Source edition
Platonis Opera, Tomus II: Tetralogia III-IV. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.
Source data
Perseus Digital Library · CC BY-SA (per Perseus's terms)
Cloned and adapted by Humanitext, with ongoing edits.
Summary
This work is a philosophical dialogue between Socrates and Protarchus that investigates whether "pleasure" or "intelligence (wisdom and knowledge)" is the true "good" that makes human life happy. Socrates begins by showing that both pleasure and knowledge are diverse and contain internal differences, introducing a dialectical method of "the one and the many" and a fourfold classification of existence: the unlimited, the limit, the mixture, and the cause. Through rigorous inquiry, they agree that neither a life of pure pleasure nor a life of pure intellect is self-sufficient, and that a "mixed life" combining both is the most desirable for humans. To determine the components of this ideal life, the dialogue minutely analyzes various types of physical and mental pleasures, the mixtures of pleasure and pain, and the degrees of purity in different branches of knowledge. Ultimately, they identify "measure (proportion)," "beauty," and "truth" as the key elements that make the mixture good, concluding that intellect is far closer to the good than pleasure and ranks much higher in the hierarchy of values.