His arguments were
credited more because of the excellence of his character than for
their own sake; he was thought to be remarkably self-controlled, and
therefore it was thought that he was not saying what he did say as a
friend of pleasure, but that the facts really were so. He believed
that the same conclusion followed no less plainly from a study of
the contrary of pleasure; pain was in itself an object of aversion
to all things, and therefore its contrary must be similarly an
object of choice. And again that is most an object of choice which
we choose not because or for the sake of something else, and
pleasure is admittedly of this nature; for no one asks to what end
he is pleased, thus implying that pleasure is in itself an object of
choice. Further, he argued that pleasure when added to any good,
e.g. to just or temperate action, makes it more worthy of choice,
and that it is only by itself that the good can be increased.
This argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more a
good than any other; for every good is more worthy of choice along
with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of
this kind that Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues
that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and
that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the
good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it.
Pages:
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316