possibility of their hedonism’s providing a route to eudaimonia.
27
See Annas 1993, 229–36; O’Keefe 2002.
28
DL 2.91: ‘They say that wisdom is not good per se, nor is it choiceworthy per se, but only for its
consequences’ (τὴν φρόνησιν ἀγαθὸν μὲν εἶναι λέγουσιν, οὐ δι’ ἑαυτὴν δὲ αἱρετήν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰ ἐξ
αὐτῆς περιγιγνόμενα).
διὸ καὶ καθ’ αὑτὴν αἱρετῆς οὔσης τῆς ἡδονῆς τὰ ποιητικὰ ἐνίων ἡδονῶν
ὀχληρὰ πολλάκις ἐναντιοῦσθαι. ὡς δυσκολώτατον αὐτοῖς φαίνεσθαι τὸν
ἀθροισμὸν τῶν ἡδονῶν εὐδαιμονίαν ποιουσῶν. (DL 2.90)
Hence, while pleasure is per se choiceworthy, objects which produce some
pleasures often result in opposing pains. Thus it appears to them that the
collection of pleasures which produce happiness is a most difficult thing.
While the Epicureans counsel us to avoid or eliminate those pleasures that
lead to later greater pains and always keep an eye on the long term and on
eudaimonia, the Cyrenaics simply conclude that such pleasures show that
eudaimonia is a difficult (and perhaps even impossible) state to attain.29
They may even have allowed, in disagreement with all the other Hellenistic
schools, that the wise man does not necessarily live in a permanently
pleasant state; he lives pleasantly only ‘for the most part’ (DL 2.91). The
collection (athroismos) of pleasures is further explained at DL 2.88. Since the
Cyrenaics recognise only episodic pleasure (merikē hēdonē) and hold only
these to be the good, eudaimonia – a happy life – is choiceworthy only in so
far as it is a life which contains such pleasures. The episodic pleasures
themselves are the Cyrenaics’ primary object of pursuit. A good life is
merely a collection (athroismos) of such pleasures.30
Some recent accounts of time-relative theories of self-interest rely upon a
conception of personal identity which erodes the ‘common sense’ view of an
agent persisting throughout a life and therefore rejects the assumption that
the temporal stages in the same agent’s life must all be taken into account in
every rational choice. One explanation of the Cyrenaics’ emphasis on the
pleasures of the present argues that this view was based upon a reductive
view of personal identity.31 But there is no evidence for any such conception
of the self in the extant sources for Cyrenaicism, and what the sources do
present is incompatible with such an account. The Cyrenaics present no
doubts at all about the fact that an agent should conceive of himself as a
29
Hegesias may have taken the extremely pessimistic stance that since happiness is unattainable and
pain inevitable, a hedonist would do best by committing suicide. His lectures were banned by
Ptolemy (Cic. Tusc. 1.83). See Matson 1998. Compare Sidgwick 1907, 130 n.: ‘[T]he conclusion that
life is always on the whole painful would not prove it to be unreasonable for a man to aim ultimately
at minimising pain, if this is still admitted to be possible; though it would, no doubt, render
immediate suicide, by some painless process, the only reasonable course for a perfect egoist – unless
he looked forward to another life.’
30
This is the subject of some disagreement. See, for example, Laks 1993, 30–6, for the view that the
Cyrenaics are not eudaimonists stricto sensu (cf. Striker 1993, 17). Tsouna 1998, 134–5, is less inclined to
see a Cyrenaic rejection of eudaimonism. She argues this at greater length in Tsouna 2002.
31
Irwin 1991. He does recognise (69) that the extant texts do not ascribe this position to the Cyrenaics
explicitly. Zilioli 2012, 113–20 and 161–3, offers a similar interpretation; compare Warren 2014, 416–21.
single, temporally extended, and persistent individual.32 There is one par-
ticularly important and interesting text worth considering in detail.
καὶ ἥ γε Κυρηναικὴ καλουμένη ἀπ’ ᾿Αριστίππου τοῦ Σωκρατικοῦ τὴν ἀρχὴν
λαβοῦσα, ὃς ἀποδεξάμενος τὴν ἡδυπάθειαν ταύτην τέλος εἶναι ἔφη καὶ ἐν
αὐτῇ τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν βεβλῆσθαι· καὶ μονόχρονον αὐτὴν εἶναι,
παραπλησίως τοῖς ἀσώτοις οὔτε τὴν μνήμην τῶν γεγονυιῶν ἀπολαύσεων
πρὸς αὑτὸν ἡγούμενος οὔτε τὴν ἐλπίδα τῶν ἐσομένων, ἀλλ’ ἑνὶ μόνῳ τὸ
ἀγαθὸν κρίνων τῷ παρόντι, τὸ δὲ ἀπολελαυκέναι καὶ ἀπολαύσειν οὐδὲν
νομίζων πρὸς αὑτόν, τὸ μὲν ὡς οὐκέτ᾿ ὄν, τὸ δὲ οὔπω καὶ ἄδηλον.
(Athenaeus, Deipnosophistai 12, 544a–b)
And the so-called Cyrenaic sect which took its cue from the Socratic
Aristippus [also takes this view]. He accepted that this feeling of pleasure
was the goal of life and said that happiness was to be found in it. He also said
this feeling was unitemporal, and just like luxury-seekers he thought that the
memory of past pleasures and the hope of those to come are of no concern to
him, but he judged the good solely in the present. He thought that ‘having
enjoyed’ or ‘enjoying in the future’ were nothing to him since the first is no
longer, the second not yet and unclear.
Since, according to this report, Aristippus clearly did consider that he had
experienced past pleasures and would experience future ones there is no doubt
in his mind that there is a persistent individual across these times. It is also
clear that Aristippus the Elder thought that past and future pleasures were
‘nothing to him’ and the passage offers a number of possible reasons for that
claim. First, Aristippus offers what looks like a metaphysical analysis of past
and future pleasures – the former are no longer and the future are not yet.
This is probably intended to cast aspersions on the reality – at present or from
the present perspective – of those past and future pleasures. Their existence is
compromised by their temporal location and they are therefore not possible
sources of value. Third, in addition to making future pleasures ‘not yet’ he
claims that enjoyment of future pleasures is ‘unclear’. This can plausibly be
interpreted as the familiar claim that by being in the future these pleasures are
not certain to occur, and therefore no clear prospect of them can be formed
and used as a factor in present decision making. (Past pleasures are not
‘unclear’; they most certainly did happen but their being in the past is
nevertheless sufficient to rule them out as present sources of pleasure.) The
possible reasons for rejecting temporal neutrality are therefore complex and
several, but they certainly make no reference to questions of personal identity.
32
Tsouna 1998, 132–3, collects the relevant evidence. She argues further against Irwin’s interpretation in
Tsouna 2002. Cf. O’Keefe 2002, 398–401.
Second, Aristippus characterises pleasures as unitemporal (monochronos).
This means that pleasures can be enjoyed only in the present – simulta-
neously with the occurrence of the object of the pleasure.33 When Diogenes
Laertius describes the difference of opinion between the Epicureans and the
Cyrenaics on this matter (2.89–90), he offers an additional piece of infor-
mation which explains why Aristippus should characterise pleasure in this
way. According to Diogenes, the Cyrenaics confine pleasure to the present
since ‘the motion of the soul is dispersed by the passage of time’ (ἐκλύεσθαι
γὰρ τῷ χρόνῳ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς κίνημα). The motion of the soul in question is
precisely the ‘pleasant feeling’ (ἡδυπάθεια) which Aristippus thinks is the
telos. The Cyrenaics, of course, recognise only what Epicurus dubbed
‘kinetic’ pleasures and these – so we are told – are not enduring. The
conception of pleasure as ‘unitemporal’ will not, however, sufficiently
explain the Cyrenaics’ stance on the limits of prudential reasoning. A
more optimistic assessment of our chances of reliably planning for the
future might also accept the Cyrenaics’ conception of pleasure (it is, after
all, a conception which is certainly more intuitively appealing than the
Epicurean version) and simply argue that it is in an agent’s interests to plan
in order to enjoy as many of such pleasures as possible.
In that case, let us look elsewhere for the Cyrenaics’ reasons for advoca-
ting a concentration on the present. In particular, Aristippus’ assertion that
future enjoyment is ‘not yet and unclear’ deserves greater attention. Again, a
comparison with the Epicureans is helpful. In the account of prudential
reasoning at Ep. Men. 129–30, Epicurus overlooked or chose not to dwell
upon an additional important factor in the comparison of goods in the near
and more distant future, namely the obvious fact that the more distant
future is less certain than the nearer future. (I mean here ‘certain’ primarily
in an epistemological sense: we can at present be less sure what will occur in
the further than the nearer future since there is a greater intervening period
between that time and the present in which various unforeseen things might
happen.)34 However, there is plenty of evidence to show that Epicurus was
well aware of the vagaries of chance and indeed offered some advice for how
the recognition of this fact should affect one’s decision making.
33
Tsouna 1998, 16: ‘[I]t is one and the same pleasure that occupies the time unit of its occurrence (unity
requirement) and . . . this pleasure that we are experiencing is unrelated to other times present or
future (singularity requirement); it has no prospective or retrospective value, and can only be enjoyed
while it is actually occurring.’
34
Epicurus denies the bivalence of certain future-tensed propositions as part of his avoidance of (logical)
determinism. In that case, the further future (which state of affairs depends upon various factors
which are at present not yet true or false) is indeed metaphysically as well as epistemologically less
certain than the nearer future.
Some of Epicurus’ pithy ethical maxims may give the impression that he
too advocated a carpe diem attitude. The future is indeed uncertain, so it is
best to gather as much pleasure as possible while it is available. For example:
γεγόναμεν ἅπαξ, δὶς δὲ οὐκ ἔστι γενέσθαι· δεῖ δὲ τὸν αἰῶνα μηκέτι εἶναι· σὺ
δὲ οὐκ ὢν τῆς αὔριον κύριος ἀναβάλλῃ τὸ χαῖρον· ὁ δὲ βίος μελλησμῷ
παραπόλλυται καὶ εἷς ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἀσχολούμενος ἀποθνῄσκει. (SV 14)
We have come to be once, and it is not possible to be born twice. For ever
after, it is necessary that we will be no more. But you, not being the master of
tomorrow, throw away what is pleasant. Life is destroyed by procrastination,
and each single one of us dies deprived of leisure.
This brief saying combines the assertion that ‘you only live once’ with the
claim that the future is – at least to some extent – beyond anyone’s control
(οὐκ ὢν τῆς αὔριον κύριος). In that case, the reasonable conclusion is that
procrastination (mellēsmos) is a foolish policy.35 Nevertheless, Epicurus does
not claim that the future is entirely out of our control. He insists that
although the contingencies of life must be taken into account there is a
degree to which future-directed planning can affect and determine future
happiness. While the future may not be wholly ours to control, it is not
entirely beyond our abilities to predict and direct what will occur.
μνημονευτέον δὲ ὡς τὸ μέλλον <οὔτε πάντως ἡμέτερον> οὔτε πάντως οὐχ
ἡμέτερον, ἵνα μήτε πάντως προσμένωμεν ὡς ἐσόμενον μήτε ἀπελπίζωμεν ὡς
πάντως οὐκ ἐσόμενον. (Ep. Men. 127)
Remember that the future is neither entirely ours, nor entirely not ours, so let
us neither be altogether confident that it will be nor despair that it will
altogether not be.
The far future may be less predictable than the near future. He asserts that
although the future is indeed uncertain we need not despair as a result and
would presumably also claim that although the further future is less certain
than the near – and to that extent should not be relied upon with the same
degree of certainty – again this is not a reason for total despair. In his
discussion of the appropriate attitude to take to the future most generally,
Epicurus takes a moderate line – reminding us that it cannot be relied on
entirely but should not be considered entirely unreliable – and this outlook
35
For further discussion of this passage see Warren 2000, 237 n. 17 and 2001c. Compare SV 35 ‘We
should not ruin what we have by desiring what we do not have, but we should bear in mind that even
what we have is a gift of fortune’ (οὐ δεῖ λυμαίνεσθαι τὰ παρόντα τῶν ἀπόντων ἐπιθυμίᾳ, ἀλλ’
ἐπιλογίζεσθαι ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα τῶν εὐκταίων ἦν). This line of thought has a good Democritean heritage.
See Democritus DK 68 b202, 224, 286.
can be applied also to decisions concerning competing goods in the more
and less remote future. Epicurus can justify this moderate confidence by
maintaining that an Epicurean should arrange his desires in such a way that
fortune has the least possible chance of frustrating them. In brief, he must
retain only natural and necessary desires, and these are sufficiently general
that they can be satisfied easily. So an Epicurean desires ‘food’, not any
particular kind of food.36
The Cyrenaics, on the other hand, have no interest in asking us to reduce
or examine our desires. Fortune, therefore, has a much greater chance of
frustrating ambitions and removing potential sources of pleasure. This is
combined with the Cyrenaics’ generally pessimistic assessment of our
chances of accurately predicting or controlling the future. In contrast with
Epicurus’ guarded optimism, Aristippus (probably Aristippus the Elder)37 is
decidedly negative.
πάνυ σφόδρα ἐρρωμένως ἐῴκει λέγειν ὁ ᾿Αρίστιππος, παρεγγυῶν τοῖς
ἀνθρώποις μήτε τοῖς παρελθοῦσιν ἐπικάμνειν μήτε τῶν ἐπιόντων
προκάμνειν· εὐθυμίας γὰρ δεῖγμα τὸ τοιοῦτο καὶ ἵλεω διανοίας ἀπόδειξις.
προσέταττε δὲ ἐφ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὴν γνώμην ἔχειν καὶ αὖ πάλιν τῆς ἡμέρας ἐπ’ ἐκείνῳ
τῷ μέρει, καθ’ ὃ ἕκαστος ἢ πράττει τι ἢ ἐννοεῖ. μόνον γὰρ ἔφασκεν ἡμέτερον
εἶναι τὸ παρόν, μήτε δὲ τὸ φθάνον μήτε τὸ προσδοκώμενον· τὸ μὲν γὰρ
ἀπολωλέναι, τὸ δὲ ἄδηλον εἶναι εἴπερ ἔσται.38 (Aelian, Varia Historia 14.6)
Aristippus seems to speak with particular conviction when he encourages
people neither to bother themselves in retrospect over what has passed, nor
to toil in prospect of things to come. For this kind of behaviour is the mark of
happiness and proof of a gracious frame of mind. He told them to pay
attention to each day as it comes and similarly to pay attention to that part of
the day in which the individual’s action or thought takes place. For he said
that only the present is ours: not what has gone, nor what is anticipated. For,
the former has perished and it is unclear if the latter will be.
With the clear injunction to ‘take each day as it comes’ this is perhaps the
best indication we have of time-relativity being embraced and promoted by
a Cyrenaic. But once again the reason given for this attitude has nothing to
do with any particular conception of pleasure, nor any particular view of
personal identity, and everything to do with their assessment that the future
is ‘uncertain’. Aristippus is simply not able to state definitively, or indeed
with the degree of certainty which would be required for some system of
36
See KD 16 and the discussion in Annas 1993, 191–200.
37
See Mannebach 1961. He takes Epic. Ep. Men. 127 to be a reply to this Cyrenaic position.
38
Note the two forms: ἐπικάμνειν and προκάμνειν. The former seems to have been coined for this
context (LSJ s.v.) in order to balance the latter.
prudential future-planning, whether things will be one way or another. In
that case the best we can do is focus on the moment and make sure that we
make the best of it we can.
Epicureans and their critics on memory, anticipation, and pleasure

Concerns for the future – fears – and painful memories of the past – regrets –
are two forms of psychic pain and distress. In this sense, memory and
anticipations might seem to be obstacles to the Epicurean goal of living a
life of ataraxia. However, it is also clear that these fears and regrets usually
stem from false beliefs about what is good and bad. People are often pained
by the fear of death, for example, even though in fact death is ‘nothing to
us’. A proper understanding of what is truly good and bad can therefore
neutralise any potentially damaging effects of memory and anticipation.
What is more, the Epicureans then make a case for the positive contribution
to our wellbeing made by our capacities for recollecting and anticipating
non-present experiences. In their account of a good and pleasant life the
Epicureans made significant use of our ability to recall past pleasures since
they asserted that we can, by recalling past pleasures and anticipating future
pleasures, offset any present physical pains and guarantee a state of pain-
lessness. They adopt what we identified earlier as a simple account of the
affective aspect of memory and anticipation – namely, that we enjoy recall-
ing past pleasures and are pained by recalling past pains, and so on – and set
this capacity to work in ensuring a present pain-free state. The Cyrenaics, in
contrast, take a stand against the dominant way of understanding the
affective aspect of introversive memory and anticipation and, furthermore,
find implausible the Epicureans’ optimism about the therapeutic value of
memories and expectations. The Epicureans, in other words, offer a picture
very much like that we found in the Philebus while the Cyrenaics, for
reasons based on their particular account of the pathē in general, reject
that picture.
The most extreme example of the Epicurean faith in the power of the
pleasures of memory comes from the biographical accounts of Epicurus
himself. He is supposed to have said on his very last day that despite serious
physical distress, he nevertheless was living without any mental pain and
therefore in a state of the highest mental pleasure – ataraxia – because he
was able to recall pleasant philosophical conversations he had previously had
with his friends.39 Epicurus manages not merely to distract himself from his
39
See DL 10.22 for Epicurus’ Letter to Idomeneus and compare the Latin version at Cic. Fin. 2.96.
Epicureans and their critics 197
current sickness; rather, he claims to be able to summon up genuine psychic
pleasure (DL 10.22; Cic. Fin. 2.96) which counterbalances the physical
distress. Recalling previous pleasant experiences is therefore a way of gen-
erating present pleasure, presumably simply because the Epicureans think
that by recalling the experiences they are reliving those past experiences in
some way, including the past pleasures.40 Since we are able to some degree
to direct what we recall and what we do not, we can deliberately call up
particular pleasant experiences as the situation demands and use the pleas-
ures that are generated to counteract any present pains.
Another context in which the Epicureans made reference to the power of
memory is in the treatment of grief. Consistent with their general stance on
the nature and value of death, they insist that it would be wrong to think
that the deceased, by being dead, is harmed in any way. However, they do
recognise that someone might nevertheless feel grief not, presumably,
because of any concern for the now deceased but because the loss of a
friend might be painful (DL 10.119). The advice they offer is distilled in
another pithy saying quoted by Plutarch at Non Posse 1105e:
ἡδὺ πανταχόθεν ἡ φίλου μνήμη τεθνηκότος.
The recollection of a dead friend is pleasant in every way.41
Is it appropriate to grieve for a dead friend? The answer appears to be that
grief of a kind is indeed appropriate and, moreover, beneficial: the recol-
lection of a deceased friend is guaranteed to bring pleasure. Most likely,
Epicurus means that whenever we deliberately recall a friend who is now
dead, the recollection will be of some pleasant experience shared with that
friend or, perhaps more generally, the recollection will be of the friendship
itself. Just as we saw Epicurus maintain that the recollection of a past
pleasant experience will generate pleasure in the present, so too we are
assured that, since the experiences while the friend was alive were pleasant, it
will be pleasant to recollect that friend and that friendship although the
friend is now dead. Any painful grief at the loss of the friend is then
supposed to be alleviated.
Such optimism is perhaps laudable. But it is difficult to share. After all,
we might instead draw a lesson from Aristotle’s account of Eumaeus’
40
For a recent discussion see Giovacchini 2007.
41
Compare Sen. Ep. Mor. 99.25 and Epic. SV 66: ‘Let us grieve for our friends not with laments but by
thinking of them’ (συμπαθῶμεν τοῖς φίλοις οὐ θρηνοῦντες ἀλλὰ φροντίζοντες). For some more
discussion of Epicurean accounts of grief see Warren 2004, 39–41; LaBarge 2012, esp. 328, and
Konstan 2013.
memories and insist that the recollection of a dead friend, at the very least,
cannot be relied upon always to be pleasant. It is likely that recalling a past
pleasant experience from that friendship will always be accompanied by the
reminder that this friend is no longer alive. At worst, we might worry that
the recollection will be painful since it will bring to one’s mind once again
how much this friendship did bring pleasure and how it is now conclusively
over – a thought that might well be painful if the friendship itself was ever
previously thought to be valuable. Of course, it is open to Epicurus to claim
that such a bitter-sweet recollection is not necessary; a good Epicurean wise
man will be able to look back and recall the friendship with pleasure and
without any painful grief that it is now over. But this might raise our
suspicions about the worth of the friendship in the first place and, in any
event, is little more than a confident assertion. Furthermore, the Epicureans
either neglected the importance of the present context of the recollection
itself which seems to have been recognised by Aristotle or they were simply
of the opinion that a clear-minded Epicurean sage would be sufficiently
adept at homing in on the pleasant aspects of any memories that he would
never be subject to unwanted distress.
In large part, the Epicurean emphasis on the power of memory and
anticipation appears to have been a response to the charge that, in identify-
ing pleasure as the good, they will have to admit that any goods we
experience are merely temporary: pleasure simply ‘flows away’ once it has
been enjoyed. If that were true, then it would jeopardise the Epicurean
claim that a sage can guarantee stable and lasting happiness given that
physical pain is to some extent an unavoidable fact of human life.42
Recollection, however, is for the Epicureans the capacity that allows us to
recall and relive past pleasures, suggesting that these pleasures are never
entirely lost and, moreover, can be used to counteract any physical pain we
encounter.
This Epicurean stance has never been found particularly plausible.43
Cicero launches an attack on it at Fin. 2.104–6 arguing, first of all, that
memory is not in our power to the extent that the Epicureans claim; some
things we would like to forget but cannot and some things we wish we could
remember but cannot. Next, he argues that there are some pains that we
ought not to forget, either because they were the result of virtuous deeds or
42
See also Cic. Tusc. 5.95; Augustine, Sermones 348.3.
43
There is an obvious plausibility to the thought that recollecting a past good that is now lost can be a
source of pain. See e.g. Aquinas, Summa Theologica 2.2.36.1; Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae 2.4.;
Dante, Inferno 5.121–3: ‘nessun maggior dolore | che ricordarsi del tempo felice | ne la miseria’. (I owe
these references to Oliver Thomas.)
Epicureans and their critics 199
because it might even be pleasant to remember past sufferings. Here, Cicero
offers his Latin version of a verse from Euripides’ Andromeda that we have
already seen used also by Aristotle in his account of memory, pleasure, and
pain in Rhet. 1.11: ‘pleasant is the memory of past sufferings’.44 Presumably
the phrase is sufficiently proverbial that we need not think of any direct
connection between the Ciceronian and Aristotelian texts but it is possible
that Cicero has taken the fragment from a critical discussion of the
Epicurean view in an Academic source.45
Another critic – Plutarch – puts his dissatisfaction with the Epicurean
view in terms that point to a more serious disagreement. We have already
looked at this passage when thinking about his general dissatisfaction with
the kinds of pleasures which he thinks the Epicureans enjoy. But it also
shows his distaste for the role the Epicureans assign in particular to mem-
ories of past pleasant experiences.
εἰ δ’ ἀκούεις αὐτῶν μαρτυρομένων καὶ βοώντων, ὡς ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ ψυχὴ τῶν
ὄντων πέφυκε χαίρειν καὶ γαληνίζειν πλὴν ἐπὶ σώματος ἡδοναῖς παρούσαις
ἢ προσδοκωμέναις, καὶ τοῦτ’ αὐτῆς τὸ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἆρ’ οὐ δοκοῦσί σοι
διεράματι τοῦ σώματος χρῆσθαι τῇ ψυχῇ, <καὶ> καθάπερ οἶνον ἐκ πονηροῦ
καὶ μὴ στέγοντος ἀγγείου τὴν ἡδονὴν διαχέοντες ἐνταῦθα καὶ παλαιοῦντες
οἴεσθαι σεμνότερόν τι ποιεῖν καὶ τιμιώτερον; καίτοι γ’ οἶνον μὲν χρόνος
διαχυθέντα τηρεῖ καὶ συνηδύνει, τῆς δ’ ἡδονῆς ἡ ψυχὴ παραλαβοῦσα τὴν
μνήμην ὥσπερ ὀσμὴν ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν φυλάσσει· ζέσασα γὰρ ἐπὶ σαρκὶ
κατασβέννυται, καὶ τὸ μνημονευόμενον αὐτῆς ἀμαυρόν ἐστι καὶ κνισῶδες,
ὥσπερ ἑώλων ὧν τις ἔπιεν ἢ ἔφαγεν ἀποτιθεμένου καὶ ταμιεύοντος ἐπινοίας
ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ χρωμένου δηλονότι ταύταις προσφάτων μὴ παρόντων.
(Non Posse 1088e–1089a)
But when you hear their loud protest that the soul is so constituted as to find
joy and tranquillity in nothing in the world but pleasures of the body either
present or anticipated, and that this is its good, do they not appear to you to
be using the soul as a decanter of the body, and to imagine that by decanting
pleasure, like wine, from a worthless and leaky vessel and leaving it to age in
its new container, they are turning it into something more respectable and
precious? Yet there is a difference: the new vessel preserves the wine that has
settled in the course of time and improves its flavour, whereas in the case of
pleasure the soul takes over and preserves the memory of it, as it were the
bouquet, and nothing else; for the pleasure effervesces in the flesh and then
44
suavis laborum est praeteritorum memoria (= Eur. fr. 133 Nauck2). Cicero comments that ‘you all know
the line in Greek’ (nostis omnes). Pace Madvig 1879 ad loc., this might mean: ‘All you Epicureans’
know the line, since then Cicero can make a subtle jibe against the Epicureans: they remember this
bon mot about memory but fail to recognise it as a counter-example to their theory.
45
The same fragment is cited at Plut. Quaest. Conv. 630e.
goes flat, and what is left of it in recollection is faint and greasy, as though a
man were to lay away and store up in himself the thoughts of yesterday’s food
and drink, resorting to these, we must suppose, when nothing fresh is at
hand (trans. Einarson and De Lacy).
Note the insistence that although a good storage jar can preserve and
even enhance the substance and flavour of a wine, memory is able to
preserve only the mere bouquet of the past pleasure. The soul cannot
repeat the full original bodily pleasure.46 The bouquet of a wine is, of
course, related to the full taste of the wine; sniffing a decanter or a
recently pulled cork will produce an experience that, despite lacking
the depth and richness of the full range of sensations involved, may
capture part of the experience of drinking the wine itself. But even so this
will fall far short of the full experience of drinking the wine. Plutarch’s
criticism is well aimed and it is easy to think of other similar examples.
Consider the pleasure of sitting outside on a lawn on a warm day. Later
in the year, perhaps on a cold November afternoon, I might think back
and recall that past experience. It might be pleasant to recall it; perhaps
the thought might lift my autumnal gloom a little. Then again, perhaps
it will make me feel worse if I also reflect upon how long ago that was and
how long it will be before I feel that warmth again. But it certainly will
not generate on that cold November afternoon the pleasure of a sunny
summer’s afternoon even if I have a ‘clear expectation’ that I might feel
such a pleasure soon enough.47
A little later, at 1091a–b, Plutarch returns to his general complaint that the
Epicureans mistakenly think that the absence of pain – particularly the
absence of bodily pain – is the greatest pleasure. (We discussed this in
Chapter 4 above.) He cites two texts to show that this is the Epicureans’
view: a passage from Metrodorus’ Against the Sophists (fr. 48 Körte) and a
sentence from an unnamed work by Epicurus himself (Usener 423).
46
See also Cic. Fin. 2.106. Here Cicero refers to Aristotle’s contempt for the epitaph of Sardanapalus.
The Syrian king, on an inscription on his tomb, boasted of taking with him all his past bodily
pleasures. Aristotle apparently retorted that it was a nonsense that a dead man could retain any
experiences at all, let alone those pleasures which, even when Sardanapalus was alive, lasted only as
long as the experiences that caused them. For Sardanapalus as the standard-bearer for a brutish kind
of hedonism see Arist. NE 1.5 1095b19–22. The criticism Cicero reports does not appear in any of our
extant Aristotelian texts.
47
Cf. Cic. Tusc. 5.73–4 for a similar point made by someone more used to suffering hot Italian
summers. Cicero cannot see how it would help someone to cool down just to remember being
surrounded by cool streams (ut si quis aestuans, cum vim caloris non facile patiatur, recordari velit sese
aliquando in Arpinati nostro gelidis fluminibus circumfusum fuisse; non enim video quo modo sedare
possint mala praesentia praeteritatae voluptates).
In between these two citations, however, Plutarch himself adds a comment
that adds something important to the Epicureans’ view. Plutarch observes
that Epicurus is claiming that the nature of the good arises from the mere
escape from evil and from the recollection (mnēmē), recognition (epilogisis),
and gratitude (kharis) that this has happened.48 It is likely that Plutarch is
paraphrasing Epicurus here – certainly, Epicurus refers to kharis in a similar
fashion at Ep. Men. 122 and in SV 17 and epilogisis is probably a piece of
Epicurean terminology49 – and together the trio of recollection, recognition,
and gratitude show how the Epicureans are interested in sometimes deliberate
consideration of one’s current state of painlessness as itself a possible source of
pleasure. Pleasure can therefore be generated through looking back and
comparing one’s current painless state with some past suffering no less than
by looking backwards or forwards when in a present state of suffering and
recalling or anticipating a later or earlier state of painlessness.
Cyrenaic recommendations
The spirit of Plutarch’s criticism would be warmly endorsed by the
Cyrenaics and we are now in a position to understand their recommenda-
tion that we should enjoy each pleasure ‘as it comes’ (DL 2.91). This is a
claim which is taken in the sources to be a criticism of the Epicurean
confidence in the power of anticipating some future pleasant event or
recalling some previous pleasant event. (DL 2.89 makes an explicit contrast
with the Epicureans.) The Cyrenaics counter by insisting that pleasure is
‘unitemporal’ (monochronos: Athenaeus 12, 544a–b; cf. Aelian, Varia
Historia 14.6). The best interpretation of this claim recalls the foundational
assertions of Cyrenaic epistemology. Pleasure and pain are pathē and there-
fore are constituted by a particular interaction between a perceiver and a
given object. A particular pleasure is both private and tied to a specific such
interaction: in the absence of either the perceiver in this particular state or
the object in this particular state that particular pleasure cannot be experi-
enced. Pathē are also unrepeatable. For example, if I take pleasure at the
thought of enjoying opening my birthday gifts later this year, I am not
48
Plut. Non Posse 1091b: ὅμοια δὲ καὶ τὰ Ἐπικούρου λέγοντος τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φύσιν ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς
φυγῆς τοῦ κακοῦ καὶ τῆς μνήμης καὶ ἐπιλογίσεως καὶ χάριτος, ὅτι τοῦτο συμβέβηκεν αὐτῷ,
γεννᾶσθαι.
49
ἐπιλόγισις is not a common word but it does occur also at Epic. Nat. 28 (PHerc. 179/1417) 13.vii.18,
viii.13 Sedley. For its meaning see Sedley 1973, 32–3, where he argues that epilogisis is the faculty of
which epilogismos is the activity (although Sedley suspects that Plutarch may have misunderstood this
distinction).
taking an advance instalment of the pleasure I will experience on that day
since my pleasure when I do open the gift will be a pathos constituted by an
interaction at that time between me and the various objects I perceive. Any
pleasure I take in the anticipation of that event, on the other hand, will be a
distinct pathos, constituted by a different interaction. It is not clear just what
the two participants in that interaction are that constitute the pathos of
pleasure as I anticipate a future pleasant experience.50 Perhaps we are invited
to think once again in terms of the Philebus’ analysis of some kind of re-
presentation of a past experience, together with its original affective aspect.
When someone anticipates or remembers feeling pleased, this is an internal
viewing of a depiction of the event in question and that the event will
include a depiction of the person’s affective response at the time of the
anticipated event. In that case the new pathos will be generated internally as
a result of the consideration of that internal depiction. The event that I view
in anticipating the birthday present is ‘my enjoying opening my present’
and I experience a pathos in considering that depiction of the event.
However it is generated, the Cyrenaics think that the pathos of pleasure
when a person anticipates or recollects occurs only at the time of the
anticipation or recollection and its identity is dependent solely on the
condition of its occurrence at that time. To enjoy anticipating a pleasure
is not to receive an advance instalment of some pathos yet to come and,
similarly, to enjoy the recollection of a pleasure is not to receive some
recovered instalment of a past pleasure.51 (As reported at DL 2.89, the
motion of the soul ‘dissipates’ over time.) Rather, if anticipation or recol-
lection is accompanied by pleasure then this is a new pathos to be identified
with some presently obtaining psychic motion: pleasure and pain must
always be present pathē generated by something present.
The Epicureans insist on the efficacy of recalling past pleasures as a means of
mitigating present pains. The Cyrenaics doubt that this is likely to be effective
even if a ‘recollected pleasure’ is not a revived past pathos but is rather a brand
new present pathos. However, there is an important role for anticipation in
50
The Cyrenaic sources are not very helpful on this point although there is reasonably strong evidence
that they took all pleasures to involve a cognitive element. See DL 2.90 and Plut. Quaest. Conv. 674a–b
(SSR IV A 206). They argue that we can enjoy listening to someone merely performing a song of
mourning. But we do not take pleasure in listening to someone who is genuinely in mourning singing
the same song. And two phenomenologically identical experiences (e.g. hearing (i) a crow and (ii)
someone imitating the call of a crow) may reasonably cause different hedonic responses because of a
person’s understanding of the situation. We can enjoy the latter but be irritated by the former. For
more discussion see Warren 2013b.
51
Note that what allows us to be sure that this is a memory at all is an appropriate connection between
the internal representation and a past experience. See the remarks in Bernecker 2010, 235–9.
Cyrenaic psychology and ethics which might at first glance appear to be in
tension with their criticism of the Epicureans. The Cyrenaics think that it is
possible to ready oneself against likely future pains by a form of ‘pre-rehearsal’ of
suffering (praemeditatio mali): by focussing attention on a future pain we might
lessen the harm when that pain eventually comes.52 In his account Cicero
ascribes to the Cyrenaics the implausible claim that only unexpected pains are
painful (Tusc. 3.28). More likely, and more in keeping with the remainder of
their discussion, by thinking in advance of the supposed pain the Cyrenaic will
lessen the pain of the event when it eventually occurs. It cannot be that the
future pathos is being experienced in advance and its intensity eased by its
thereby being spread more extensively through time since this would violate the
Cyrenaics’ insistence that pain must be unitemporal: any pain experienced in
advance must be a distinct pathos from the future and expected pathos of pain.
And even if the effect of pre-rehearsal were that the single pain is spread out over
a longer time (‘suffering in instalments’) this would be unlikely to amount to a
diminution of pain overall. The best explanation is that by thinking in advance
of possible harms the Cyrenaic’s soul becomes arranged and prepared such that,
should the imagined harm occur, it will generate a less intense pathos of pain.
For example, if the Cyrenaic has been constantly thinking that his children are
mortal and fragile it will apparently be less painful for him should one of them
be injured or die. The Cyrenaic does not conjure up for himself the painful grief
in advance. (Aelian, Varia Historia 14.6 reports that Aristippus advised against
both ‘toiling in retrospect over things past’ and ‘toiling in prospect (prokam-
nein) over things to come’.) Rather, the Cyrenaic constantly reminds himself
that a certain painful event is possible, ensuring that it will not be a shock
should he ever experience it in the future. The pre-rehearsal is either not itself
painful at all or, if it is painful to some extent, the combination of the pre-
rehearsal and the eventual lessened pain is not as bad as an unexpected and
intense pain.
Epicurus denies that this mitigation occurs and claims that, on the con-
trary, anticipating misfortune merely makes future evils felt in the present. He
proposes instead that evils can be lessened or avoided by his controversial
tactic of recalling past pleasures or anticipating future ones. Cicero’s spokes-
man, for his part, finds neither Epicurean claim plausible (Tusc. 3.34–8).53
52
See Cic. Tusc. 3.28–35. Cf. Graver 2002a, 96–101 and 195–201; 2002b; O’Keefe 2002.
53
Irwin 1991, 73–5, connects this disagreement with his picture of the Cyrenaics as sceptics about
personal identity, but to do so he has to make the Cyrenaic praemediatatio mali ‘impersonal
anticipation’. He admits that the Cyrenaics might allow anticipation to take a ‘first-person’ form
(and that it would be more effective if it did). Epicurean anticipation is always first-personal. Cf.
Sorabji 2000, 233–9.
The pleasures of confident expectation
Epicurus’ recipe for happiness includes the notion that we can guarantee the
secure hope of its continuance and look back and enjoy past pleasures
whenever we choose. The Cyrenaics, however, are much less confident
and prefer to err on the side of caution: assume and expect that pain will
come; enjoy the present while you can. We are at last in a position to
pinpoint the major difference between the Epicurean and the Cyrenaic
positions. Epicurus thinks that we can, through powers of planning, expect-
ation, and recollection, make positive use of past and future pleasures to
maintain or increase our present hedonic state. The Cyrenaics do not.
In brief, the Epicureans hold that the temporal location of any particular
object of pleasure is irrelevant; an Epicurean can at will recollect past objects
of pleasure and anticipate future ones, and he can in effect transform any
past or future pleasure into present pleasure.54 In this way the assurance of a
future pleasure is not merely relevant for future wellbeing by legitimising
the use of prudential reasoning, but it can be made to do double duty by
bolstering an agent’s present pleasure through the sure expectation that the
future contains no threats of pain.
For example, SV 33 asserts that someone who has and expects to have in
the future all the goods required to live without pain rivals Zeus in
happiness:55
σαρκὸς φωνὴ τὸ μὴ πεινῆν, τὸ μὴ διψῆν, τὸ μὴ ῥιγοῦν. ταῦτα γὰρ ἔχων τις
καὶ ἐλπίζων ἕξειν κἂν <Δὶι> ὑπὲρ εὐδαιμονίας μαχέσαιτο.
The cry of the flesh is to feel no hunger, no thirst, and no cold. For someone
having and expecting to have these would rival even Zeus in happiness.
An important characteristic of this god-like happiness is the combination of
present wellbeing with the assurance of its continuation. The certainty of
future painlessness fortifies the pleasure of the present.56
54
See in particular Torquatus’ account at Cic. Fin. 1.57 and compare Tusc. 5.95–6. Seneca takes up the
theme of the availability of past pleasures (and their being invulnerable to fortune) at De Brevitate
Vitae 10.2–6, Ep. Mor. 99.5.
55
Cf. Warren 2000, esp. 246–7. Compare Cic. Tusc. 3.38: [Zeno of Sidon] ‘would argue and maintain in
a loud voice that the happy man is he who enjoys present pleasures and is confident that he will enjoy
them in the future either for the whole of his life or for the most part of it . . .’ (contendere et magna voce
dicere solebat, eum esse beatum, qui praesentibus voluptatibus frueretur confideretque se fruiturum aut in
omni aut in magna parte vitae . . .).
56
Similarly, the Epicureans also assert that if it is known that an event in the future will not be painful,
no distress can be felt at present at its prospect: Ep. Men. 125. On the role played by this principle in
their arguments against the fear of death see Warren 2001b, 2001d, and 2004.
The pleasures of confident expectation 205
At Plutarch, Non Posse 1089d–1090d, Plutarch’s spokesman Theon notes
that not only do the Epicureans consider the good to be a ‘stable condition’
(εὐσταθὲς κατάστημα) of the flesh, they also include as a characteristic of
this ideal state the presence of a ‘secure anticipation’ (πιστὸν ἔλπισμα) of its
continuation. (Theon is citing Epicurus’ own words, again from the Peri
Telous or On the Goal of Life.)57 Theon himself considers this last point to be
implausible – such sure expectation is impossible – and echoes the reports of
Aristippus by Athenaeus and Aelian in basing this disagreement on the idea
that ‘the future is unclear’ (1090a: τὸ γὰρ μέλλον ἄδηλον). Since, he claims,
it is impossible to legislate for all manner of possible future harms, including
those diseases which Epicurus and his followers suffered, the Epicureans
cannot possibly have such confident expectation of a continuing stable
state. In reply, the Epicureans might rely again on the idea that the harms
Plutarch mentions are mere bodily pains which can be counteracted – as
Epicurus himself showed – by recalling past pleasures. But since Plutarch
has no time for that idea either, it is hard to think that he would be
persuaded to revise his harsh assessment. Furthermore, he thinks that
since the pleasures that are being expected are mere bodily pleasures, this
is an impoverished kind of experience for the soul and is yet another
example of the Epicureans’ failure to give proper weight to the pleasures
for which the soul is naturally fitted (1096d).
Indeed, in a passage cited by Philodemus and perhaps also from
Epicurus’ Peri Telous, there are signs of what amounts to a hedonist
counterpart of the argument of Plato’s Phileb. 21a–c, which concluded
that the faculties of memory and anticipation are necessary parts of a
choiceworthy life. Here, they are necessary parts of a good and pleasant
life because they allow a person to recall and anticipate pleasures, thereby
contributing to the present state of the soul.
ὡς γὰρ | ἐλπίδος ὁ καιρὸ[ς ἐ]ψιλώθη | καὶ τῆς κ[ατὰ σάρκα ἡδονῆς | καὶ
ἐπιμ̣ [ονως] ἀ[π]ελείφθη | τῆ[ς τῶν γεγονότ]ων χάρι|τος, ἆρ’ [ἂν ἔτι
τη]ρήσαιμι, ὦ̣ | Μητ[ρόδωρε, τοιοῦτ]ον κατάστη|μα ψυ[χῆς; . . .
(Philodemus, On Epicurus (PHerc. 1232) XVIII.10–17 Tepedino Guerra)58
57
The phrase: τὸ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς κατάστημα καὶ τὸ περὶ ταύτης πιστὸν ἔλπισμα cited by Plutarch
also appears in other sources (Origen, Contra Celsum 3.80, Aulus Gellius 9.5, Cleomedes 166.1–7) and
can plausibly be attributed to Epicurus’ work On the Goal of Life (Usener 68). Demetrius Laco
(PHerc. 1012 Puglia) notes variation in some Epicurean copies of the text in which ἔλπισμα has
become ἐγκατέλπισμα. See Puglia 1988, 231–2 and cf. Purinton 1993, 286 n. 8.
58
For discussion see Tepedino Guerra 1987 and 1994 and Purinton 1993, 298–9.
For when the (present) moment has been stripped of expectation and of
bodily pleasure and has permanently been deprived of the pleasure of past
[experiences], could I still, Metrodorus, maintain such a state of the soul?
Let us assume that this is a rhetorical question expecting a negative answer. In
that case, it proposes that the ability to look ahead and to look backwards, to
anticipate and to remember pleasures, is essential for the maintenance of a
good and pleasant state of the soul. So anticipation and pleasure are necessary
for a choiceworthy human life precisely because they are means of contribu-
ting to and maintaining a current good and pleasant state. In particular, it
seems that a settled state of the soul will require the ability to look backwards
and forwards to recall and anticipate a settled state of the flesh. If I am unwell,
for example, I might calm the mental anxiety it causes by recalling or
anticipating a state of health just as I might recall or anticipate various psychic
pleasures. On the assumption that Epicurus is the speaker, there is an added
poignancy to this question since we have already seen the famous case of
Epicurus using his memories of past pleasures in just the fashion envisaged
here to maintain a pleasant state of the soul in the face of the physical pains
that afflicted him when he was close to death.
Finally, there is one more interesting piece of evidence that offers another
perspective on the Epicureans’ account of pleasure and expectation.
Consider this Epicurean argument against divination, found in a scholion
to Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 624 (Usener 395):
᾿Επικούρειον ἐστι δόγμα ἀναιροῦν τὴν μαντικήν. “εἱμαρμένης γὰρ”, φησί,
“πάντων κρατούσης πρὸ καιροῦ λελύπηκας †εἰπὼν τὴν συμφορὰν ἢ
χρηστόν† τι εἰπὼν τὴν ἡδονὴν ἐξέλυσας”. λέγουσι δὲ καὶ τὸ “ἃ δεῖ
γενέσθαι, ταῦτα καὶ γενήσεται”.
There is an Epicurean doctrine that denies divination. Epicurus says: ‘If fate
controls everything then, when you foretell a misfortune, then you have been
pained before the right moment. Alternatively, if you foretell something
positive, then you have ruined the pleasure.’ These people also say: ‘What
has to be will be.’59
It is not a very good argument against divination. At best, it is a pragmatic
argument that divination is something you ought not to do. If it is not
reliable then it is useless; if it is reliable then it is of no benefit. You go to a
fortune teller and ask about your future. If the fortune teller tells you that
something bad will happen then this will increase your overall distress.
59
The line in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound is spoken by Prometheus: τὸ μὴ μαθεῖν σοι κρεῖσσον ἢ
μαθεῖν τάδε. Also compare the evidence of Epicurus’ attitude to prophecy in the citation from the
Short Epitome at DL 10.135.
Conclusions 207
Given that the event is fated and therefore inevitable you have simply added
the dread of expectation to the eventual pain to come. But if the fortune
teller tells you that something good will happen then this ruins the pleasure
to come.
The first arm of the dilemma accords well with the now familiar claim
that prescience or anticipation of a pain merely makes a pain present. It is
the mirror image of the claim found also in Epicurean texts that the memory
of a pain will make a pain present or the memory of a pleasure will make a
pleasure present. The second arm of the dilemma, however, seems to run
counter to the Epicurean claim that knowledge and expectation of a future
pleasure can produce confidence and pleasure in the present. And unless the
fortune teller reveals that your friend has organised a surprise party for you
tomorrow and the pleasure of that party should come mostly from the fact
that it is a surprise then it seems to me not true that knowing some pleasure
will come about will diminish the pleasure. Perhaps it does not diminish the
pleasure of the event itself but it might diminish any extra pleasure that
might come from its being unexpected. Even so, that seems to me to be
outweighed by the pleasure produced by the confident expectation of the
happy event. Imagine, for example, you are told that you will win big on the
lottery next year. (And imagine also that this is a reliable prediction.) Will
this make the win any less pleasant? It might make it less of a surprise, for
sure, but the surprise is surely not what is pleasant about winning the
lottery. And just imagine the pleasure you will experience in knowing the
windfall is on its way.
Conclusions
Not only do the Epicureans maintain that it is necessary always to aim for
the greatest overall pleasure, by careful planning and foresight and some-
times by forgoing nearer lesser pleasures, but they also argue that through
deliberate acts of recollection and anticipation a trained Epicurean can
bridge any temporal gap between himself and an object of pleasure to
transform that pleasure into a present experience. To be sure, we humans
are sometimes pained by regrets for the past and sometimes we are pained
by anxieties for the future. But the same capacities that can usher in such
pains can also, when combined with a proper understanding of what is
really good and what is really bad, equip us to maximise our mental pleasure
by recalling and anticipating positive experiences. The Epicureans display a
clear and laudable understanding of the role that faith in the future plays in
the happiness of the present. Confident anticipation of future wellbeing is a
powerful force for ensuring not only pleasure in the future, but also pleasure
in the present.
These two claims about the function of confidence in future goods might
appear to be in tension. On the one hand, the Epicureans are counselling us
to look always to the greatest future pleasure and take care to have a long-
term view in matters of decision making. On the other hand, the techniques
of recollection and anticipation seem to make it irrelevant just when these
past and future objects of pleasure are located; the temporal dimension can
easily be bridged by thought. The question is why an Epicurean would need
to perform the complex and difficult task of practical decision making as
outlined in Ep. Men. 129–30, if he is easily capable of reaching out and
bringing future pleasures to life in the present through anticipation.
There are two answers to this. First, there is the simple matter of physical
necessity. It may be possible to cheer oneself up in a time of crisis by
anticipating a nice meal next week, but this is not going to have much effect
in actually filling one’s stomach. Practical decision making is a necessity
caused in part by human physiology and it is an inescapable fact of being
human that we do indeed live temporally extended lives.60 Second, it is not
the case that the ‘proxy enjoyment’ of temporally distant objects through
recollection and anticipation is entirely independent of the actual experi-
ence of those same objects when they were/will be present. It is certainly
true, for instance, that I cannot truly be said to enjoy remembering some
pleasant event unless at some time in the past I did in fact enjoy that event.
The later enjoyment of a pleasant memory is dependent upon some
previous actual experience.61
This notion is built into the conception we have of ‘memory’. It is
difficult to conceive of someone remembering a pleasure which they did
not in fact experience in the first place; at least, there would be something
strange in calling such a thing a memory. The analogous claim would be
that anticipation of pleasures can occur only in cases in which the pleasure
being anticipated will indeed (or at the very least is most likely to) occur in
the future. Here we need to tread more carefully. It would be strange to say
of someone that he is ‘anticipating’ some pleasurable future event if that
event is known not to be going to happen. But, as the Philebus reminds us, it
is certainly possible mistakenly to anticipate some future pleasure and to
60
See Warren 2000, 244–7.
61
For example, when Epicurus says that on his deathbed his suffering is alleviated by the memory of past
philosophical questions (DL 10.22), this depends on Epicurus actually having had such pleasant
conversations in the past.
Conclusions 209
take pleasure in anticipating a future experience that does not in fact provide
the pleasure as expected. There are, of course, pleasures of day-dreaming, of
contemplating fantastic states of affairs which are known to be impossible or
unlikely, but these are different from the pleasures of, for example, awaiting
the morning post for a parcel one knows has been sent.62
And yet in order to secure the possibility of anticipating and recollecting
pleasures, the wise man must still go out and plan to experience those pleasures
when they are presently available. Anticipation and recollection do not absolve
the Epicurean from needing to plan ahead in order to secure present pleasures.
On the contrary, only if he successfully arranges his life in order to experience
pleasures as and when they are in fact available will be able to recollect them
later and anticipate them before they occur. And since the Epicurean wise man
has such a simple set of desires then we can presume that his anticipated
pleasures will be simple and reliable too. His desires and preferences will not
alter over time since, in order to attain his wise state, he has pared down his
desires only to those that are necessary and natural. He desires only the general
objects that will rid him of hunger, thirst, cold, and the like. In that case, it is as
unlikely as it can be that an Epicurean wise man will take pleasure in
anticipating a future experience that, when it arrives, he does not in fact enjoy.
The Epicureans and the Cyrenaics agree that ideally the wise man should
be able to plan for future episodes of pleasure, future kinetic pleasures. But
they differ in their assessment of our chances of being able to attain that
ideal. That difference is partly the product of their differing view on the
number and sort of desires which one should seek to fulfil. The Epicurean’s
restricted set of easily fulfilled general desires allows him to be much more
confident in planning to satisfy them in the future. The confidence that he
will experience these pleasures makes the Epicurean experience a lack of
anxiety in the present. Just as the Epicurean’s acceptance of various doc-
trines concerning the far future – namely that death is annihilation and
there is no post-mortem judgement and punishment – is supposed to bring
about present peace of mind, so does the very promise that he will experi-
ence the pleasurable episodes for which he plans contribute to a present
feeling of pleasant security. Since the Cyrenaics do not allow that such
absence of anxiety is itself a pleasure, this further positive role of future
pleasures is unavailable to them.
62
This last consideration is relevant to the question of whether Epicurus ought to have written a will.
According to KD 2 and the basis it offers for agreeing that ‘death is nothing to us’, post-mortem events
cannot affect an agent’s wellbeing. So the contemplation of those events (seeing one’s great-
grandchildren well looked-after) can only be of the ‘day-dreaming’ type of anticipation, not an
anticipation of a pleasure which the agent will experience later.
chapter 9
Epilogue
There are many pleasures to be had from learning, knowing, remembering,

and anticipating. And all the ancient philosophers we have met in these
chapters agree that those pleasures are part of what it is to live a human life.
However, it might also appear from these chapters that our human capaci-
ties for reasoning and the associated affective aspects of engaging those
capacities provide, at best, a mixture of benefits and harms in our lives.
Consider, for example, this passage at the end of Lucretius’ set of arguments
for the conclusion that the human soul is mortal and disperses when the
person dies.
praeter enim quam quod morbis cum corporis aegret,

advenit id quod eam de rebus saepe futuris
macerat inque metu male habet curisque fatigat,
praeteritisque male admissis peccata remordent.
adde furorem animi proprium atque oblivia rerum,
adde quod in nigras lethargi mergitur undas. (DRN 3.824–9)
For, what is more, the soul sickens along with diseases of the body, and often
something comes along which tortures it with concerns for things to come
and it is held in fear and worn down by cares. And errors gnaw away at it in
memories of past mistakes. Add to these the madness that belongs just to the
mind and add in forgetfulness; add in the fact that it is drowned in the black
waves of coma.
This passage is immediately followed by Lucretius’ famous statement that

‘death is nothing to us’ and there is doubtless some sense of gradual
transition from the closing image of the loss of mental powers, then of
consciousness, and finally the oblivion of eventual annihilation. But before
the supposedly uplifting message that death really is the end of all sensation,
Lucretius leaves behind the impression that our rational powers are as much
a source of fear, anxiety, remorse, regret, and other pains as they are a source
of pleasures and delights. Perhaps, we wonder whether, in their enthusiasm
210
Epilogue 211
for the joys of learning and knowing, of planning and recalling, our
philosophers have failed to give due attention to the negative counterparts
of these pleasures of reason. A lion may be unable to feel the pleasure of
acquiring the knowledge of a mathematical theorem, may be unable to
enjoy recognising a statue as a representation of Apollo, and may be unable
to cheer himself up by recalling a warm afternoon of feasting on a freshly
killed deer. But that same lion will not be disturbed by the realisation that
he does not know how to solve a complex equation, or be pained at the
thought of the coming winter and the possibility of starvation. Perhaps in
various ways the lion is better placed than we are since it is free from any of
these pains of reasoning.1
We can generalise this concern so that it threatens not just the hedonist
Epicureans but Plato and Aristotle too. In fact, there are two general concerns
that they will need to address. First of all, it is certainly true that fears and
regrets and their associated pains can enter into human lives because we are
animals able to reminisce and to anticipate. We sometimes form beliefs about
our past or future that are painful. Second, it is also true that as creatures
capable of forming beliefs and thinking about our own futures and pasts we
might find ourselves holding false beliefs about such things or making
incorrect estimations of various outcomes. These false appearances and false
beliefs might also generate in us various pains. They might even generate in us
various pleasures that we might feel are best avoided or at least should not be
indulged, precisely because they are generated by false beliefs and misunder-
standings. As we have seen, Plato was particularly interested in the ways in
which our capacity for reasoning and imagining various past or future
experiences might be fallible. In short, our ability to think can bring pains
into our lives and our propensity to make mistakes can bring both pleasures
and pains into our lives that we might prefer to do without. And conversely,
the pleasures and pains we experience, particularly as we think about the past
and future, can encourage the adoption of false beliefs and make us suscep-
tible to various kinds of error.
And yet, Plato and Aristotle will agree with the Epicureans that these are
all problems which can be rectified or avoided. Provided that we come to see
what really should be feared and what really should be regretted then we can
live without any unnecessary distress of that kind. First of all, these ancient
philosophers tend to the view that we should strive to become the kind of
person for whom there really is nothing very much that ought to cause
anxiety or regret. A good person is such that his past will cause him no regret
1
See Warren 2002a, 129–42.
212 Epilogue
and his future will contain nothing to dread. So there are very few true
beliefs about his past or future that should cause a good person any pain.
Good people will also, we are assured, live a life free from the misappre-
hensions and other errors that might provoke the sorts of pleasures and
pains we would prefer to do without. A good person will be entirely or to the
greatest degree possible free from any false beliefs about his past or future
and therefore free from pains of that sort too. But most of all, according to
these philosophers there is also – as I hope the previous chapters have made
clear – a range of overwhelmingly positive benefits to the presence in our
lives of these abilities to think, to learn, to recollect, and to anticipate.
Whatever their various disagreements over the details of just what consti-
tutes a good human life and just what pleasures and pains really are, these
ancient philosophers share a commitment to two important views. A good
human life is a life lived by a thinking rational animal. And a good human
life will be a pleasant life.
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Index locorum
Aelian De Insomniis (On Dreams)

Varia Historia 2 459b32–460a27 10
14.6 195, 201, 203 2 460b18–20 10
Aeschylus De Memoria (On Memory)
Prometheus Bound 1 449b22–3 164
624 206 1 449b25–8 19
Aquinas 1 450a1–451a8 165
Summa Theologica 1 450a5 166
2.2.36.1 198 1 450a19–25 165
Aristocles 1 450a25–b11 164
ap. Eus. PE 14.21.1–4 180 1 450a29–30 165
Aristotle 1 450a29–32 164
Posterior Analytics 2 451a20–451b2 56
2.19 99b34–100a3 12 2 451b2–7 56
De Anima (On the Soul) 2 451b7–8 56
1.1 403a23–4 166 2 453a6–11 18
1.2 405a13–19 66 2 453a10–12 75
2.3 414b16–18 3 De Motu Animalium (On the Motion
2.3 415a7–12 3 of Animals)
2.5 417a21 55 7 701a32–3 15
2.5 417b5–6 55 7 701b17–22 165, 167
2.5 417b5–28 55 8 702a5–7 165
2.5 417b6–7 55 11 703b18–20 165
2.5 417b9–12 55 De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts
3.3 427b17–24 166 of Animals)
3.3 427b14–26 13 1.5 644b25–8 76
3.3 427b21–4 10, 165, 166 1.5 645a4–6 76
3.3 428a10–11 12 1.5 645a7–16 76
3.3 428a19–24 12 1.5 645a17 76
3.3 428a23–4 12 1.5 644b20–31 76
3.3 428b2–4 10 3.6 669a19–21 18, 60
3.3 429a4–8 17 De Sensu (On Perception)
3.4 429b31–430a2 164 1 437a1–17 53
3.8 432a7–14 165 3 439b31–440a6 62
3.9 432b29–433a1 166 Eudemian Ethics
3.10 433a12–13 12 1.4 1215b6–14 66
3.10 433b27–30 12 3.2 1230b21–1231a26 62
3.11 434a5–10 6, 13 3.2 1230b36–1231a5 74
De Generatione Animalium (On the 3.2 1230b38–1231a5 4
Generation of Animals) 3.2 1231a1–2 74
1.23 731a31–b4 18 3.2 1231a6–12 14
225
226 Index locorum
Aristotle (cont.) 10.3 1174a1–8 58
Historia Animalium 10.4 1174a16–17 61
1.1 488b24–6 18 10.4 1174b2–3 61
8.1 588a18–31 18 10.4 1174b14–16 61
9.6 612a12–15 18 10.4 1174b18–20 61
Metaphysics 10.4 1174b18–23 63
A.1 980a21–2 53 10.4 1174b33–1175a3 63
A.1 980a24–7 54 10.4 1175a3–6 63
A.1 980a27–9 12 10.4 1175a6–10 63
A.2 982b12–13 71 10.5 1175a21–1175b1 64
A.2 982b17–21 71 10.5 1175b3–6 64
A.8 989b14–16 66 10.5 1175b16–20 64
Θ.6 61 10.5 1175b34–6 64
Λ.7 1072b19–26 67 10.5 1175b36 64
Nicomachean Ethics 10.5 1175b36–1176a3 64
1.5 1095b19–22 200 10.5 1176a1 66
1.6 1096b16–19 53 10.5 1176a5–8 58
1.9 1100a4–1.10 1101a21 189 10.5 1176a16 64
2.2 1104a3–10 179 10.5 1176a26–9 65
3.1 1110b18–24 160 10.7 1177a13–17 65
3.1 1111a30–4 54 10.7 1177a17–18 65
3.4 1113a31–3 183 10.7 1177a22–7 65
3.10 1118a9–13 14 10.7 1177b26–1178a8 65
3.10 1118a16–26 13 10.7 1177b33–4 67
3.10 1118a20–3 18 Physics
3.10 1118a22–3 14 3.3 55
3.10 1118a23 15 7.3 163
3.10 1118a27–32 14 Poetics
5.10 1137b27–32 179 4 1448b4–19 72
5.10 1137b29–31 183 7 1450b35–1451a10 73
6.2 1139a5–15 99 9 1452a1–11 70
6.7 1141a26–8 17 23 1459a17–21 73
7.3 1147a35–b5 17 24 1460a11–18 70
7.6 1149a32–b1 10 24 1460a17–18 70
7.7 1150a21–2 160 Rhetoric
7.7 1150b29–31 160 1.11 1369b33–5 68, 69
7.11 1152b16–18 64 1.11 1369b33–1370a27 163
7.12 1153a7–12 59 1.11 1370a27–30 19, 163
7.12 1153a20–3 64 1.11 1370a27–b28 154
7.13 1153b25–32 58 1.11 1370a35–b3 168
9.4 1166a23–9 60, 158, 163 1.11 1370b2–10 154
9.4 1166b15–17 158 1.11 1370b9–10 164
9.7 1168a9–19 161 1.11 1370b15–22 154, 164
9.7 1168b18–19 161 1.11 1371a23 69
9.7 1169a22–5 162 1.11 1371a31–b10 67
9.8 1170a8–11 159 1.11 1371a32–3 70
9.9 1169b30–1170a11 163 1.11 1371b9 75
10.2 1172b9–11 57 1.11 1371b11 69
10.2 1172b9–15 177 2.12 1389a20–4 171
10.2 1172b28–32 57 2.13 1390a6–11 171
10.2 1172b29 57 3.10 1412a33–1412b3 75
10.2 1172b35–1173a5 58 3.10 1412b1 75
10.3 1173b13–20 59, 157 Topics
10.3 1174a1–3 58 2.6 112b21–6 4
Index locorum 227
Athenaeus 206–7 20
Deipnosophistae 214–22 59
544a–b 192, 201 Dante
547a 86 Inferno
Augustine 5.121–3 198
Sermones Democritus
348.3 198 DK 68 b202 194
Aulus Gellius DK 68 b224 194
Noct. Att. (Attic Nights) DK 68 b286 194
9.5 85, 205 Diogenes of Oinoanda
9.5.1 85 fr. 33.vi.11–vii.10 Smith 81
fr. 44.ii.10–iii.14 Smith 186
Boethius frs. 137–77 Smith 189
Consolatio Philosophiae Diogenes Laertius
2.4 198 2.66 189, 190
2.88 191
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) 2.89 97, 201, 202
De Finibus 2.89–90 193
1.31 178 2.90 191, 202
1.32 181 2.91 190, 191, 201
1.32–3 178 10.4 88
1.33 111, 180 10.6–7 88
1.37–8 178 10.22 82, 93, 196, 197, 208
1.47 182, 184 10.25 84
1.47–8 178 10.31 176
1.48 181, 182 10.118 180
1.57 204 10.119 180, 197
2.96 196, 197 10.120 101
2.104–5 166 10.135 206
2.104–6 198 10.136 97
2.106 200 10.137 177
De Natura Deorum
1.33 88 Epicurus
Tusculan Disputations Kyriai Doxai
1.83 191 2 209
3.28 203 3 178
3.28–35 203 11 80
3.34–8 203 12 80, 81
3.38 204 16 187, 195
5.73–4 200 18 178
5.95 198 19 178
5.95–6 204 Letter to Herodotus
Clement of Alexandria 35 79
2.119 85 35–7 80
2.131 85 38 184
Cleomedes 47 79
166.1–7 205 63 184
65–6 92
Damascius 66 97
Lectures on Plato’s Philebus 78–9 80, 81, 82
13 20 Letter to Menoeceus
147 189 122 201
175 164 125 204
178 19 127 160, 194, 195
187 126 128 79, 177
228 Index locorum
Epicurus (cont.) 6.9–27 92
129 178 6.9–34 93
129–30 175, 176, 193, 208 6.80–9 80
131 178
Letter to Pythocles Origen
85–8 80 Contra Celsum
86 81 3.80 205
On Nature
Book 28 (PHerc. 179/1417) Philodemus
13.vii.18 Sedley 201 De Morte (PHerc. 1050)
13.viii.13 Sedley 201 XII.36–XIII.1 189
Vatican Saying On Choices and Avoidances (PHerc. 1251)
14 190, 194 XI.5–20 Indelli and Tsouna-McKirahan 185
17 188, 201 On Epicurus (PHerc. 1232)
27 81, 82 XVIII.10–17 Tepedino Guerra 205
33 204 Plato
35 194 Gorgias
40 82 493a1–c7 40
41 82 493a–494a 91
66 197 Laches
74 82 187e6–188b1 21
Euripides 188b5 22
Andromeda Laws
fr. 133 Nauck2 170, 199 644c9–d3 130
Orestes 653e3–654a3 74
778 117 730c 130
1173 117 960d1–4 117
Eusebius see Aristocles Meno
71e1–72a5 28
Homer 79a7–80b7 28
Iliad 80a8–b2 28
3.21–9 14 81c5–d5 5
3.23 14 81d4–5 5
3.27 14 84a3–b1 28
3.23–5 16 84b10–11 28
Odyssey 84c6 29
14.192 171 Phaedo
14.361–2 171, 172 73c5–74a4 75
15.399–401 171 73c5–74a8 69
15.400–1 170 81e6–82a2 20
15.484 172 109a ff. 89
15.486–7 166 114e3–4 21
15.488–92 172 Phaedrus
17.290–327 13 258e2–5 90
273e 130
Iamblichus Philebus
Protrepticus 11b4–c2 2, 26
11, 58.3–13 65 11b6–c2 141, 142
11d4–6 145
Lucretius 12b–c 147
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) 20e–22e 26
3.27–9 82 21a–c 205
3.433–44 92 21a–d 141
3.824–9 210 21a14–d1 2
3.935–46 92 21a8–22a6 51
Index locorum 229
21b6–9 141 39c–d 141
21c 141, 143 39d3–4 132
21c1–8 141 39e–40c 151
21c1–d1 12 39e4–6 60
21c4–8 26 39e8–40c2 138
21c5 2 39e10–11 130
21c5–6 142 39e10–40a1 136, 154
21d9–e2 50, 141 40a 19, 20, 105, 138, 140, 153
21d9–e4 50 40a10 133
22a 141 40a3–4 60, 144
22b3–8 142 40a6 144
22b4–6 142 40a9 144
22b6 142 40a9–12 129, 131, 133, 136, 138
24a1–25a4 120 40b2 138
26a–b 147 40b2–3 155
26a2 147 40b2–c2 136, 155
26a6–b4 148 40b3 151
26b1–2 147 40b3–4 130
26b5–7 147 40b–c 147
26b7–10 147 41b 124
26b8 150 41b8–9 120
27e2–28a4 120 41e 124
28a4–6 150 41e2 124
28c6–8 149 41e2–6 120
28e 148 41e–42c 119
28e1–2 150 41e8 124
28e3 148 41e9–42c4 121
28e5 148 42a5–9 123
29a–30d 148 42b2–6 121, 124
30c2–7 148 42b4–6 121, 126
30d1–3 50 43c 114
30d1–4 149 43c13–44a11 127
33b2–4 50 48c2–49e8 25
33b2–7 50 51b3–5 62
33b8–9 50 51b9–d3 62
33c 154 51e–52b 22
33c–34c 47 51e7–52b9 23, 50
33e2–4 48 52a5–7 24
34b 48 52a8–b1 26
34b10 47 52a–b 26, 28
34b11 47 52b3 26
34b8 47 52b7–8 24
34b–c 47 54a3 59
35c12–d3 143 55a 50
35c9–10 12, 142, 143 55a5–8 50, 66
35c–d 27 55a5–11 59
35c–d 143 58d4–5 27
36a–b 27, 144 59d10–e3 149
36a–c 32 60d3-e5 142
36a8 144 61b–c 149
36b8–9 12, 142, 143, 144 63e3–64a3 150
36b–c 27, 144 63e5–6 151
37a–38b 123 64a4–5 150
38c 123 64b6–7 149
38c6 123 67b4–7 27
230 Index locorum
Plato (cont.) 553a–555a 138
Protagoras 561d–e 140
320e3 118 571b–572b 42
321b6 118 573b–581c 42
321c7ff. 118 577d–578a 140
321d4 118 577d13–e2 160
322b1–6 118 579d–e 140
322b5 118 580a4 140
322c1–3 118 580d–83a 44
337c1–4 4 581a9–b5 100
345c 130 581b5–7 35
354e–357e 182 581c4–583a11 65
355d8–e1 108 581d2 34
356a3–5 108 581d6 34
356a5 106 581d9–e1 35, 37, 38
356a8–c1 107, 110, 111 581e1 34
356b1 111 582a10 35
356b3–4 109 582c7–8 35
356b4–5 109 583b5 88
356b5–c1 109 583c10 89
356b8–c1 106 583c10–d2 88
356c6–7 111 583c–585a 127
356c6–8 111 583e9–10 33
356d3 116 584a7–10 126
356d4–e2 159 584b9 66
356d8 114 584d1–e5 89
356d8–e2 114 584d–585a 87
356e2 116 584e7 101
356e8–357a2 116 584e8–5a5 126
357a5–b3 107, 118 585a 33
358a7–b2 4 585a8–b1 33
Republic 585a–e 90, 93
439b3–6 41 585b 38
475d 101 585b–e 32
476e2 101 585b3–4 33
477a2–4 31 585b6–7 33
479d4 102 585b9–10 38
485a 32 585b11 66
485c–d 40 585b11–c2 45
485d10–e1 32 585b11–c6 42
487a 46 585c1–2 39
490a–b 30 585c2–6 45
490b6–7 30 585c8 39
501b 49 585d 38
515c5 29 585d1–3 38, 39
515c8 29 585d5 40
515d2–7 30 585d11 38
515e1 29 585d11–e5 66
515e7 29 585e1–5 38
519a7–b 31 585e3–5 90
523b9 30 586a 33
524d2 30 586a1–b3 91, 94
524e2–525a3 30 586a1–b4 66
539e6–540a1 22 586a6–7 41
540a–b 48 586b2 41
Index locorum 231
586b3–4 40 Non Posse (On the Fact That It Is
586b7–8 43 Impossible to Live Pleasantly
586b7–c5 43 Following Epicurus)
586c1–2 126 1086c–d 83
586c7 41 1086e 94
586c7–d2 42 1087d 87
586e4–587a2 42, 44 1088b–c 88
586e5 44 1088e–1089a 91, 92, 199
587a4–6 44 1089c 95
588b10–e1 41 1089d 85, 97
589a–92b 42 1089d–e 91
Symposium 1089d–1090d 205
207e–208a 40 1090a 85, 90, 205
208a3–7 37 1090b 90
212a–b 130 1090d 90
Theaetetus 1091a 90
178a–179b 152 1091a–b 88, 170, 200
178c9–d2 152 1091b 201
178d–e 154 1091c 94
178d8–e6 152 1091d 88
198d–e 48 1091d–e 86, 87, 89
Timaeus 1091e 89
37c6–d1 50 1091f 102
53c 130 1092a–b 95
80b5–8 5 1092b–d 95
Plotinus 1092d 90
Enneads 1092d–1095b 96
4.3.28 171 1092e 96, 97, 98, 100
Plutarch 1092f 98
Adversus Colotem (Against Colotes) 1093a–c 96, 100
1107e 86 1093b–c 96
1108c 94 1094a 95
1124c 189 1094e 94
1124d–1125c 94 1095c 101
An Seni (On Whether an Old Man Should Be a 1096c–d 95
Ruler) 1096d 205
786c 83 1096d–e 95
De Adul. (On Flattery) 1097a 87
61d 100 1098c–d 87, 88
De An. Procr. in Tim. (On the Generation of the 1098e–1100d 100
Soul in the Timaeus) 1099d 87
1024e–1025a 99 1099d–f 93
1025d–e 99 1099f–1100a 87
1025e 99 1100a–c 100
De Aud. Poet. (On How to Listen to Poets) 1104f 90
18b–c 75 1105d 90
De Fato 1105e 197
571d 98 1107c 100
De Soll. An. (On the Cleverness of Animals) Quaest Conv. (Dinner-party Questions)
960a 98 630e 199
960c 98 673d–e 75
963d 98 674a–b 96, 202
969c 98 Quaest. Plat. (Platonic Questions)
Lat. Viv. (On the Maxim ‘Live Unknown’) 1001d 98
1129b 83 1002a 98
232 Index locorum
Plutarch (cont.) Ep. Mor. (Moral Letters)
Virt. Mor. (On Moral 78.14 170
Virtue) 78.15 171
441c 98 99.5 204
443e 99 99.25 197
451b 98 Sextus Empiricus
Polystratus PH (Outlines of Pyrrhonism)
De Irrat. Cont. (On Irrational 3.194 177
Contempt for Common Opinions)
(PHerc. 336/1150) Thucydides
I–IV Indelli 12 1.65.3 117
Proclus 3.20.4 117
Commentary on Plato’s Republic Timon of Phlius
vol. 2: 105, 23 Kroll 84 fr. 7 Diels 88
vol. 2: 109, 12 Kroll 84
vol. 2: 111.6ff. Kroll 84 Virgil
vol. 2: 113, 9 Kroll 84 Aeneid
vol. 2: 113, 9–10 Kroll 84 1.203 171
vol. 2: 116, 19 Kroll 84
vol. 2: 121, 24 Kroll 84 Xenophanes
DK 21 b25 50
Seneca the Younger Xenophon
De Brevitate Vitae Memorabilia
10.2–6 204 2.1.23–4 5
Subject index
For references to works by ancient authors see the Index locorum
Achilles 70 for knowledge 30, 53

activity: see energeia future desires 115
akolasia 14 role of memory in 143–5
akrasia 105, 119, 180 divination 206
anamnēsis 5, 18, 47–50, 56, 164, 196 divinity: see god
animals, non-human 3, 9–20, 41, 53, 60, 65, 74, 91,
94–5, 118, 142, 144, 167, 211 emotions: see pathē
beauty of 75, 76–7 emptying: see replenishment
used as evidence for hedonism 57–8 energeia 52, 60, 68
see also: mollusc, the life of a Epimetheus 118
apeiron 120 epistēmē 24
Aristippus the Elder and Aristippus Younger Eudoxus 57–8, 177
189–96 Eumaeus 168–74, 197
ataraxia 94, 95, 185, 187, 196
Athene 118 filling: see replenishment
Aulus Gellius 84 fine, the (to kalon) 161, 162
see also: beauty
beauty 4, 61–3, 67–77, 98, 148, 161 forgetting: see anamnēsis
see also: fine, the (to kalon) Forms, Platonic 35, 44, 49, 89, 90, 96,
bias, psychological (to the future or the near or the 101, 102
perceived) 112–14, 122–7 friendship 158, 197
see also: neutrality, temporal
geometry 81, 211
Callicles 40 god 50–1, 65, 67, 130, 147, 150, 185, 204
Calvenus Taurus 85 Good, the 5, 44
childhood 58, 155 grief 197
Colotes 83–6, 94, 95
commensurability 108, 179 Hector 70
see also: symmetrēsis hedonism, psychological 106, 177–8
completion: see teleiotēs Hephaestus 118
contemplation 65 Hermes 118
cosmos 76, 147–50 Herodotus 96
‘Cradle Argument’ 177 Hierocles 85
Danaids 40, 91 illness 88, 101, 164, 196, 206, 210

death 185, 189, 196, 206, 210 illusion, Müller–Lyer 117
desire 17, 27, 32, 41, 112, 163, 180, 184, 209 imagination: see phantasia
Epicurean classification of 195 imitation 67–77, 167
233
234 Subject index
jar, leaky 93, 199 pleasure, katastematic 85, 178, 205
see also: Danaids see also: ataraxia
joke 75 pleasure, kinetic 193
pleasure, pure 20, 24, 44, 62, 67–77, 96, 97
kanōn 176, 183 praemeditatio mali 203
Prior, A. N. 169
Laërtes 170 Proclus 83, 84, 85
Laocöon 73, 74, 75, 76 procrastination 194
logismos 1–2, 4, 12, 26–7, 49, 129, 141, 155, 187 Prodicus 4
lottery, winning the 132–6, 207 Prometheus 118–19
Protagoras 118, 130, 151–4
measuring, art of: see tekhnē metrētikē; see also: prudence: see phronēsis and neutrality, temporal
kanōn purity 34, 38, 50–1, 59, 64, 66, 90
memory, ‘autobiographical’ or ‘introversive’ 7, Pythocles 189
132, 133, 157
Menelaus 14 recollection: see anamnēsis
Metrodorus of Lampscus 88, 200, 206 regret 159–61, 196
mollusc, the life of a 26, 141–3 replenishment 24, 27, 33–6, 38–50, 52, 59, 68, 90,
music 4, 58, 64, 73, 147, 155, 163–7 144, 157
neutrality, temporal 108, 113, 114–16, 175–96 Sidgwick, H. 169

see also: bias, psychological Solon 146
Nicias 21 sōphrosynē 14
spirit: see thumos
Odysseus 170–2 statue 70, 73, 75, 76–7, 123, 211
Oedipus 5, 70 Stoics 9, 83, 84
old-age 155, 188–9 symmetrēsis 180
paralysis, caused by a stingray 28 tekhnē metrētikē 106, 107–19, 159, 183

Paris (Trojan hero) 14 see also: kanōn
pathē (sing. pathos) 9–11, 113, 163, 184, 196 teleiotēs 60, 63
Cyrenaic account of 201–3 tetrapharmakos 185
perception 53, 59, 61–3, 65, 111, 166, 184 thumos 35, 42, 98, 100
perfection: see teleiotēs Timocrates 85, 87
Perseus 173 Torquatus 180, 184
personal identity 37, 40, 191 tragedy 69–70, 73
phantasia 6, 10, 12, 15–16, 163–7
phronēsis 99, 141, 190 weighing 106, 107–11
physiologia 80–2 wonder 69–71, 75, 76
piety 129, 130, 136–40, 150–1, 160
pleasure, false 2, 6, 89, 122–7, 129–56 Zeus 118–19, 149, 204

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THE PLEASURES OF REASON IN PLATO,

ARISTOTLE, AND THE HELLENISTIC

james warren is a Reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

ἡδὺ πανταχόθεν ἡ φίλου μνήμη τεθνηκότος.

1 Introduction: the pleasures of reason 1

2 Plato on the pleasures and pains of knowing 21

3 Aristotle on the pleasures of learning and knowing 52

4 Epicurus and Plutarch on pleasure and human nature 79

6 Anticipation, character, and piety in Plato’s Philebus 129

7 Aristotle on the pleasures and pains of memory 157

8 Epicureans and Cyrenaics on anticipating and recollecting

Introduction: the pleasures of reason

Pleasure and logismos

Knowing and learning

Reason and emotion

What the lion anticipates

Damascius and the donkey

Plato on the pleasures and pains of knowing

Plato often assures us that it is pleasant to acquire knowledge. In the

Pleasures and pains of learning in the Philebus

soc.: So let us therefore add in the pleasures to do with learning, if in fact we do

The pleasures and pains of the cave

Coming-to-know and continuing to know

Philebus 55a: pleasure, thought, and the divine life

Aristotle on the pleasures of learning and knowing

A natural desire to know

Pleasures of thought in the Nicomachean Ethics

Learning and pleasure in Rhetoric 1.11

Learning and pleasure in Poetics 4

Epicurus and Plutarch on pleasure and human nature

Epicureans on the pleasures of learning and knowing

Plutarch’s Platonist attack on Epicurean pleasures

Plutarch and the pleasures of reason

Measuring future pleasures in Plato’s

Weighing and measuring

Test 1. Weigh pleasures against pleasures (356b3–4).

Measurement, illusion, and prudentialism

The salvation of life

ΣΩ . νῦν δέ γε αὐταὶ διὰ τὸ πόρρωθέν τε καὶ ἐγγύθεν ἑκάστοτε μεταβαλλόμεναι

Anticipation, character, and piety

In Chapter 2 I suggested that we can use insights from the discussion of

Anticipation and false pleasure

True and false pleasures and piety

The unity of a life

Character and false pleasure

Protagorean hedonism and consistency

Aristotle on the pleasures and pains

Memory, character, and pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics

Memory and phantasia

The thought is characteristically compressed and provokes a number of

Epicureans and Cyrenaics on anticipating

Just as the Hellenistic philosophers and their later Roman commentators

Epicurean prudential reasoning

The limits of prudential reasoning

Epicureans and their critics on memory, anticipation, and pleasure

There are many pleasures to be had from learning, knowing, remembering,

praeter enim quam quod morbis cum corporis aegret,

This passage is immediately followed by Lucretius’ famous statement that