The Philebus composed between 360 and 347 BC, is among the last of the late Socratic dialogue

Socratic dialogue

Socratic dialogue is a genre of prose literary works developed in Greece at the turn of the fourth century BC, preserved today in the dialogues of Plato and the Socratic works of Xenophon - either dramatic or narrative - in which characters discuss moral and philosophical problems, illustrating a...

s of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

. Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

 is the primary speaker in Philebus, unlike in the other late dialogues. The other speakers are Philebus and Protarchus.

The dialogue's central question concerns the relative value of pleasure

Pleasure

Pleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria...

 and knowledge

Knowledge

Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...

, and produces a model for thinking about how complex structures are developed. Socrates begins by summarizing the two sides of the dialogue:

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure for all who are able to partake of them, and that to all such who are or ever will be they are the most advantageous of all things.

But he then goes on to dismiss both pleasure and knowledge as unsatisfactory, reasoning that the truly good life is one of a measured and sensible mixture of the two.

The dialogue is generally considered to contain less humor than earlier dialogues, and to emphasize philosophy and speculation over drama and poetry.

Sources

• Plato (tr. B. Jowett). Philebus.
• Schofield, Malcolm. (1998, 2002). "Plato." In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an encyclopedia of philosophy edited by Edward Craig that was first published by Routledge in 1998 . Originally published in both 10 volumes of print and as a CD-ROM, in 2002 it was made available online on a subscription basis...
  
  . London: Routledge. Retrieved September, 2006.

External links

• Full text, Greek or English (Harold N. Fowler, 1925) - Perseus Project
  Perseus Project
  The Perseus Project is a digital library project of Tufts University that assembles digital collections of humanities resources. It is hosted by the Department of Classics. It has suffered at times from computer hardware problems, and its resources are occasionally unavailable...
  
  
• Full text and Introduction (Benjamin Jowett
  Benjamin Jowett
  Benjamin Jowett was renowned as an influential tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian and translator of Plato. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford.-Early career:...
  
  , 1892)
• Overview at Gutenberg
• 'Measure for Measure' section on the Philebus in "Plato's Ethics: An Overview" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy