The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato's PhilebusWith The Tragedy and Comedy of Life, Seth Benardete completes his examination of Plato's understanding of the beautiful, the just, and the good. Benardete first treated the beautiful in The Being of the Beautiful (1984), which dealt with the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman; and he treated the just in Socrates Second Sailing (1989), which dealt with the Republic and sought to determine the just in its relation to the beautiful and the good. Benardete focuses in this volume on the good as discussed in the Philebus, which is widely regarded as one of Plato's most complex dialogues. Traditionally, the Philebus is interpreted as affirming the supposedly Platonic doctrine that the good resides in thought and mind rather than in pleasure or the body. Benardete challenges this view, arguing that Socrates vindicates the life of the mind over against the life of pleasure not by separating the two and advocating a strict asceticism, but by mixing pleasure and pain with mind in such a way that the philosophic life emerges as the only possible human life. Socrates accomplishes this by making use of two principles - the limited and the unlimited - and shows that the very possibility of philosophy requires not just the limited but also the unlimited, for the unlimited permeates the entirety of life as well as the endless perplexity of thinking itself. Benardete combines a probing and challenging commentary that subtly mirrors and illumines the complexities of this extraordinarily difficult dialogue with the finest English translation of the Philebus yet available. The result is a work that will be of great value to classicists, philosophers, and political theorists alike. |
Contents
Philebus | 1 |
I The Tragedy and Comedy of Life | 87 |
II Socrates Portarchus and Philebus 11a112c4 | 92 |
III The One and the Many 1 12c414b8 | 105 |
IV The One and the Many 2 14c115c9 | 111 |
Eidetic Analysis 15d117a5 | 115 |
VI Notes and Letters 17a620b3 | 119 |
VII The Good 20b423b6 | 130 |
X The Seven Overlays 31b247d4 | 166 |
XI Comedy 47d550e3 | 198 |
XII Pure Pleasure 50e353c3 | 209 |
XIII Being and Becoming 53c455c3 | 213 |
XIV Science and Dialectic 55c459c9 | 217 |
XV The Mixture 59c1064c4 | 227 |
XVI The Good 64c667b13 | 235 |
243 | |
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Common terms and phrases
accept actually admits allow animals answer Aphrodite appears argument arts asks beautiful becoming beginning believe belong body cause choose comedy comes Compare complete contrary course desire dialogue divine double eidetic analysis elements enjoy everything exactly experience expression fact false give gods hand hope human implies impossible infinite issue kind knowledge least less light limit live look mean measure memory mind mixture monads nature never occurs once one's opinion original pair perhaps Philebus Philebus's philosophy Plato plea pleasure and pain pleasure and thought possible present problem protarchus Protarchus's pure question rates reason rightly sciences seems sense separation Socrates soul sound speak species speech stand structure suggests sure things thinking third thought tion tragedy true truth turn understand unlimited whole