James Adam, The Republic of Plato

---

τοῦτο γὰρ κτλ. The argument is as follows. While suffering pain, men are apt to look upon the ἡσυχία from pain as the highest pleasure. Perhaps (suggests Glauco) at such a time the neutral state is in point of fact found positively pleasant and welcome by them. Socrates proceeds to shew (by a reductio ad absurdum proof) that Glauco's suggestion is untenable. ‘In that case,’ he argues, ‘ἡσυχία from pleasure will in like manner be positively painful: and thus the neutral state, which we declared to be between the two extremes, will upon occasions be both, viz. both pleasure and pain.’ Glauco allows that that which is neither cannot become both, and Socrates proceeds: In this instance the ‘both’ is a κίνησις, and the ‘neither’ a ἡσυχία, and lies, as we have seen, between the two: so that it is wrong to identify the absence of pain with pleasure or the absence of pleasure with pain. Hence your suggestion is erroneous: οὐκ ἔστιν ἄρα τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ φαίνεται κτλ. See below on 584 A. The argument is really complete when Glauco says οὔ μοι δοκεῖ, but the words καὶ μὴν τό γε ἡδύ introduce a new reason for refusing to identify ἡσυχία with pleasure or with pain, by explicitly stating for the first time that pleasure and pain are each of them a κίνησις. ἡσυχία and κίνησις are mutually exclusive notions. Cf. Phil. 43 D—44 B, where the reasoning follows nearly the same lines. See also next note.