Page - 921 - in The Complete Plato
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Text of the Page - 921 -
SOCRATES: My answer is, that all things instrumental, remedial, material,
are given to us with a view to generation, and that each generation is relative
to, or for the sake of, some being or essence, and that the whole of generation
is relative to the whole of essence.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, must surely be for the sake
of some essence?
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And that for the sake of which something else is done must
be placed in the class of good, and that which is done for the sake of
something else, in some other class, my good friend.
PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, will be rightly placed in
some other class than that of good?
PROTARCHUS: Quite right.
SOCRATES: Then, as I said at first, we ought to be very grateful to him
who first pointed out that pleasure was a generation only, and had no true
being at all; for he is clearly one who laughs at the notion of pleasure being a
good.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.
SOCRATES: And he would surely laugh also at those who make
generation their highest end.
PROTARCHUS: Of whom are you speaking, and what do they mean?
SOCRATES: I am speaking of those who when they are cured of hunger or
thirst or any other defect by some process of generation are delighted at the
process as if it were pleasure; and they say that they would not wish to live
without these and other feelings of a like kind which might be mentioned.
PROTARCHUS: That is certainly what they appear to think.
SOCRATES: And is not destruction universally admitted to be the opposite
of generation?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then he who chooses thus, would choose generation and
destruction rather than that third sort of life, in which, as we were saying, was
neither pleasure nor pain, but only the purest possible thought.
921
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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