Philebus | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

PHILEBUS
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The Philebus appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which
the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has
become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the
development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the
Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a
corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the
persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion
and incompleteness in the general design. As in the speeches of
Thucydides, the multiplication of ideas seems to interfere with the
power of expression. Instead of the equally diffused grace and ease of
the earlier dialogues there occur two or three highly-wrought passages;
instead of the ever-flowing play of humour, now appearing, now
concealed, but always present, are inserted a good many bad jests, as
we may venture to term them. We may observe an attempt at artificial
ornament, and far-fetched modes of expression; also clamorous
demands on the part of his companions, that Socrates shall answer his
own questions, as well as other defects of style, which remind us of the
Laws. The connection is often abrupt and inharmonious, and far from
clear. Many points require further explanation; e.g. the reference of
pleasure to the indefinite class, compared with the assertion which
almost immediately follows, that pleasure and pain naturally have their
seat in the third or mixed class: these two statements are unreconciled.
In like manner, the table of goods does not distinguish between the two
heads of measure and symmetry; and though a hint is given that the

divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of this in the final
summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences does not appear;
though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the highest good, the
sciences and arts and true opinions are enumerated in the fourth class.
We seem to have an intimation of a further discussion, in which some
topics lightly passed over were to receive a fuller consideration. The
various uses of the word 'mixed,' for the mixed life, the mixed class of
elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and pain, are a further
source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions which Plato is
attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a controversy
might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended to refer.
But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has not told us; or
to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them, the relation in
which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or the Megarian good, or
to the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes respecting pleasure. Nor are
we able to say how far Plato in the Philebus conceives the finite and
infinite (which occur both in the fragments of