A Comparison of Plato’s and Aristotle’s Views on the Nature of Pleasure

Angela Kind

Abstract

            Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts of the nature of pleasure are compared in this paper by exploring their answers to three questions about pleasure that they both ask in their work.  These questions are as follows:  Is pleasure a process, and if not, what is it?  Do false pleasures exist?  Might pleasure be the good?  What we will find is that Plato and Aristotle are in general agreement when it comes to the latter two questions.  By using the term ‘false’ metaphorically, both Plato and Aristotle would say false pleasures exist, but they differ slightly in what they call false pleasures.  Both Plato and Aristotle also say that pleasure, although sometimes it is definitely a good, is definitely not the good.  We will find that their greatest disagreement lies in the answer to the first question.  Neither Plato nor Aristotle will say outright that pleasure is a process, but Plato will say that pleasure is called by a process of replenishment and Aristotle will say that pleasure can result from this process (which to him only covers physical pleasures) and that it can be the result of perfection of an activity.   

A Comparison of Plato’s and Aristotle’s Views on the Nature of Pleasure

The nature of pleasure has concerned philosophers throughout the ages and Plato and Aristotle are no exception to this.  In this paper, I will compare and contrast Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on the nature of pleasure by exploring the responses they gave to the similar questions they asked.  These similar questions include, but certainly aren’t limited to, the following:  Is pleasure an end in itself or part of a process?  Do false pleasures exist?  Are some or all pleasures bad or is pleasure actually the greatest good?  By exploring these questions, I hope to show that although Plato and Aristotle are aligned on some issues regarding pleasure, they are largely in disagreement.  

Pleasure as a Process

            In this section, I intend to give an overview of Plato’s account of pleasure in the Philebus.  Even though one can find places where Plato talks about pleasure scattered throughout the dialogues, I will use the Philebus in this section because it is one of his latest works on the subject and seems to be the most complete account of it.  I have found that the Philebus seems to tie together the loose ends that Plato left open in other works such as the Gorgias, Protagoras and the Republic, but I will discuss this more in the following sections (Frede p. 425).

            Anyway, many of the authors that I have read have referred to Plato’s account of pleasure as something to the effect of “the replenishment theory” (Riel p. 7).  Through Socrates, Plato describes this replenishment theory as follows:

What I claim is that when we find the harmony in living creatures disrupted, there will at the same time be a disintegration of their nature and a rise of pain … But if the reverse happens, and the harmony is regained and the former nature restored, we have to say that pleasure arises, if we must pronounce only a few words on the weightiest matters in the shortest possible time.  (Philebus 31d)

Given this passage, it seems that Plato would claim that pleasure is the replenishment of some lack.  But seeing that this theory seems to originate from a model of purely physical pleasures, such as thirst being slaked and hunger being satisfied (31e), does this theory account for all of the pleasures described in the Philebus? It seems that Aristotle would say that it does not.  Aristotle’s response to Plato’s replenishment theory will be covered more thoroughly later.

However, Thomas Tuozzo, in his article The General Account of Pleasure in Plato’s Philebus, would answer this question affirmatively.  Here he argues that even though Socrates is adamant that some pleasures are very different from other kinds of pleasures and even though Socrates does not explicitly say how the replenishment theory, which seems to originate from a model of physical pleasures, can apply to other pleasure that Tuozzo refers to as reflexive pleasures or pleasures which depend on cognition, such as pleasures of anticipation and emotional pleasures, the Philebus does give us a single account that includes all of the pleasures.  Tuozzo would define Plato’s replenishment theory as “a conscious psychic process caused either by the reality of the restoration of a bodily or psychic harmony, or by entertaining the image of such a restoration” (p. 2).

Reflexive Pleasures and Plato’s Theory

And how did he get reflexive pleasures to fit into the model? By saying that pleasure isn’t identical to the restoration of harmony but caused by it, he can say that pleasure is the result of other things that have similar causal properties to actual replenishment (Tuozzo p. 6).  And something that would have similar causal properties is anticipation or imagining oneself in a pleasant situation and enjoying it.  But do these two things have similar causal properties?  What is it about actual replenishment, which is a process of moving from a state of lacking to a state of being filled, that causes pleasure?  At this point, I cannot think of anything but to say that it is the process of moving from the former state to the latter which is pleasurable, but that does not work because it is like saying that the thing about actual replenishment that causes pleasure is actual replenishment.  That’s not very helpful.  I guess I could then say that arriving at this fulfilled state causes pleasure.  But this does not seem quite satisfactory.  If I eat a meal, it will likely be pleasurable, even if I do not get to finish it and leave hungry (the leaving hungry part will not be pleasurable, but eating the meal until then will be unless of course I am anticipating leaving in the middle of the meal which will make eating the meal a mixed pleasure). 

Besides, if what makes restoration pleasurable really is arriving at a fulfilled state, this would contradict what Socrates said later in the dialogue:

But what about the following point?  Have we not been told that pleasure is always a process of becoming, and that there is no being at all of pleasure?  There are some subtle thinkers who have tried to pass on this doctrine to us, and we ought to be grateful to them.  (Philebus 53c)

Socrates will use this argument to show that pleasure is not the good.  What’s interesting to note at this point is that Tuozzo says that Plato himself does not explicitly state that pleasure is coming-into-being and that this is just another instance where Socrates makes an assertion to show those who would concur with it what they are really committing themselves to if this assertion were drawn out to its logical conclusion (p. 5).  Socrates facetiousness in the last line of the quotation also seems to indicate that Plato might not have subscribed to the view that pleasure is coming-into-being.  But if replenishment is a process, which it seems to be, and processes are means by which things come-into-being and not states, then Plato does say that coming-into-being at least causes pleasure.  It seems we are back to where we started. 

Perhaps asking what about replenishment causes pleasure is silly.  Maybe we could ask instead if Tuozzo’s take of Plato’s theory of replenishment, as a process that replenishes bodily or psychic harmony or the image of such replenishment, is satisfactory.  There are a few scholars that he references, J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor in their book, The Greeks on Pleasure, and one that I found myself that do disagree with him, by claiming that this theory of replenishment does not seem to apply to all the pleasures (Tuozzo p. 10).  Gerard Hughes, in Aristotle on Ethics, states that Plato “thinks that some pleasures, in particular pleasures of the mind, need not be processes, nor involve filling up some physical deficiency in the way in which bodily pleasures might be thought to do” (p. 193). 

It does seem to me that there are some pleasures that Plato mentions that do not seem to require a lack at all.  What about learning and the other pure pleasures?  Of these, Socrates says, “Those that are related to so-called pure colors and to shapes and to most smells and sounds and in general all those that are based on imperceptible and painless lacks, while their fulfillments are perceptible and pleasant” (Philebus 51b).  Even with the pure pleasures, there is a lack of some sort that can be replenished.  This lack I suppose might be the missing out on the beauty of these pleasures when one does not perceive them.  What makes these pleasures pure is that this lack is imperceptible and thus painless (Frede p. 452).  So it seems that at this point, we would have to say that Plato’s theory of replenishment does include all pleasures that were mentioned in the Philebus. 

Aristotle’s Refutation of Pleasure as a Process

As stated above, I claimed that Aristotle would think that Plato’s theory does not include all of the pleasures described in the Philebus and is thus, at best, incomplete.  From what I gathered, Aristotle would think that Plato’s account of pleasure is incomplete for many of the same reasons listed above.  One example of this is that he seems to think that the replenishment theory only applies to bodily processes:

They say, too, that pain is the lack of that which is according to nature, and pleasure is replenishment.  But these experiences are bodily.  If then pleasure is replenishment with that which is according to nature, that which feels pleasure will be that in which the replenishment takes place, i.e. the body.  But that is not thought to be the case. (NE X 3, as quoted in Riel p. 48)

Now it’s true that Plato himself did not want to say that it is the body itself that experiences the pleasure.  According to Plato, the actual bearer of pleasure was the soul, not the body (Riel p. 48).  But as we have seen above, not all lacks, even lacks of that which are according to nature, are physical lacks.  Would a lack need to be somehow outside of nature and if so, what would such a lack be?  It seems to me to be that perfect pleasures, which result from lacks of things like seeing perfect geometrical shapes, would be a lack according to nature.  Even in the process of learning, which happens in nature, one will not know exactly what he has lacked until he learns it.  So his lack will be imperceptible for him.  Perhaps I am not grasping what Aristotle meant by the “according to nature” part of the above quotation, but I do not think that Aristotle’s first attempt at refuting the replenishment theory works.  Even though such a theory came to be through a discussion of purely physical pleasures, the replenishment theory does cover more than that.  It is important to note that Aristotle still rejects the replenishment theory saying that it still does not pertain to nonphysical pleasures.  This extrapolation from bodily pleasures does not apply to nonphysical ones, for how can pleasure result from a lack that is unperceivable? (Riel p. 50) 

            But notice too that in the above quotation, Aristotle equates pleasure with replenishment and in doing so I am not sure that he interpreted Plato correctly.  As stated above, it seems that Plato never explicitly said that pleasure is restoration and since he did not equate the two, Tuozzo interpreted Plato as saying that there is a causal relationship between actual or imagined restoration and pleasure.  As it turns out, this distinction is also the basis of Aristotle’s account of pleasure.  Aristotle notes that restoration is not pleasure, but pleasure is a result that supervenes on the replenishment (Riel p. 49). 

Pleasure as the Perfection of an Activity

So Aristotle’s account of pleasure might not be completely opposed to Plato’s account.  It is not completely opposed, but certainly not in alignment either.  Basically, Aristotle wants to say that pleasure is not the result of a process of restoration of our faculties, but the result of using these faculties.  Pleasure results when our faculties or the faculties of any creature can perform its activities without impediment (Riel 51).  Aristotle says the following about his view on the nature of pleasure:

Every perception has its pleasure, as does every instance of thinking or study … Pleasure makes the activity perfect.  But it does not make the activity perfect in the same way as the perceived object and the faculty of perception do when they are both good, any more than a doctor and health contribute in the same way to someone being healthy … Pleasure makes the activity perfect not as an intrinsic quality of the activity does, but as a supervenient perfection, like the bloom of youth.  (NE X 4 as quoted in Hughes p. 197-198)

With this definition, we can see that Plato’s and Aristotle’s takes on pleasure differ very much.  For Aristotle, pleasure does not involve restoration at all, but it is the result of the perfection of an activity.  Pleasure involves things like reading articles on the Philebus and understanding them or painting a beautiful picture or performing well at work (Hughes p. 199).  Hughes notes “to perform effortlessly a natural activity at its best just is to enjoy it” (p. 199).  I wonder if it is pleasure that motivates us to perform worthy activities such as creating art or seeking intellectual fulfillment.  If such activities did not produce pleasure, I do not think we would pursue these activities nearly as often.  If pleasure is what motivates us to fulfill our potential, might it be the good?  We shall pursue this question more thoroughly in the last section of this paper.  For now, let’s continue to explore other questions about the nature of pleasure to see where Plato and Aristotle stand on them. 

False Pleasures According to Plato

            One thing that confused me greatly in the Philebus is Socrates’s introduction of false pleasures.  After examining the matter a bit more closely, just a bit, I still am aligned with Protarchus’s position, as stated in this portion of the dialogue:

PROTARCHUS:  But how could there be false pleasures and pains, Socrates?

SOCRATES:  Well, how could there be true or false fears, true or false expectations, true or false judgments, Protarchus?

PROTARCHUS:  For judgments I certainly would be ready to admit it, but not for the other cases.

In these next two sections, I intend to explore the following questions:  How could there be false pleasures and pains, indeed?  And what does it mean to have a false pleasure or pain?  Does Plato mean to say that a pleasure or a pain is not a real pleasure or pain if it is a false one or does is he simply stating that pleasures and pains that result from true or false judgments are true and false respectively but equally real?  If he means the former, I do not think he can be right about this aspect of the nature of pleasure.  If he means the later, then there must be some other name he can give false pleasures, maybe something less misleading like “pleasures that result from false judgments”.  Many scholars note that Plato’s equivocating causes great problems for them in dealing with this section, and it certainly has caused such difficulties for me at any rate (Frede p. 442).

False Pleasures as Propositional Attitudes

In Disintegration and Restoration: Pleasure and Pain in Plato’s Philebus, Dorothea Frede claims that there are four kinds of false pleasures: false pleasures and pains as propositional attitudes, false pleasures and pains as a result of mismeasurement, false pleasures as equated to freedom from pain and false pleasures as pleasures that are not pure (p. 443).  I agree that the last two pleasures are false pleasures, if we use false metaphorically:  if by false we mean, in the case of freedom from pain, not a pleasure at all (the same way that a false Rembrandt is not really a Rembrandt), and if, in the case of impure pleasures, we mean the same as what we mean by false gold, where a certain piece of gold is not completely composed of gold (Frede p. 449).  But I do have problems with the first two kinds of false pleasures. 

Now in thinking of false pleasures and pains in terms of propositional attitudes, I will admit that of course pleasures that are the result of true judgments are better than pleasures that result from false ones in any case.  If I mistakenly think that I won the lottery, I can imagine myself being very excited.  I will think that I will be able to pay my school debts way ahead of schedule as well as my family’s.  I’ll finally get to see Europe.  My parents will finally get that nice little (or maybe not so little) retirement home in Florida.  This pleasure sure seems real to me—in what sense will Plato say that this is a false pleasure?  Sure I’ll be a little embarrassed after telling all my friends I’m a millionaire when it turns out I’m not, but to call the pleasure I experienced previously as false does not seem to accurately convey what had happened.  The pleasure that I experienced before I came to know about my false judgment was exactly the same as the pleasure that I would have experienced if I actually had won the lotto.  And if the pleasure that I experienced in that moment was exactly the same as what a true pleasure would have been, then Plato can’t mean that the pleasure I experienced was not real.  The only thing that makes this pleasure false is in a metaphorical sense that indicates nothing more about it other than there is something wrong with the pleasure, i.e., that it was the result of a false judgment (Frede p. 444). 

So why call it a false pleasure?  Frede argues that what makes an anticipated pleasure pleasurable in the first place is the thought that it will actually come to pass.  These pleasures are pleasures only with the hope that the contents of the blissful daydream will become a fact in the future.  Frede says that these anticipated states are “propositional attitudes” and they can be true or false (p. 445).  But note that it is the propositional attitudes that can be true and false and not the pleasure that results from them.  So why is pleasure still called false?  To answer this question, perhaps we should go back to the dialogue.  Through Socrates, Plato expresses his view thusly:

But what we have to question is how it is that judgment is usually either true or false, while pleasure admits only truth, even though in both cases there is equally real judgment and real pleasure … Is it that judgment takes on the additional qualification of true and false and is thus not simply judgment, but also has either one of these two qualities?  … And furthermore, whether quite generally certain things allow extra qualifications, while pleasure and pain are simply what they are and do not take qualifications.  About that we also have to come to an agreement … But at least it is not difficult to see that they, too, take on qualifications.  For we said earlier that both of them, pleasures as well as pains, can be great and small, and also have intensity.  (Philebus 37b,c)

Yes, so pleasures and pains do have qualifications, but I do not think truth and falsity are qualifications that can be ascribed to pleasures and pains, unless he is speaking metaphorically.  Oranges have qualifications as well.  Some are relatively large and some are small, but none of them are true or false.  Socrates continues:

But if some bad state should attach itself to any of them, then we would say that the judgment becomes a bad one, and the pleasure becomes bad too …But what if some rightness or the opposite of rightness are added to something, would we not call the judgment right, if it were right, and the pleasure too? (Protarchus assents.)  As to pleasure, it certainly often seems to arise in us not with a right, but with a false, judgment.  (Philebus 37d,e)

So it’s not that the pleasure isn’t real.  Just as false judgments are nonetheless real judgments, false pleasures are real pleasures.  I think all Plato means to say is when we feel a false pleasure, our response to the status quo is not correct and so there is something very wrong with the pleasure we’re experiencing, which still does not help answer why Plato would incorrectly ascribe this qualification to pleasures and pains.  But as Frede stated, maybe the argument is only meant to show that there is something wrong with many of the pleasures we experience and that if pleasure often seems to arise with false judgments and if such pleasures are experienced wrongly, maybe pleasure is not the wonderful thing that Philebus said it was (p. 444).  But even if pleasure isn’t the wonderful thing Philebus made it out to be, it still is not false.    

False Pleasures as the Result of Mismeasurement

            The second of the four false pleasures are pleasures that result from mismeasurement.  I am convinced that the only sense in which these false pleasures are false is again in a metaphorical sense; the only thing that Plato is really saying about these pleasures is that there is something wrong with them, namely that they are not measured correctly in the sense that it was described in the Protagoras, and not that such pleasures should really have the qualification of falsity ascribed to them.  Let’s recall what was meant by measuring pleasures in the Protagoras by taking a look at the dialogue.  Socrates states: 

Since this is so, I will say to them: ‘Answer me this: Do things of the same size appear to you larger when seen near at hand and smaller when seen from a distance, or not?’  They would say they do … ‘If then our well-being depended upon this, doing and choosing large things, avoiding and not doing the small ones, what would we see as our salvation in life?  Would it be the art of measurement or the power of appearance?  While the power of appearance often makes us wander all over the place in confusion … the art of measurement in contrast, would give us peace of mind firmly rooted in truth and would save our life.  (Protagoras 356c,d,e)

            Just as we can easily misjudge the size of a far away object, I would agree that we can misjudge how much pain or pleasure will result in an act.  In my experience, I would say that I have misjudged the size of the pain I would endure from indulging in certain pleasures.  I am sure that if I would have realized at the moment of decision about this pleasure, with full force the pain that I would later endure, I would not have indulged in such pleasures.  But my errors were not as great as Esau’s.  Frede uses the story of Esau, in which he sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils, as an example of how pleasures and pains can be misjudged (p. 447).  But nothing that was said above can lead us to the conclusion that pleasures are false.  Just some are disproportionate. 

False Pleasures According to Aristotle

            Aristotle does not seem to call any of the pleasures he talks about false.  But if we use the term in one of the ways Plato did, to mean that false pleasures really are not pleasures at all, then Aristotle might have identified some pleasures as such.  On this, Aristotle said the following:

When people [wishing to argue that pleasure is not good] give as examples shameful pleasures, one could reply by saying that these are not pleasant.  The mere fact that they are pleasant to people of a depraved disposition should not lead us to think that they are pleasant to anyone else, any more than we would think so in the case of things which are healthy, or sweet, or bitter to those who are sick … (NE X 3 as cited in Hughes p. 199). 

Again, these shameful pleasures are not any less real than the nonshameful pleasures.  But these pleasures definitely are not on a par with the pleasures that result from the perfection of an activity.  Another way pleasures could be false, or another way that pleasures can have something wrong with them, is that a person takes part in the good pleasures, like good food, wine and sex, too much.  Aristotle seemed to think that goodness was actually a state between two bads, so, for example, too much or too little food would be a bad thing.  About this he says the following:

In the case of those states and processes in which one cannot have too much of a good thing, so neither can there be too much pleasure involved in them.  But where it is possible to have too much of a good thing, so it is possible to have too much pleasure.  Now one can have too much in the way of bodily goods, and a nasty person is so not because he [enjoys] the necessary pleasures, but because he goes after what is too much.  (NE VII 14 as cited in Hughes p. 189)

            Aristotle seems to be saying that pleasures can be found lacking if the soul or body is distorted, as in the former example in this section, or if one indulges too much (or even not enough) in pleasures, like in the latter section.  Aristotle does not seem to be as opposed to pleasures as Plato is.  From what I gathered, Aristotle seems to think that it is fine for anyone to pursue pleasures, as long as they do so in moderation. 

Plato’s Response to “Is Pleasure the Good?”

            I think it is obvious that Plato would say no to this question.  As I write this, I feel like I can here him screaming this one from his grave, “Pleasure is NOT the good!”  One might wonder then if Plato’s answer is so obvious, why am I considering it?  Well, because he considers this question himself in a few of these dialogues including the Gorgias and Philebus, and because the arguments that get him to that resounding “No” are very interesting.  In this section, I will talk about how Plato explored this question in the Philebus.

One thing that I found interesting about the Philebus is that Philebus, the proponent of pleasure, somehow was not able to do his part in Socrates’s exploration of whether or not pleasure was the good, leaving his friend Protarchus to take his place.  I think that it was through this dramatic device that Plato meant to tell us something:  Those that hold pleasure as the greatest good will miss out on other, more noble goods, such as understanding the nature of the reality around them.   

In order to figure out whether pleasure or knowledge was the good, Socrates needed to define the good in the Philebus and he does so as follows:

Let there be neither any knowledge in a life of pleasure, nor any pleasure in that of knowledge.  For if either of the two is the good, then it must have no need of anything in addition.  But if one or the other should turn out to be lacking, then this can definitely no longer be the real good we are looking for.  (Philebus p. 408)

I think if this is the definition of the good, then I am not sure that any one thing can be the good.  These are really high standards and I am hard pressed to think of any good that is able to match this definition.  Since neither knowledge nor pleasure is able to fulfill the requirements of being perfect and sufficient, neither of them can be the good.  But at this point the discussion is not over.  Socrates and Protarchus continued by asking, since neither pleasure nor knowledge was the good, because neither pleasure nor knowledge was, by themselves, enough for the good life, which of the two would be closer to the good.  Which of these two would be more prevalent in the mixture of the good life?  The mixture of the good life turned out to consist of more than just pleasure and knowledge but also measurement, beauty and truth.  And as it turns out neither pleasure nor knowledge was awarded second place for this.  Knowledge and intellect came in third place and pleasure a disappointing fifth.   But measurement came in first and I wonder that since it did, if it could be considered the good.  Since the good life for humans is a mixture of the five things, it would seem that even measurement is not sufficient and thus cannot be the good.  What exactly the good is has been left unanswered.

            Another reason to think that pleasure is not the good comes from an argument mentioned in the first section.  Basically, it is stated as follows:  If pleasure is a coming-to-be and if coming-to-be is not the good but being is, then pleasure cannot be the good.  But this argument only works if pleasure is thought of as a process and earlier in the paper our friend Aristotle has shown us why this is not exactly the way to think about pleasure.  Given this disagreement between Plato and Aristotle, perhaps Aristotle would say that pleasure is the good. 

Aristotle’s Response to “Is Pleasure the Good?”

            Compared to Plato, Aristotle seems to me to be a hedonist, but even he would not want to claim that pleasure is the good.  One reason Aristotle cannot think this is because of the connection between moral failure and pleasure he makes in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics (Hughes p. 184).  But given what he said about pleasure being the perfection of an activity, one would have to wonder if it is the good since it guides us into the life we are supposed to live.  But then again, given what we said in the section about Aristotle’s false pleasures, pleasure does not always seem to have the effect of guiding us to the best life for human beings to live. 

By exploring questions on the nature of pleasure, such as whether pleasure is a process or a state of being, whether or not there are really false pleasures and whether or not pleasure is the good, we have found that Plato are Aristotle are in at least general agreement in the latter two questions (and even here they explore these questions in different ways).  We have also found a significant difference in their philosophies when it comes to the first question.  For Plato, the nature of pleasure results from an actual or imagined restoration from a lack to harmony.  For Aristotle, the nature of pleasure is not this, but what perfects an activity.  Unfortunately, there are many more aspects in their philosophies regarding pleasure that were not covered in this paper.  Perhaps if we were to explore what they thought to be the nature of pleasure more deeply, we would find that they disagree in many other ways.

Works Cited

Cooper, John M., ed.  (1997).  Plato Complete Works.  Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapolis.

Frede, Dorothea.  (1995).  “Disintegration and restoration: Pleasure and Pain in Plato’s Philebus” in Plato’s Ethics: Classical Philosophy: Collected Papers.  Terence Irwin, ed.  Vol. 3. Garland Publishers: New York. 

Hughes, Gerard J.  (2001).  Aristotle on Ethics.  Routledge:  New York.

Riel, Gerd.  (2000).  Pleasure and the Good Life: Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists.  Brill: Boston.

Tuozzo, Thomas M.  (Oct. 1996).  “The General Account of Pleasure in Plato’s Philebus” in Journal of the History of Philosophy.  Vol. 34, No. 4.  Viewed at http://firstsearch.oclc.org on 6/21/2003.