Pleasures of Intelligence may be compared, and are compared by Plato, with other pleasures, and declared to be of more value. This is arguing upon the Hedonistic basis.
In a scheme of mental philosophy, Emotion and Intellect are properly treated as distinct phenomena requiring to be explained separately, though perpetually co-existent and interfering with each other. But in an ethical discourse about Summum Bonum, the antithesis between Pleasure and Intelligence, on which the Philêbus turns, is from the outset illogical. What gives to it an apparent plausibility, is, That the exercise of Intelligence has pleasures and pains of its own, and includes therefore in itself a part of the End, besides being the constant and indispensable directing force or Means. Now, though pleasure in genere cannot be weighed in the scale against Intelligence, yet the pleasures and pains of Intelligence may be fairly and instructively compared with other pleasures and pains. You may contend that the pleasures of Intelligence are superior in quality, as well as less alloyed by accompanying pains. This comparison is really instituted by Plato in other dialogues;[116] and we find the two questions apparently running together in his mind as if they were one and the same. Yet the fact is, that those who affirm the pleasures attending the exercise of Intelligence to be better and greater, and the pains less, than those which attend other occupations, are really arguing upon the Hedonistic basis.[117] Far from establishing any antithesis between Pleasure and Intelligence, they bring the two into closer conjunction than was done by Epikurus himself.
[116] See Republic, ix. pp. 581-582, where he compares the pleasures of the three different lives. 1. Ὁ φιλόσοφος or φιλομαθής. 2. Ὁ φιλύτιμος. 3. Ὁ φιλοκερδής.
Again in the Phædon, he tells us that we are not to weigh pleasures against pleasures, or pains against pains, but all of them against φρόνησις or Intelligence (p. 69 A-B). This appears distinctly to contradict what Sokrates affirms in the Protagoras. But when we turn to another passage of the Phædon (p. 114 E), we find Sokrates recognising a class of pleasures attached to the exercise of Intelligence, and declaring them to be more valuable than the pleasures of sense, or any others. This is a very different proposition: but in both passages Plato had probably the same comparison in his mind.
Sydenham, in a note to his translation of the Philêbus (pp. 42-43), observes — “if Protarchus, when he took on himself to be an advocate for pleasure, had included, in his meaning of the word, all such pleasures as are purely mental, his opinion, fairly and rightly understood, could not have been different in the main, from what Sokrates here professes — That in every particular case, to discern what is best in action, and to perceive what is true in speculation, is the chief good of man; unless, indeed, it should afterwards come into question which of the two kinds of pleasure, the sensual or the mental, was to be preferred. For if it should appear that in this point they were both of the same mind, the controversy between them would be found a mere logomachy, or contention about words (as between Epicureans and Stoics), of the same kind as that would be between two persons, one of whom asserted that to a musical ear the proper and true good was Harmony, while the other contended that the good lay not in the Harmony itself, but in the pleasure which the musical ear felt from hearing it: or like a controversy among three persons, one of whom having asserted that to all animals living under the northern frigid zone, the Sun in Cancer was the greatest blessing; and another having asserted that not the Sun was that chief blessing to those northern animals, but the warmth which he afforded them; the third should imagine that he corrected or amended the two former by saying — That those animals were thus highly blest neither by the Sun, nor by the warmth which his rays afforded them, but by the joy or pleasure which they felt from the return of the Sun and warmth.”
[117] Plato, in Philêbus, p. 63 C-D, denounces and discards the vehement pleasures because they disturb the right exercise of Reason and Intelligence. Aristotle, after alluding to this doctrine, presents the same fact under a different point of view, as one case of a general law. Each variety of pleasure belongs to, and is consequent on, a certain ἐνέργεια of the system. Each variety of pleasure promotes and consummates its own ἐνέργεια, but impedes or arrests other different ἐνεργείας. Thus the pleasures of hunting, of gymnastic contest, of hearing or playing music — cause each of these ἐνεργεῖαι, upon which each pleasure respectively depends, to be more completely developed; but are unfavourable to different ἐνεργεῖαι, such as learning by heart, or solving a geometrical problem. The pleasure belonging to these latter, again, is unfavourable to the performance of the former ἐνεργεῖαι. Study often hurts health or good management of property; but if a man has pleasure in study, he will perform that work with better fruit and result.
This is a juster view of ἡδονὴ than what we read in the Philêbus. The illogical antithesis of Pleasure in genere, against Intelligence, finds no countenance from Aristotle.
See Ethic. Nikom. vii. 13, 1153, a. 20; x. 5, p. 1175; also Ethic. Magna, ii. p. 1206, a. 3.
Marked antithesis in the Philêbus between pleasure and avoidance of pain.
Another remark may be made on the way in which Plato argues the question in the Philêbus against the Hedonists. He draws a marked line of separation between Pleasure — and avoidance, relief, or mitigation, of Pain. He does not merely distinguish the two, but sets them in opposing antithesis. Wherever there is pain to be relieved, he will not allow the title of pleasurable to be bestowed on the situation. That is not true pleasure: in other words, it is no pleasure at all. He does not go quite so far as some contemporary theorists, the Fastidious Pleasure-Haters, who repudiated all pleasures without exception.[118] He allows a few rare exceptions; the sensual pleasures of sight, hearing, and smell — and the pleasures of exercising Intelligence, which (these latter most erroneously) he affirms to be not disentitled by any accompanying pains. His catalogue of pleasures is thus reduced to a chosen few, and these too enjoyable only by a chosen few among mankind.