Kitap 10
5
Again, these thinkers’ refutation of the argument from the converse appears equally unsound. They pain say, if pain is bad, it does not follow therefore that pleasure is good: for an evil can also be opposed to an evil and to a thing that is neither good nor evil: a statement which is indeed sound enough, but which does not apply to the things in question. If both pleasure and pain were in the class of evils, both would be also of necessity things to be avoided, and if in the class of things neutral, neither ought to be avoided, or they ought to be avoided alike; but as it is we see men avoid pain as evil and choose pleasure as good; it is therefore as good and evil that they are opposed.
1
Nor yet does it follow that if pleasure is not a quality, therefore it is not a good. Virtuous activities are not qualities either, nor is happiness.
2
Again they arguePlat. Phileb. 24e, Plat. Phileb. 31a. that good is definite, but that pleasure is indefinite, because it admits of degrees. Now (a) if they base this judgement on the fact that one can be more or less pleased, the same argument will apply to Justice and the other virtues, the possessors of which are clearly spoken of as being more or less virtuous; for example, A may be more just or brave, and may act more, or less, justly or temperately, than B. If on the other hand (b) they judge by the nature of the pleasures themselves, I am afraid they do not state the right ground for their conclusion, if it be true that there are two kinds of pleasures, unmixed as well as mixed.i.e., when they attribute indefiniteness to pleasure, they are really thinking of the mixed pleasures only; it does not apply to the pure pleasures, in which there is no admixture of pain; and the distinction between these two kinds of pleasure is Plato’s own.
