
Contents
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I. Idle Pleasure I. Idle Pleasure
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II. The Philebus II. The Philebus
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III. Appetite and Pleasure III. Appetite and Pleasure
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IV. True Pleasure IV. True Pleasure
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V. True Pleasures and Value V. True Pleasures and Value
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VI. The Value of Idle Pleasure VI. The Value of Idle Pleasure
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Bibliography Bibliography
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6 Plato’s Philebus and the Value of Idle Pleasure
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Published:July 2018
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Abstract
Early in his Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick quotes with approval William Lecky’s claim that ‘the pleasure of virtue can be obtained only on the express condition of its not being the object sought’. This makes the pleasure of virtue idle—a pleasure that falls outside of the motivational framework of the activity in which the pleasure arises. In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates identifies certain so-called ‘true pleasures’ as the only pleasures that are, without qualification, good. These true pleasures are idle in the relevant sense: they are pleasures one gets without aiming at them, that is, without pleasure having a practically guiding role in the activities that give rise to them. This is non-accidental: these are pleasures one will get only by not taking pleasure as one’s guide. Further, this fact about the motivational structure of these pleasures is essentially connected to their goodness.
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