Many scholars have denied that Plato’s argument about desire at Philebus 34c10–35d7 is related to his recollection arguments in the Meno and Phaedo, because it is concerned only with postnatal experiences of pleasure. This paper argues against their denial by showing that the desire argument in question is intended to prove the soul’s possession of innate memory of pleasure. This innateness interpretation will be supported by a close analysis of the Timaeus, where Plato suggests that our inborn desires for food (...) and drink derive from the primitive experiences of pleasure that have naturally been incorporated into the appetitive part of the soul. (shrink)

In the Philebus, Socrates maintains two theses about the relationship between pleasure and the good life: the mixed life of pleasure and intelligence is better than the unmixed life of intelligence, and: the unmixed life of intelligence is the most divine. Taken together, these two claims lead to the paradoxical conclusion that the best human life is better than the life of a god. A popular strategy for avoiding this conclusion is to distinguish human from divine goods; on such a (...) reading, pleasure has merely instrumental value, and it benefits human beings only as a result of their imperfect nature. I argue that certain ‘pure’ pleasures are full-fledged, intrinsic goods in the Philebus, which are even worthy of the gods . This positive evaluation of pure pleasure results from a detailed examination of pleasure, which reveals that different types of pleasures have fundamentally different natures. (shrink)

This paper deals with the deuteros plous, literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s Phaedo, the key passage being Phd. 99e4-100a3. I argue that (a) the ‘flight into the logoi’ can have two different interpretations, a standard one and a non-standard one. The issue is whether at 99e-100a Socrates means that both the student of erga and the student of logoi consider images (‘the standard interpretation’), or the student of logoi does not consider images but (...) that “consistency should suffice for truth” (‘the non-standard interpretation’); (b) the non-standard one implies the problem of the hypothesis, a problem analogous to the problem of the elenchus; (c) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’ ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th Meditation and the final proof for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo. (shrink)

Plato’s nephew Speusippus has been widely accepted as the historical person behind the mask of the anti-hedonists in Phlb. 42b–44c. This hypothesis is supported by, inter alia, the link between Socrates’ char- acterization of them as δυσχερεῖς and the frequent references of δυσχέρεια as ἀπορία to Speusippus in Aristotle’s Metaphysics MN. This study argues against assigning any privileged status to Speusippus in the assimilation of δυσχέρεια with ἀπορία. Instead, based on a comprehensive survey of how δυσχερ- words were used in (...) classical antiquity, the semantic shift of δυσχέρεια can be explained in an alternative way. (shrink)

This paper provides an original approach to research on the logical processes that determine how certain forms participate in others. By introducing the concept of relational participation, the problems of self-referentiality of the Platonic forms can be dealt with more effectively. Applying this to the forms of likeness and unlikeness in Parmenides 132d-133a reveals a possible way to resolve different versions of the Third Man Argument. The method of generating numbers from oddness and evenness may also be of interest; relational (...) participation in these forms clarifies the interpretation of Parmenides 143e-144a. (shrink)

The argument in Plato's Philebus presents three successive formulations of the hedonist principle. Commentators often take Socrates' argument in the dialogue to be dealing solely with the third formulation, which states that pleasure, rather than intelligence, is closer in nature to the good. I argue that, nonetheless, in the dialogue Socrates remained concerned to provide a direct refutation of the first formulation, that is, of the straightforward claim that pleasure is the good for all living beings. ;Chapter One ascribes to (...) the Philebus a conception of intrinsic good, which is then shown to underlie the dialogue's notion of true pleasures. Chapter Two examines in detail the problem of the "one and many" concerning pleasure, and argues that this is the problem of forms in relation to other forms, rather than that of forms in relation to particulars. This interpretation is the one that is consistent both with Protarchus' understanding of hedonism in the dialogue, and with the dialogue's methodological passages, i.e., the passages on the "god-given method" and on the four ontological kinds. In Chapter Three, it is shown how division into forms is required by Socrates' conception of the nature of pleasure. Some of the forms of pleasure are ways in which falsity is admitted into the nature of pleasure. Three accounts of false anticipatory pleasures---those of Kenny and Gosling, Mooradian, and Penner---are examined in some detail. (shrink)

Here, we outline UPJA’s recent developments and the contents of Volume 2, Issue 2.