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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: parallel. The character of Protagoras may be compared with that of
Gorgias, but the conception of happiness is different in the two dialogues;
being described in the former, according to the old Socratic notion, as
deferred or accumulated pleasure, while in the Gorgias, and in the Phaedo,
pleasure and good are distinctly opposed.
This opposition is carried out from a speculative point of view in the
Philebus. There neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief
good, but pleasure and good are not so completely opposed as in the
Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no antecedent pains, are
allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to Gorgias' definition
of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorg.), as the art of persuasion, of all
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