Plato's Rejection of Thoughtless and Pleasureless Lives - M. Evans

Plato's Rejection of Thoughtless and Pleasureless LivesAuthor(s): Matthew EvansSource: Phronesis, Vol. 52, No. 4 (2007), pp. 337-363Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40387940 .

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φ' 'Μ r PHRONESIS

BRILL Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363 www.brul.nl/phro

Plato's Rejection of Thoughtless and Pleasureless Lives

Matthew Evans Department of Philosophy, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA

[email protected]

Abstract In the Philebus Plato argues that every rational human being, given the choice, will prefer a life that is moderately thoughtful and moderately pleasant to a life that is utterly thoughtless or utterly pleasureless. This is true, he thinks, even if the thoughtless life at issue is intensely pleasant and the pleasureless life at issue is intensely thoughtful. Evidently Plato wants this argument to show that neither pleasure nor thought, taken by itself, is sufficient to make a life choiceworthy for us. But there is some disagreement among commentators about whether or not he also wants the argument to show why. Is the argument designed to establish that we should reject thoughtless and pleasureless lives because some pleasures and some thoughts are goods? Or is it silent on this issue? Many interpreters take the first option, claiming that Plato uses the argument to attack both the hedonist view that only pleasures are goods and the intellectualist view that only thoughts are goods. My aim in this paper is to show that the second option is at least as attractive as the first, both exegetically and philosophically.

Keywords Plato, pleasure, hedonism, Philebus

I

Strict hedonists have a difficult time explaining why it would be rational for you, given the choice, to prefer a life that is somewhat pleasant and somewhat thoughtful to a life that is intensely pleasant but utterly thoughtless. For strict versions of hedonism entail that a life is choiceworthy just insofar as it is pleasant.1 This is why hedonists are hard-pressed to admit

υ Many versions of hedonism do not entail this, of course. But it is worth noting that most of these alternative versions are devised precisely so as not to entail this. For a famous and

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156852807X229249



338 M. Evans I Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363

that you could rationally reject the most blissful life available to you, even if that life were completely idiotic. Non-hedonists, on the other hand, can

accept the claim that the value of thinking does not derive entirely from the value of enjoying thinking. It is precisely because hedonists cannot accept this claim that they are compelled to deny either that you could rationally reject the blissful life of an idiot, or that the life of an idiot could be blissful. Since both of these responses are bullet-biters, the overall

exchange leaves the hedonist in a significantly inferior dialectical position. Commentators often give Plato credit for discovering this line of attack

on hedonism, since Socrates deploys it - or something very close to it -

against his hedonist respondent Protarchus in the opening and closing rounds of the Philebus.2 In these texts Socrates is plainly trying to establish that the best human life is neither wholly thoughtless nor wholly joyless. His argument - which I will call the Choice Argument- turns on the largely uncontroversial claim that any human being, if rational, would prefer a life with some hedonic content and some cognitive content to a life wholly without either one (22al-b8; 60d3-e5). But at first glance it is not entirely clear why Socrates thinks that this preference is rationally required of us. Most leading commentators hold that, according to Socrates, we are rationally required to reject the two unmixed lives because thinking and enjoying are among the inherently good things that make a human life good.3 John Cooper, for example, holds that "both the pleasure and the knowl-

edge [in the mixed life] are recognized [by Socrates] to be good things in themselves (things without which life would not be satisfactory for a human being, not merely because of the furthe« things their absence would make unavailable, but because of the very natures of the pleasure and the

knowledge themselves)."4 Following Coopers lead, I will define a good as something that, because of its own nature, is worth pursuing for its

influential example, see Mill (1861/1947), chapter 2; and for an excellent recent discussion of this and other similar objections, see Feldman (2004). 2) The argument appears first at 20b6-22b8 and then later, in an abbreviated form, at 60b7-61a3. For an especially influential discussion of the arguments upshot for hedonism, see Moore (1903/1993), 139-141. 3) For defenses of this view, see Cooper (1999), 150-164; Irwin (1995), 332-338; Carone (2000); and Cooper (2004), 270-308. For dissenting views, see Gosling (1975) 181-185; Bobonich (1995); Richardson Lear (2005), 53-59; and Russell (2005), 168-171. 4> Cooper (1999), 152.



M. Evans I Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363 339

own sake.5 As Cooper understands him, Plato thinks that a life is worth

choosing (or rejecting) just insofar as it includes (or lacks) goods; since we are rationally required to prefer a life that is more choiceworthy to one that is less choiceworthy, we are rationally required to prefer one life to another life insofar as the second lacks some goods that the first does not. So, if

Cooper is right, then Plato thinks we are rationally required to prefer the mixed life to either of the two unmixed lives because each of the two unmixed lives lacks some good - either thought or pleasure - that the mixed life does not. On this interpretation, then, Plato denies not only the hedonist view that all and only pleasures are goods, but also the anti- hedonist view that no pleasures are goods.6 Because this interpretation attributes to Plato a relatively liberal attitude toward the pursuit of at least some pleasures, I will call it the Liberal Reading and those who defend it Liberais.

One serious problem for the Liberal Reading is that Socrates seems to

argue at length, later in the dialogue, against the claim that some pleasures are goods. In this later argument (53c-55a) Socrates evidently draws the conclusion that no pleasure is worth pursuing for its own sake, on the

5) According to this definition, a good is something that has final value of a certain kind because it has intrinsic value of a certain kind. Roughly speaking, some χ has final value just in case χ is worth pursuing as an end or for its own sake, not merely as a means or for the sake of another thing; and some χ has intrinsic value just in case χ is worth pursuing because of how χ is in itself, not merely because of how χ stands in relation to another thing. As Christine Korsgaard rightly insists, some philosophers (such as Kant and Moore) dis- agree about whether there are any things that are worth pursuing for their own sakes only because we care about them. If there are such things, then they have final value but do not have intrinsic value. (That is, they are worth pursuing for their own sakes, but only because they stand in a caring relation to someone.) So those who fail to respect the distinction between intrinsic value and final value are ill-equipped to adjudicate this important disagreement. For arguments to this effect, see Korsgaard (1983). Does Plato recognize this distinction? And if so, what kind of value does he think knowledge and pleasure have? These are pressing and interesting questions, but I cannot hope to answer them here. For a comprehensive attempt to credit Plato with the view that some pleasures have final value but no pleasures have intrinsic value, see Daniel Russell (2005). For a more limited attempt to credit Plato with the view that no pleasure has final value because it has intrinsic value, see my (forthcoming). 6) Note that anti-hedonism, as I formulate it here, does not entail that every pleasure is a bad - that is, something that has final disvalue of a certain kind because it has intrinsic disvalue of a certain kind.




grounds that every pleasure is itself for the sake of some good, and that

nothing worth pursuing for its own sake is itself for the sake of something else. Whatever the meaning and merit of this argument, its appearance at this point in the dialogue forces the charitable interpreter to make a deci- sion: either find a way to weaken what seems on its face to be a radical anti-hedonist argument, or develop an alternative to the Liberal Reading of the Choice Argument.7 My goal in this paper is not to make a conclu- sive case for either of these two options, but rather to show that there is an alternative to the Liberal Reading - naturally I'll call it the Conservative

Reading- that is both exegetically and philosophically defensible. The Conservative Reading holds that Platos rejection of the two

unmixed lives is not grounded in any view he might have about the goodness of thought or joy. Some of Socrates' remarks suggest that in his view we human beings might have two very different kinds of reason to reject a

given life: we have a valuing reason to reject a life if it lacks some good, and we have a limiting reason to reject a life if it is not livable by us. Conserva- tives then claim that, according to Plato, we have a limiting reason to reject each of the two unmixed lives whether or not we aho have a valuing reason to do so. As Conservatives point out, Plato repeatedly suggests that human

cognition is to some extent pleasant, and that human pleasure is to some extent cognitive; from this it seems to follow that human beings as such cannot lead lives that are either joyful and thoughtless or thoughtful and joyless. So if he holds the plausible view that a life is choiceworthy for us only if we can live it, then he must also think that there is a limiting reason for us to reject each of the two unmixed lives. If so, then the Choice Argu- ment - as he himself understands it - would go through even on the

assumption that no thoughts and no pleasures were goods. Thus, on the Conservative Reading, it remains an open question at the end of the Choice

Argument whether or not Plato accepts that some cognitions or some pleasures are goods.

At stake in the debate between Liberals and Conservatives is the charac- ter and coherence of Plato s theory of value. While the Liberal Reading commits Plato to the view that some pleasures and some thoughts are goods, the Conservative Reading does not commit him to any view about

7) Of the Liberals, only Carone faces this problem squarely and develops an interpretation that weakens the later argument. See Carone (2000), 264-270. 1 discuss Carones interpretation in my (forthcoming).



M Evans I Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363 34 1

the goodness of any thoughts or any pleasures. Thus the Conservative

Reading leaves him free to hold the anti-hedonist position that no pleasure is worth pursuing for its own sake, or the (even stronger) intellectualist position that only knowledge is worth pursuing for its own sake. Since there is some evidence that Plato defends one or more of these positions in the PhilebuSy the Conservative Reading has the advantage of being able to accommodate this evidence. But the Conservative Reading also carries a

significant cost. For it strips Plato of the credit he has received for discover-

ing what many philosophers continue to regard as a persuasive argument against both hedonism and anti-hedonism.8 As I will suggest, however, the Conservative Reading does not render Plato s view philosophically obtuse. On the contrary, it allows him to emerge as a more combative, more radical, and (to that extent) more exciting figure. By denying that Plato ever embraces an account of the value of pleasure that strikes many philosophers today as sensible or enlightened or even obvious, the Conservatives can give him credit for having grasped the crucial difference between valu-

ing and limiting reasons, and for having developed on that basis an intriguing anti-hedonist position - one that in my view remains under-explored and under-appreciated by contemporary ethicists and historians alike.9 But no matter how intriguing such a position might be, the Conservative

Reading should not be recognized as a genuine alternative unless it can make good sense of what Socrates actually says in the text. The primary goal of this paper is to show that it can.10

II

The choice that underwrites the conclusion of the Choice Argument is far from arbitrary. It is constrained by a set of interrelated standards that,

8) Many recent and widely accepted lines of argument against hedonism and anti-hedonism have deep (and unacknowledged) affinities to the Liberal Reading of Plato's Choice Argument. For arguments against anti-hedonism, see Anscombe (1957/1999), 76-78, and Nagel (1986), 156-162. For arguments against hedonism, see Moore (1912), 146-147, and Kagan (1998), 34-36. 9) For some arguments to this effect, see my (forthcoming). 10) Since my primary goal here is to interpret this argument as it appears in this dialogue, I devote relatively little attention to related arguments that appear in other dialogues. This is not because I think a wider interpretation would be fruitless, but because I think a narrower interpretation is the better place for us to start.




taken together, provide the membership conditions for what Socrates calls "the class of the good" (την τάγαθοΰ μοίραν, 20dl).11 This class, according to Socrates, is (1) complete (τέλεον, 20dl-2), (2) sufficient (ίκανόν, 20d4), and (3) such that

anyone who recognizes it aims at and pursues it, wishing to get hold of it and possess it for his very own, and cares for nothing else except what is accomplished along with goods [καΐ των άλλων ουδέν φροντίζει πλην των αποτελουμένων αμα άγαθοίς].12 (20d7-10)

Taken as a whole, this passage strongly suggests that the class of the good contains all and only those things that are worth pursuing as ends. The first two standards guarantee that this class neither lacks any of the goods there are, nor includes anything that is not a good.13 The third standard guaran- tees that, no matter what we care about, we care about it either because (we think) it is worth pursuing for its own sake or because (we think) it is

something we acquire or accomplish along with something worth pursuing for its own sake. So this third standard implies that we are rationally justified in caring about things that are not goods, provided that there are some goods that we do not (or cannot) acquire or accomplish unless we

acquire or accomplish these other things too. Since these other things are what we get "along with" goods, but are not themselves goods, I will call them subsidiaries.14 Presumably it would not be rational to care about sub-

n) Plato's use of μοίρα (allotment, portion, part) in this phrase suggests that he is concerned here not so much with the good itself as with the many things that, taken as a whole, belong to the good or have a share in the good. This is why I prefer "the class of the good" to Fredes "the good." Unless otherwise noted, all translations are modified from Frede (1993). 12) On the translation of this last phrase, see White (2002), 185, note 87. For a different take on the translation of τέλεον, see Cooper (2004) 271-272, note 2. 13) More detailed discussions of the first two standards can be found in Bury (1897/1973), 211-214; Cooper (2004) 270-278; and Richardson Lear (2005), 53-59. 14) For a different account of the distinction introduced by the third standard, see Bobo- nich (1995), 118-123, and Bobonich (2002), 153-159. Primarily on the basis of Laws 631b-632a, Bobonich argues that each thing I call a "subsidiary" is something he calls a "dependent good": something that is "good for its possessor if [and only if] she possesses something else" ((1995) 122). While Bobonich s interpretation of the Laws passage is interesting and plausible, his attempt to bring this section of the Philebus into conformity with his interpretation strikes me as forced. Here Socrates clearly does not say that these second- ary things, whatever they are, become goods if they are acquired along with goods; he says that these things are acquired along with goods, but are not themselves goods.




sidiaries for their own sake, since the value of each of them is entirely parasitic on the value of some good; but presumably it would be rational to care about subsidiaries for the sake of the goods they subsidize, since there are some goods we do not (or cannot) secure without also securing their subsidiaries.

As I understand it, the purpose of Platos distinction between goods and subsidiaries is to set aside a class of things that are worth getting only because we have to get them if we are going to get some other things. But it is important to notice that the relation between goods and subsidiaries is not equivalent to the more familiar relation between goods and instruments. For although every instrument to a good is a subsidiary of that

good, not every subsidiary of a good is an instrument to that good. To

grasp this point, imagine a world where our nature as human beings com-

pels us to enjoy listening to complex melodies. Then assume that every act of listening to a complex melody is a good. So, according to the distinction between goods and subsidiaries, every pleasure taken in listening to a com-

plex melody is (for us humans) a subsidiary. But it is plainly absurd to

suppose that, even in this imaginary world, every pleasure taken in that

activity is an instrument to that activity; we would not (and presumably could not) seek the pleasure we take in an activity as a means to the end of

engaging in that activity. On the other hand, if we were unable to listen to

complex melodies without resting our ears for an hour every day, then rest-

ing our ears for an hour every day would count as an example of something that is both an instrument to listening and - because we must rest if we are

going to listen - a subsidiary of listening. So subsidiaries are worth caring about if they are instruments, but not only if they are instruments.

The relation between goods and subsidiaries is subtle, but I believe that Plato has a good intuitive grasp of it. For he illustrates it rather clearly, at various stages of the dialogue, with several relevant examples. The cumula- tive force of these examples is that, for human beings at least, cognition necessarily accompanies pleasure, and pleasure necessarily accompanies cognition. More specifically, Socrates claims that we achieve both pleasure and cognition whenever we: (1) anticipate that we will satisfy some appetite (32b9-c2); (2) remember either having satisfied an appetite (33c5-6) or having been pleased (21cl-2); (3) learn (51e7-52a3); (4) exercise abstract

knowledge (63e3-4); (5) enjoy something for more than an instant (21c2-4); and (6) are aware of being pleased (21c4-5). The purported connection between pleasure and cognition in these cases is plainly non-accidental: Socrates is supposing that, given the sort of animals we are, we just do not




(or cannot) achieve one without the other. What this suggests, then, is that if some cognitions are goods, then the pleasures that accompany these

cognitions are subsidiaries; likewise, if some pleasures are goods, then the

cognitions that accompany these pleasures are subsidiaries. So Plato's own treatment of the relation between pleasure and cognition illustrates, in a fairly straightforward way, the relation between goods and subsidiaries - and does so without implying any view about which is which.

As interpreters of the Choice Argument, we need to keep the distinction between goods and subsidiaries in mind. For if we do not, we run the risk of conflating two very different sorts of reason a human agent might have for rejecting one kind of life in favor of another. One sort of reason - a

valuing reason - is that the life lacks some good; another sort of reason - a limiting reason - is that the life lacks some subsidiary. As we shall see, Plato may think it possible for a limiting reason to prescribe a choice even when no valuing reason does. And if this is what he thinks, then the conclusion of the Choice Argument is far weaker than the Liberal Reading can allow.

Ill

Once Socrates has specified the membership conditions of the class of the

good, he sets out to provide the rational human agent with a set of possible choices. But he is not admirably clear about how he wants this set con- structed. One interpretive question that lingers well into the body of the argument is whether the agent is supposed to be choosing among several lives or among several (psychological) features of lives. At the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates explicitly recognizes the difference: "each of us [i.e., he and Protarchus] will try to show that some state and condition of the psyche can provide the happy life for every human being" (άνθρώποις πασι τον βίον εύδαίμονα παρέχειν) (1 ld4-6). Then later, in the prelude to the Choice Argument, Socrates suggests that the argument itself is designed to establish a claim about the relative value of pleasure and thought, understood now as features rather than lives (20b6-9). But here he does not say whether this claim will be established on the basis of a choice among features or a choice among lives. Still later, when Socrates sets out the conditions under which a negative choice (that is, a rejection) would be rationally justified, his language is ambiguous:

Let there be neither intelligence in the life of pleasure nor pleasure in the life of intelligence. For if in fact either of them is the good, it must not need anything else in




addition [προσδεισθαι] . But if one or the other should appear to be lacking, then I suppose this can no longer be the real good for us [το όντως ήμιν αγαθόν]. (20e4-21a2)

From this passage alone it is not obvious whether the proposed test is supposed to reveal which of the two features, or which of the two lives, is not "the real good for us." In the lines that follow, however, Socrates strongly suggests that he means the latter (see, e.g., 21a8-9, 21d6-7, and 22a9-b6). And if this is what he means, then the choice test is designed to determine whether either of the two unmixed lives "needs" something extra, not whether either of the two psychological features "needs" something extra. Obviously Socrates thinks that the choice test will tell us whether either of the two psychological features has the power to make a life "the real good [life] for us." But as he sees it, the test itself is to be applied not to these two features, but to the two lives uniquely and exhaustively devoted to them. The interpretive challenge now is to figure out why and how Socrates thinks that the choice test, even though it is applied only to lives, can yield reliable information about the value of the features that characterize them.

According to the Liberals, Socrates thinks that the rational agent will

reject a life just insofar as that life lacks goods. Since a life that lacks goods cannot be the good life for us, the rational agent s rejection of a given life would be sufficient to establish that it is not the good life for us. On this

interpretation, the choice test can yield a conclusion about the compara- tive value of pleasure and thought because we can construct lives that are full of one and empty of the other, and then find out whether either of the two would be acceptable to every rational human agent. If the joyful but

thoughtless life fails the test, then we should infer that some goods are

thoughts, and hence that hedonism is false; if the thoughtful but joyless life fails the test, then we should infer that some goods are pleasures, and hence that intellectualism is false. Or so the Liberals suggest.

But to endorse this interpretation is, in effect, to dismiss the previously marked distinction between goods and subsidiaries. For it presupposes that if the hypothetically rational human agent finds a given life wanting, then that life must lack some good. Given Plato's distinction between

goods and subsidiaries, however, we (as interpreters) should revise this

assumption as follows: if the hypothetically rational human agent finds a

given life wanting, then that life must lack either some good or some subsid-

iary of some good. Now at first glance this revision might seem not to make a difference, since - if all subsidiaries non-accidentally come along with the goods they subsidize - any life that lacks some subsidiary must




also lack some good. But this is incorrect. To be a subsidiary is to be a thing that an agent gets, as a matter of necessity, along with some good. Thus a

things status as a subsidiary depends to some extent on the powers of various agents, and the powers of various agents can differ radically. To see this more clearly, go along with Plato for a moment and assume that gods, unlike humans, exercise their intelligence without ever taking pleasure in that exercise.15 Then assume that the exercise of intelligence is a good. From these two assumptions it follows that the pleasure of exercising intelligence is a subsidiary^ humans but not a subsidiary^ g0¿¿.16 Thus there is no guarantee that a particular life will include all the subsidiaries of whatever goods it includes, because one and the same life might lack subsidiaries for one sort of agent but not for another. So if we take the distinction between goods and subsidiaries at all seriously, we should hesitate before endorsing the Liberal view that, according to Plato, the only possible reason for a human agent to find a given life wanting is that it lacks some good. We should consider endorsing instead the Conservative view that, according to Plato, there are two possible reasons for a human agent to find a given life wanting: the first is the valuing reason that it lacks some

good, and the second is the limiting reason that it lacks some human subsidiary.17

If we decide to endorse the Conservative Reading because it alone respects the crucial difference between goods and subsidiaries, then we are bound to notice that - by Plato's own lights - each of the two unmixed lives lacks human subsidiaries. For, as I argued in the previous section, Plato holds that human pleasure necessarily accompanies human thought and human thought necessarily accompanies human pleasure. So when Socrates removes all joy from the thoughtful life and all thought from the joyful life, he effectively weakens the inference licensed by the rational human agents rejection of each. To see why, assume for the sake of argument that hedonism is true and that all and only pleasures are goods. Thus some thoughts are human subsidiaries, and a human agent would be justified in rejecting a thoughtless life for limiting reasons alone. In this

I5) Textual evidence that Plato accepts this account of the gods can be found at 33b6-c4. 1 discuss this evidence in greater detail below, in section IV. 16) As Gabriela Carone rightly insists, Plato thinks that gods are animals too. See Carone (2000), 263-264 and note 13. 17) From now on, for the sake of simplicity, I will use "human subsidiary" and "divine subsidiary" instead of "subsidiary for humans" and "subsidiary for gods."




case it would obviously not be safe to infer from the human agents rejection of the thoughtless life that some thoughts are goods and (therefore) that hedonism is false. Since hedonism is true by hypothesis, it is plain that the inference in question is a bad one. The lesson here, I take it, is that those who attribute to Plato the distinction between goods and subsidiaries must ultimately acknowledge that the pattern of inference attributed to Plato by the Liberals is fallacious by Plato s own lights.

But this is only a preliminary skirmish. The deeper conflict between Liberals and Conservatives will be settled only by a close analysis of the

argument as it appears in the text. Before we turn to that task, however, let us pause for a moment to consider the deeper philosophical motivation for

endorsing some version of the Conservative Reading. According to Con- servatives, the Liberal Reading commits Plato to the unreasonable view that the good-making features of a life - whether they be thoughts or pleasures - must succeed in making that life choiceworthy even in the absence

of any other features. This view is unreasonable, Conservatives think, because it rules out in advance the possibility that the best human life has some features which are not goods, but which any life must have in order to be the life of a human person.18 These features, as Conservatives understand them, are not necessities such as food and shelter; they are conditions on the psychological possibility of establishing and maintaining a human per- sonality.19 Since it seems possible for there to be such enabling psychological

18) In his recent book on the concept of intrinsic value, Noah Lemos rejects a closely related line of resistance to the view that we - as human persons - have no limiting reason to reject thoughtless lives: "One objection," he writes, "is that the reason no one would find the change into an immortal cricket or a very long-lived imbecile desirable is that what exists afterward 'would not be me.' In other words, such a change would be destructive of the

person." This objection has no force, Lemos thinks, since there is "no good reason to think it logically impossible for some misfortune, some accident or disease, to befall me that would result in my being such a contented imbecile." Assuming that such an imbecile has the same cognitive capacities as a cricket, I find it very odd that Lemos thinks that he as a human person could survive such a transition - though I agree with him that this issue will not be settled by appeal to what is logically possible. See Lemos (1994), 53. More on the mark, I think, is Dorothea Frede, who writes: "if there is to be anything worth calling a human life, there has to be memory of past pleasures and full comprehension of present and possible future ones." See Frede (1993), xxxii. 19) Thus Conservatives should concede that not every life we cannot live fails to be choiceworthy for us simply because we cannot live it. As Terence Irwin has pointed out to me in

correspondence, our inability to live a life completely free of illness does not make such a life any less choiceworthy for us.




features that nonetheless fail to be goods, Liberals are making a very haz- ardous move when they assume otherwise. Or so Conservatives suggest.

But even if Conservatives have a view that is philosophically well- motivated, it is no easy task for them to make decent sense of the Choice

Argument as Plato presents it in the text. And if they cannot do this, then Liberals are entitled to return to the preliminary stages of the argument and reconsider whether Plato really accepts the distinction I have drawn between goods and subsidiaries. Since the decisive test for either reading will be its adequacy to the text of the argument itself, let us focus our attention on that now.

IV

The Choice Argument is divided neatly into two parts. Taken together, they aim to establish that neither the unmixed life of pleasure nor the unmixed life of thought is choiceworthy for us. The first part rules out the unmixed life of pleasure, and the second part rules out the unmixed life of

thought. Both parts have the same structure, but for obvious reasons the first part is more detailed and less compressed than the second. Socrates starts the first part by asking Protarchus whether he would choose "to live [his] entire life enjoying the greatest pleasures" (ζην τον βίον απαντά ήδόμενος ήδονας τας μεγίστας) or whether he would rather "need some-

thing else in addition." (21a8-12) When Protarchus denies that he would need anything else, the following exchange takes place:

S: But look, wouldn't you need some sort of intelligence or reason or calculation or anything else related to them?

P: What for? In having pleasure I would have everything. S: But in living this way always throughout your life, would you enjoy the greatest

pleasures? [τους μεγίσταις ήδοναΐς χαίροις αν] Ρ: Why not? S: Given that you do not possess intellect or memory or knowledge or true opinion,

it certainly follows that you are ignorant, first, of this itself, whether you are enjoying or not, since you are empty of all intelligence. (21al4-b9)

Socrates goes on to add four further disabilities. Without any intelligence at all, Protarchus would be unable to: remember any of his pleasures (2 Ici -2); experience a single pleasure across time (21c2-4); judge that he is pleased when he is pleased (21c4-5); and calculate that he will be pleased at some




point in the future (21c5-6). From all this Socrates draws a conclusion that startles Protarchus:

S: You would live not a human life [ζην δε ουκ άνθρωπου βίον] but that of a mollusk or one of those other shelled creatures that live in the sea. Is this right, or can we think of any other consequences beside these?

P: How could we? S: But is such a life choiceworthy for us? [αιρετός ήμίν βίος ό τοιούτος] Ρ: Socrates, this argument has left me completely speechless at the moment. (21c6-d5)

According to the Liberals, Protarchus suddenly realizes here that the unmixed life of pleasure fails to be choiceworthy for us because cognitive activity is worth pursuing for its own sake. But this way of reading the

argument is not mandated by the text. When Socrates asks Protarchus whether he "would enjoy the greatest pleasures" while living a thoughtless life, what question is he asking? The potential optative "would enjoy" (χαίροις αν) is ambiguous and can sustain at least two different interpreta- tions. On the first, Socrates is asking whether Protarchus would choose to

enjoy the greatest pleasures, given the cost to his intelligence; on the second, Socrates is asking whether Protarchus could in fact enjoy the greatest pleasures, given the cost to his intelligence. On either interpretation, Socrates wants to say that the thoughtless life of pleasure is not the good life for us, but each yields a different ground for this conclusion. On the first (Liberal) reading, Socrates holds that the joyous clam's life is not

choiceworthy for us because at least some cognitive activities are worth

pursuing for their own sake; on the second (Conservative) reading, he holds that this life is not choiceworthy for us because we could not live it. So if the second reading is a live option, then we should not suppose without further argument that Plato s aim here is to show that some cognitive activities are goods.

But is the Conservative Reading really a live option? As far as I know, the first commentator to defend a version of this reading is Justin Gosling. In his 1975 commentary on the Philebus, Gosling claims that Protarchus is persuaded of the value of intelligence

on straight hedonistic grounds . . . Protarchus is not asked to contemplate with horror a life where he cannot do mathematics, but one where he cannot remember or recognize or predict his enjoyments. The first two could be seen as adding to one's pleasures, the last as giving an assured means of obtaining them. So Protarchus could




be admitting intelligent activities simply in so far as they either constituted or were a good means to pleasures.20

Goslings claim here, I take it, is that Socrates convinces Protarchus to

reject the unmixed life of pleasure only because this life is not pleasant enough; if it were mixed with some cognitive activity, it would be

significantly more pleasant than it currently is. On this interpretation, the upshot of this part of the argument is that thoughtful creatures (such as humans) can experience more or greater pleasures than those that clams can experience. Goslings proposal counts as a version of the Conservative Reading, then, since it entails that Protarchus rejects the unmixed life of pleasure because he could not enjoy the greatest pleasures within that life.

Leading Liberals claim that Gosling gets this part of the argument wrong.21 Irwin, for example, writes that "Socrates would be dealing unfairly with the hedonist position if he meant to recommend these forms of rational consciousness simply as a means to greater pleasures. For he has already conceded that the unmixed life of pleasure includes the greatest pleasures."22 According to Irwin, then, Socrates assumes for the sake of the argument (20e4-21a9) that the unmixed life of pleasure lacks nothing as far as pleasure is concerned; thus he cannot just rescind this assumption halfway through the argument and still expect it to succeed. If Irwin is

right about this - as I believe he is - then Gosling's version of the Conser- vative Reading is unsuccessful. But Goslings version is not the only one. As I see it, the core claim of the Conservative Reading is that, according to Socrates, Protarchus could not enjoy the greatest pleasures within a thoughtless life. And this core claim can be defended in two different ways. The first is to hold (with Gosling) that no thoughtless life can include the greatest pleasures; the second is to hold (against Gosling) that although some thoughtless lives can include the greatest pleasures, these lives are not human. Irwins objection to the first approach does not apply to the second approach, since the second does not entail that Socrates illicitly rescinds

20) Gosling (1975), 183. In his comments on an earlier draft of this paper, Richard Pat- terson proposed a similar view, calling it "the Neo-Conservative Reading." For two broadly similar proposals, see Richardson Lear (2005), 56, and Russell (2005), 169. 21) One possible exception is Carone, who holds both that Plato wants to recommend the mixed life on hedonistic grounds, and that the Choice Argument establishes that some pleasures are goods. See Carone (2000), 271-283. 22) Irwin (1995), 334. For a similar response, see Cooper (2004), 274-275.



M Evans I Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363 35 1

specific assumptions about the relevant lives. According to this second

approach, Socrates holds that Protarchus could not enjoy the greatest pleasures within a thoughtless life only because Protarchus, insofar as he is a human being, could not live a thoughtless life. And this approach, unlike the first, is not vulnerable to Irwin's challenge.

But Liberals are free to attack the Conservative Reading on different

grounds. One particularly promising line of attack is to claim that, if the Conservative Reading were correct, then the explicitly stated conclusion of the Choice Argument would be a grotesque non sequitur. Consider the fol-

lowing exchange:

S: Do we now understand the point of the present argument? P: Yes. Its that, of the three lives available, two are not sufficient and choiceworthy for

either human or animal [οΰτε ανθρώπων οΰτε ζφων ούδενί] . S: Well then, isn't it clear that neither of these two has the good? For otherwise it

would be sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy for every plant and animal, whichever of them is able to live in this way consistently throughout its life [οίσπερ δυνατόν ην οΰτως άει δια βίου ζην] . And if one of us were to choose some other life, he would do so involuntarily, against what is truly choiceworthy by nature, out of ignorance or some other unhappy necessity.

P: That seems right. (22a7-b9; cf. 60d3-61a2)

Socrates makes three relevant remarks in this passage, and at first blush

they all weigh heavily against the Conservative Reading. First, he claims that one of the results of the choice test is that neither of the two unmixed lives "has the good." Taken at face value, this claim implies that each of the two unmixed lives lacks goods, not that each of the two unmixed lives lacks either goods or subsidiaries. Second, he suggests that the conclusion of the Choice Argument hinges on the claim, proposed by Protarchus, that neither of the two unmixed lives is choiceworthy for any flora or fauna. Thus Socrates seems to be saying that both lives are to be rejected from the

standpoint of any nature, not just from the standpoint of human nature. Third, and perhaps most important, Socrates seems to assume that Pro- tarchus himself is quite capable of living both of the two rejected lives. For if Socrates did not think this, then it's hard to see why he would think himself entitled to infer from Protarchus' rejection of the two unmixed lives that neither is choiceworthy "for every plant and animal, whichever of them is able to live in this way consistently throughout its life." If Socrates had assumed that Protarchus was unable to live either of the two unmixed lives, then presumably the choice test (when presented to




Protarchus) would not have issued in a negative verdict for both of them. The most natural interpretation of these three remarks, then, seems not to be consistent with the Conservative Reading. So unless Conservatives can show that this way of interpreting Socrates' remarks is flawed or optional, Liberals have good reason to deny that Plato accepts the distinction between goods and subsidiaries - at least as I have drawn it here.

V

The most effective way for Conservatives to resist this line of interpretation, I think, is to look for evidence elsewhere in the Philebus that Socrates does not really endorse any of the three claims he seems to endorse in this

passage. One obvious place to look for such evidence is the exchange that

directly follows upon the one we have just examined. In this exchange Socrates expresses his view that, despite what the radical hedonist Philebus

might think, the Choice Argument does not consign pleasure and thought to the same fate:

S: Then enough has been said, it seems to me, to show that the god of Philebus and the good cannot be recognized as one and the same.

Philebus: Nor is your intellect [σος νους] the good, Socrates, since the same com- plaint applies to it!

S: It may apply to my intellect, Philebus, but not, I think, to the true and divine intellect [θείον νουν], which is in a quite different condition [άλλως πως εχειν]. (22cl-6)

Philebus' outburst here makes an important contribution to the argument of the dialogue as a whole. For it is only in response to this outburst that Socrates sounds his first warning not to overestimate the Choice Argu- ment's achievement. Though the meaning of his warning is somewhat

cryptic, it is plainly based on what he takes to be an important distinction between his intellect and the divine intellect. In his view there's something about the distinction between being a god and being a human that war- rants (or at least allows) a continuing commitment on his part to some version of intellectualism. This is news to Philebus, and striking in itself, because it suggests that the Choice Argument - at Socrates sets it - fails to establish that intellectualism (or at least some recognizable version of intellectualism) is false. But Socrates does not elaborate on the god/human distinction in this passage, nor does he discuss its relevance to the Choice Argument. So at this point we're left wondering how this distinction is



M Evans I Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363 353

supposed to perform its limiting role and how powerful its limiting role really is.

Perhaps the best way to start answering these questions is to consider one of Socrates' various remarks about the difference between being a god and being a human. Though he says relatively little about gods in the Philebus, there is one memorable passage in which he suggests that their lives are both pleasureless and painless. This passage covers one part of Socrates' ambitious attempt to spell out the consequences of what I call his

Equilibrium Theory of pleasure and pain.23 (This theory holds, very roughly, that pleasures and pains are restorations and destructions, respectively, of certain mental equilibria.) Here Socrates claims that there is a kind of life that involves neither destruction nor restoration, and that if the Equilib- rium Theory is correct, then whoever lives such a life undergoes neither

pleasure nor pain (32e-33a). From this he draws an interesting conclusion:

S: It was agreed before, in the comparison of lives, that the one who chooses the life of intelligence and reason must not experience pleasure, whether large or small.

P: That was certainly agreed. S: So [the one who chooses this life] lives in this way. And perhaps it would not be

strange if, of all lives, this is the most divine [θειότατος]. Ρ: Well, it's not likely that gods are either pleased or pained. S: It certainly isn't. For I suppose each of these would be inappropriate [ασχημον].

(33a8-bll)

By "inappropriate" here Socrates presumably means "inappropriate for gods'" This would make sense, given the Equilibrium Theory, since the

Equilibrium Theory entails that pleasure and pain are symptomatic of an

imperfect nature. It is a standard doctrine of Platonic (and Socratic) theol-

ogy that the gods have no such imperfections, so Socrates would naturally infer - given the Equilibrium Theory - that the divine life is both pleasureless and painless.24 What makes this inference interesting for my purposes is that Socrates, while drawing it, refers explicitly to the Choice Argument. And in doing so he implies that the "most divine" life is none other than the pleasureless intellectual life - the very same life that he thinks Protarchus is rational to reject. So we can safely assume that whatever purpose the god/

23) For more detailed discussion of this theory, see my (2007). 24) Here I am in broad agreement with Frede (1993) xliii. For an intriguing dissent, see Gabriela Carone (2000), 260-264. Carones arguments are too intricate and involved for me to deal with here, but I discuss them more carefully in my (2007).



354 M Evans I Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363

human distinction might have in the overall argument, it is not to protect the divine life from the negative result of the Choice Argument. For if that were its purpose, then Socrates would be saying here that we have no reason to reject the thoughtful but pleasureless life; and in saying this he would be contradicting the explicit conclusion of the Choice Argument. To avoid saddling Socrates with inconsistent commitments, then, we need to understand how the god/human distinction could warrant the claim that some version of intellectualism is true, but not warrant the claim that the maximally thoughtful life is choiceworthy for us even if it is joyless.

The pressure on us to reach such an understanding merely increases when we consider another passage, later in the Philebus, where Socrates seems to contradict the conclusion of the Choice Argument in even starker terms. In this passage Socrates is trying to persuade Protarchus that a certain claim about pleasure must be false because its consequences are

patently absurd. Socrates' rhetorical strategy is twofold: first he adopts the

perspective of a certain theorist who scornfully rejects this claim about

pleasure, and then he explains why he thinks this theoreticians attitude toward pleasure is justified. Here is how his argument - which I will call the Preference Argument - appears in the text:

S: And this man will also laugh at those who find their end in processes of becoming [και των έν τους γενέσεσιν αποτελουμένων καταγελάσεται] .

Ρ: Why? And which people do you mean? S: I mean those who, when curing hunger or thirst or anything that a process of

becoming cures, rejoice on account of the process of becoming insofar as it is a pleasure [χαίρουσι δια την γένεσιν ατε ηδονής οΰσης αυτής] and claim that they would not agree to live without thirsting and hungering and experiencing all the effects that follow upon [thirsting and hungering].

P: They're not likely to, at any rate. S: But wouldn't we all say that destruction is the opposite of becoming? P: Necessarily. S: So someone choosing this life would choose destruction and becoming, but not

that third life, in which there is neither being pleased nor being pained, but only thinking [φρονείν] in its purest possible form.

P: Well, Socrates, it seems that a great absurdity [άλογία] follows if one holds that pleasure is good.

S: A great absurdity indeed. . . (54el-55al2)

The target of Socrates' criticism here, I take it, is some human agent (or group of human agents) who would reject any life that is entirely pleasureless - no matter how thoughtful it might be - in favor of a life that is to




some extent pleasant. This is surprising, from an interpreter s point of view, because the target of Socrates* criticism here seems to be someone with views that are uncomfortably close to Socrates' own. For he too holds, in accordance with the conclusion of the Choice Argument, that any human

agent should reject any life that is entirely pleasureless - even the maximally thoughtful divine life - in favor of a life that is to some extent pleasant. Thus the Choice Argument seems to license as rational the very same choice that the Preference Argument seems to dismiss as irrational. So unless we are willing to accuse Socrates of a patent contradiction, we need to develop a comprehensive reading of the two arguments that removes the

apparent conflict between them. The simplest and most obvious way to do this, I think, is to claim that

what Socrates condemns as irrational in the Preference Argument is not the agent s choice simpliciter, but the agent s choice as guided by certain considerations. Right at the outset of the Preference Argument Socrates makes it clear that his goal is to discredit those who both "find their end in

processes of becoming" and (since all pleasures are processes of becoming) "hold that pleasure is good."25 His primary target, then, is not so much a

particular choice between lives as it is a view about what justifies a particular choice between lives. More specifically, he seems to be arguing that

anyone who rejects all pleasureless lives for the reason that pleasure is worth

pursuing for its own sake is committing a serious error. The details of this

argument are interesting in their own right, and to my mind extremely powerful, but for our purposes here they do not matter.26 What does matter is that Socrates' argument (on the proposed reading) is not designed to discredit everyone who rejects pleasureless lives; it is designed to discredit

only those who reject pleasureless lives on the ground that some pleasures are

good. If we read the argument in this way, then it no longer conflicts

directly with the Choice Argument. The Choice Argument entails that we

ought to reject the pleasureless life in favor of the mixed life, and the Pref- erence Argument entails that the reason why we ought to reject the pleasureless life in favor of the mixed life is not that some pleasures are worth

pursuing for their own sakes. Since these two entailments are consistent, Socrates can endorse both arguments without contradicting himself.

25) The Preference Argument is embedded within a larger argument (53c4-55al 1) the key premise of which is that every pleasure is a "process of becoming" (γένεσις). 26) For a detailed analysis and evaluation of this larger argument, see my (forthcoming).




This way of resolving the conflict tells strongly against the Liberal Read-

ing of the Choice Argument. For it rules out the possibility that, according to Plato, there is a valuing reason for every human agent to reject thoughtful but pleasureless lives. Since Liberals cannot accept this result, they likewise cannot accept this way of resolving the conflict. And yet, as far as I can see, they have no comparably clear alternative to offer.27 Conservatives, on the other hand, are well-placed to explain why Plato thinks he is in a

position to accept both that pleasureless lives lack no goods and that we humans should reject them anyway. For if the Conservative Reading is correct, then he holds that the divine life fails to be choiceworthy for us, but only because we are unable to live it: we have a limiting reason - but no valuing reason - to pick something less godlike. Thus the Conservative

Reading can explain quite clearly why Plato thinks that the god/human distinction saves some version of intellectualism from the jaws of the Choice Argument. For it gives him room to claim that we should reject the unmixed life of cognition even though cognitions are the only goods there are. The Liberal Reading, on the other hand, seems to leave Plato with no

comparably coherent story to tell.

VI

As we have seen, there is evidence in other parts of the Philebus that Plato

recognizes the difference between a valuing reason to reject a life (that is, a reason provided by the life's lack of goods) and a limiting reason to reject a life (that is, a reason provided by the life s lack of subsidiaries). Conserva- tives can use this evidence as leverage against the otherwise attractive Lib- eral Reading of Socrates' recapitulation of the Choice Argument. On that

reading, remember, Socrates makes three related claims: first, that the choice test shows that each of the two unmixed lives lacks goods; second, that Protarchus should reject the two unmixed lives from any biological standpoint whatsoever; and third, that Protarchus (as a human) is fully

27) Gabriela Carone is the only Liberal I am aware of who both notices this conflict and attempts to resolve it. But her proposal seems forced. She claims that Plato does not really accept the premise that every pleasure is a "process of becoming", and does not really draw the conclusion that no pleasure is a good. See Carone (2000), 264-266. Of course Carone has reasons of her own for making such radical moves, but it is obvious that her reading of this particular argument - bracketing out all other issues - is more strained than the one I am proposing here.




capable of living the two unmixed lives. Because we as interpreters can now appreciate the high exegetical cost of the Liberal Reading as whole, we can now also appreciate how relatively cheap a defensible Conservative alternative might be. So this is a good time for us to consider, as we did not before, what such a Conservative alternative might look like.

The Liberal Reading of Socrates' recapitulation is initially appealing because it makes excellent sense of his claim that, if either of the two unmixed lives had "the good" then that life would be "sufficient and com-

plete and choiceworthy for every plant and animal, whichever of them is able to live in this way consistently throughout its life" (22b4-6). As Liber- als are quick to point out, this seems to imply two things: first, that a given life can fail the human choice test - that is, the choice test as presented to a human being - only if a human being can consistently live that life; and second, that if a life fails the human choice test, then it does not have all the goods that there are. So if Socrates means what he seems to mean here, then obviously he does not hold that the reason why the two unmixed lives fail the human choice test is that no human being can live them; he must hold instead that they both fail because each lacks goods. This jibes nicely with the way Liberals propose to interpret the choice test:

Choice Test (Liberal Version) Let L be any life and let C be any creature that can live L. L passes the choice test if and only if L is sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy for C. L is sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy for C if and only if L lacks no goods. If L does not pass the choice test, then L fails the choice test.

On this reading, the choice test has a built-in stipulation to the effect that a life can pass or fail only if the creature for whom it is or is not sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy can live it. Therefore, if the Liberal Reading of the passage as a whole is correct, then Plato holds that the reason why the unmixed lives fail the human choice test is not that human beings cannot live them, but rather that each of them lacks goods.

The most serious philosophical problem with this reading is that it seems to leave Plato with no comfortable way to explain why the unmixed life of

thought is not sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy for us. For if Plato thinks that the unmixed life of thought lacks goods, and if- as I indicated in section IV - he thinks that the unmixed life of thought is the divine life, then he must also think that the divine life lacks goods; but if the divine life lacks goods, then human beings have a reason to reject it even if they




can consistently live it. Thus the Liberal Reading ends up attributing to Plato the extremely peculiar (not to mention impious) view that the divine life is inherently inferior in value to the good human life. Since this is a view that Plato almost certainly does not accept, Conservatives can plausibly claim that there must be something wrong with the initially attractive Liberal Reading of Socrates' remarks. For if Plato thinks that we do not have a limiting reason to reject the unmixed life of thought, then it is unclear what sort of reason he thinks we do have to reject it.

To exploit this problem effectively, however, Conservatives need to be able to propose a minimally credible alternative interpretation of Socrates' actual remarks. Their only promising strategy, I take it, is to look for ambi-

guities in Socrates' claim that a given life's status as passing or failing the choice test depends to some extent on the chooser's biological capacities. Here, once again, is the problematic passage:

Well then, isn't it clear that neither of these two has the good? For otherwise it would be sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy for every plant and animal, whichever of them is able to live in this way consistently throughout its life [Ικανός και τέλεος και πάσι φυτοις καΐ ζφοις αιρετός, οισπερ δυνατόν ην οΰτως αεί δια βίου ζην]. (22b4-6)

Recall that in this passage Socrates seems to say two things that help Liber- als and hurt Conservatives: first, that each of the two unmixed lives fails the choice test because it lacks goods; and second, that a life can fail the choice test only if the hypothetical chooser can live it. Consider the second claim first. Here it is possible to raise doubts about whether the Liberal Reading is mandated by the text. Liberals see the crucial qualifying phrase - the one beginning with the relative pronoun οισπερ - as placing a restriction on the set of creatures whose choices can determine whether the tested life passes orfaiL·. As I have already suggested, this is the most natural way to read the text. But I believe it can sustain a different interpretation. The qualifying phrase can be seen instead as placing a restriction on the set of creatures y»r whom the tested life can be deemed choiceworthy. If this alternative interpretation is on the table, then there are two subtly different ways in which Socrates' claim can be understood: (i) if L has the good, then for any C that can live L, L is choiceworthy for C; and (ii) if L has the good, then for any C, L is choiceworthy for C if and only if C can live L. Con- servatives opt for (ii) instead of (i), and thereby advocate a different version of the choice test:



M. Evans / Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363 359

Choice Test (Conservative Version) Let L be any life and let C be any creature. L passes the choice test for C if and only if L is sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy forC. L is sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy for C if and only if L lacks no goods and C can live L. If L does not pass the choice test for C, then L fails the choice test for C.

The Conservative Version differs from the Liberal Version in two important respects: first, it allows the choice test to yield different verdicts for the same life, depending on the sort of chooser to whom that life is presented for consideration; and second, it requires the choice test to yield a negative result for a given life if the choosing creature cannot live that life consistently. The first difference is important because Conservatives want to be able to explain why the unmixed life of thought is choiceworthy for a god but not for us; the second is important because Conservatives want to be able to say that we have limiting reasons to reject unmixed lives.

Even if the Conservative Version of the choice test is correct, however, Conservatives have a remaining problem. To see why, assume that their

preferred reading is correct. Then Socrates claims that if some life is unliv- able by some creature then that life is not choiceworthy for that creature. But that is not all. He also claims that if some life is not choiceworthy for us, then that life does not "have the good." As Liberals are right to point out, Socrates' language here suggests that if a life fails the choice test, then it lacks goods. And this is plainly inconsistent with the Conservative claim that a life can fail the choice test without lacking goods. Here Conservatives have no choice but to hold that Socrates is being sloppy: when he says that a given life does not "have the good" he just means that this life does not have whatever would make it sufficient, complete, and choiceworthy for us. Some support for this initially unappealing interpretation can be gleaned from Socrates' concession, at the end of the Choice Argument, that there is at least one version of intellectualism that the Choice Argument does con-

clusively defeat. He makes this concession just after drawing the god/human distinction, which - as I argued in section IV - he deploys in order to show that there is another version of intellectualism that the Choice Argument does not conclusively defeat. Here is how he teases out this line of thought:

Now I do not maintain that intelligence wins first place over the mixed life, but we need to look and consider how we are going to award second place. For, as we attribute




responsibility for this mixed life, one of us might hold that the cause is intelligence while the other might hold that the cause is pleasure; and thus, while neither of these would be the good, someone could still suppose that one of them is the cause, [ό μεν τον νουν αίτιον, ό δ' ήδονήν είναι, και οΰτω το μεν αγαθόν τούτων αμφοτέρων ούδέτερον αν εϊη, τάχα δ' αν αίτιον τις ύπολάβοι πότερον αυτών είναι]. (22dl -4)

Here Socrates makes it very clear that, if intelligence were "the good," then the intelligence in the unmixed life of thought would make that life most

choiceworthy for us; but if intelligence were merely the "the cause", then the intelligence in the mixed life would make that life most choiceworthy for us. These two different standards seem to yield two crucially different versions of intellectualism, which can be formulated as follows:

Strong Intellectualism

Only the intelligence in a life gives us a valuing reason to choose it, and the unmixed life of intelligence is most choiceworthy for us.

Weak Intellectualism

Only the intelligence in a life gives us a valuing reason to choose it, but the mixed life is most choiceworthy for us.

Everyone in the debate agrees that Strong Intellectualism is false, since neither of the two unmixed lives is more choiceworthy for us than the mixed one; but Socrates apparently refuses to give up on Weak Intellectu- alism. Conservatives can plausibly say, in light of this refusal, that when Socrates claims that neither of the two unmixed lives "has the good," he is

denying Strong Intellectualism, not Weak Intellectualism. Conservatives can then go on to say that Weak Intellectualism, properly spelled out, entails that cognitions are the only things worth pursuing for their own sakes - since the only things that give us valuing reasons to choose a life, if it is choiceworthy, are things worth pursuing for their own sakes. So if the Conservatives are right, and Plato endorses Weak Intellectualism, then he can consistently deny both that a pleasureless life is choiceworthy for us and that any pleasures are goods.

VII

Conservatives can make a good case for their view. They can provide a defensible interpretation of the central texts, and they are better prepared than Liberals to explain some otherwise puzzling features of Plato's argu-



M. Evans / Phronesis 52 (2007) 337-363 361

ment. Indeed, it is tempting to conclude on these grounds alone that the Conservative Reading is the right one. But the goal of this paper, as I stated at the outset, is not to establish that the Conservative Reading is correct, but only to show that it can withstand careful scrutiny and (to that extent) should stay on the table as a live option for interpreters. If it can make better sense of Plato s overall position in the Philebus - as I suspect it does - then interpreters should feel free to adopt it.

Assuming that the Conservative Reading does indeed qualify as a live

option for us, I would like to explore very briefly some of the consequences, both positive and negative, of adopting it. Perhaps the most obvious negative consequence for Conservatives is that they must deny Plato's author-

ship of what continues to strike many philosophers as an extremely effective

argument.28 The Conservative Reading, by comparison, might seem to make the Choice Argument weak, uninteresting, or unsound. Not only does the argument (on this reading) license no conclusion whatsoever about the goodness of any thoughts or pleasures, but the conclusion it does license - that neither thoughts nor pleasures by themselves can make a life choiceworthy for us - seems to gain very little ground on hedonism. Because of the symmetrical force of the argument, the Conservative Read-

ing entails that Socrates is entitled to retain Weak Intellectualism only to the extent that Protarchus is entitled to retain Weak HedonismP For, if the Conservatives are right, then it would be a mistake to think that the Choice

Argument is designed - even in part - to establish that not all goods are

pleasures; the argument defeats only those hedonists who hold that a given life is choiceworthy for us just insofar as it is pleasant. Clever hedonists can endorse the argument, concede that we have a limiting reason to reject thoughtless lives, but deny that we have a valuing reason to do so. If this is

right, then the Choice Argument is far less damaging to Plato's hedonist

opponents than it appears. My own view is that this outcome is only a minor disappointment. For

it leaves Plato with the room he needs to develop what I take to be a much more interesting and powerful line of attack on hedonism. As I suggested

28) Both Liberals and Conservatives seem to assume that the Choice Argument as they interpret it is sound, but they tend not to say so. An interesting exception is Cooper, who repeatedly claims that the argument, as interpreted by Liberals, is persuasive in its own right. See Cooper (2004), 276-277. 29) Several commentators notice this consequence and agree that Plato is committed to it. See Gosling (1975), 183-184; Bobonich (1995), 122; and Richardson Lear (2005), 56-57.




in section IV, I believe that the clever hedonists who weaken their view in the face of the Choice Argument become the targets of a very different, non-symmetrical argument that appears much later in the Philebus. If I understand this later argument correctly, it is designed not only to vindi- cate the popular view that some goods are not pleasures, but also to repu- diate the equally popular view that some goods are pleasures. Since Plato would not be able to endorse this conclusion if he were already committed to the Liberal version of the Choice Argument, I believe there are good exegetical reasons to develop an interpretation that frees him of this commitment. Of course I cannot hope to defend here my reading of the later

argument, let alone my considered endorsement of it.30 Suffice it to say, then, that there are some interesting reasons to suspect not only that Plato

rejects the Liberal version of the Choice Argument, but also that this version of the argument is unsound. The Conservative version may well be Platos better bet.31

30) See my (forthcoming). 31) For their comments, criticism, and advice I am grateful to Stephanie Beardman, Jim Hankinson, Liz Harman, Verity Harte, Terence Irwin, Phillip Mitsis, Jessica Moss, Richard Patterson, Nishi Shah, David Sosa, Sharon Street, Iakovos Vasilou, and Steve White.

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Plato's Rejection of Thoughtless and Pleasureless Lives - M. Evans

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