[581e]
compared with the delight of knowing
the truth1 and the reality, and being always occupied with that
while he learns? Will he not think them far removed from true pleasure,2 and call3 them
literally4 the pleasures of necessity,5 since he would have no use for them if necessity were
not laid upon him?” “We may be sure of that,”
he said.“Since, then, there is
contention between the several types of pleasure and the lives themselves,
not merely as to which is the more honorable or the more base, or the worse
or the better, but which is actually the more pleasurable6 or free from pain,
1 Cf. Phileb. 58 C on dialectic.
2 Cf. 598 B, Epist. iii. 315 C, Marc. Aurel. viii. 1πόρρω φιλοσοφίας. Hermann's text or something like it is the only idiomatic one, and τῆς ἡδονῆς οὐ πάνυ πόρρω must express the philosopher's opinion of the pleasurableness of the lower pleasures as compared with the higher. Cf. A.J.P. xiii. p. 366.
3 For the infinitive cf. 492 Cκαὶ φήσειν, 530 Bκαὶ ζητεῖν.
4 τῷ ὄντι marks the etymological use of ἀναγκαίας. Cf. on 511 B and 551 E, p. 266, note a.
5 Cf. 558 D f.
6 This anticipates Laws 663 A, 733 A-B, 734 A-B.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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