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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not, like the Cynics, opposed to
all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of the soul shall
have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the Epicureans in
describing pleasure as something more than the absence of pain. This is
proved by the circumstance that there are pleasures which have no
antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as the
pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and anticipation. In
the previous book he had made the distinction between necessary and
unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and he now observes
that there are a further class of 'wild beast' pleasures, corresponding to
Aristotle's (Greek). He dwells upon the relative and unreal character of
The Republic |
