Page - 917 - in The Complete Plato
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PROTARCHUS: Very good, Socrates; in what remains take your own
course.
SOCRATES: Then after the mixed pleasures the unmixed should have their
turn; this is the natural and necessary order.
PROTARCHUS: Excellent.
SOCRATES: These, in turn, then, I will now endeavour to indicate; for
with the maintainers of the opinion that all pleasures are a cessation of pain, I
do not agree, but, as I was saying, I use them as witnesses, that there are
pleasures which seem only and are not, and there are others again which have
great power and appear in many forms, yet are intermingled with pains, and
are partly alleviations of agony and distress, both of body and mind.
PROTARCHUS: Then what pleasures, Socrates, should we be right in
conceiving to be true?
SOCRATES: True pleasures are those which are given by beauty of colour
and form, and most of those which arise from smells; those of sound, again,
and in general those of which the want is painless and unconscious, and of
which the fruition is palpable to sense and pleasant and unalloyed with pain.
PROTARCHUS: Once more, Socrates, I must ask what you mean.
SOCRATES: My meaning is certainly not obvious, and I will endeavour to
be plainer. I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty as that of animals or
pictures, which the many would suppose to be my meaning; but, says the
argument, understand me to mean straight lines and circles, and the plane or
solid figures which are formed out of them by turning-lathes and rulers and
measurers of angles; for these I affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, like
other things, but they are eternally and absolutely beautiful, and they have
peculiar pleasures, quite unlike the pleasures of scratching. And there are
colours which are of the same character, and have similar pleasures; now do
you understand my meaning?
PROTARCHUS: I am trying to understand, Socrates, and I hope that you
will try to make your meaning clearer.
SOCRATES: When sounds are smooth and clear, and have a single pure
tone, then I mean to say that they are not relatively but absolutely beautiful,
and have natural pleasures associated with them.
PROTARCHUS: Yes, there are such pleasures.
SOCRATES: The pleasures of smell are of a less ethereal sort, but they
have no necessary admixture of pain; and all pleasures, however and
wherever experienced, which are unattended by pains, I assign to an
917
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book The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Title
- The Complete Plato
- Author
- Plato
- Date
- ~347 B.C.
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 1612
- Keywords
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Categories
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International