Abstract:
Why is the Protagoras’ final argument premised on Hedonism? I argue for a new interpretation that shows Plato to be concerned with the very issues that motivate the Republic’s tripartite psychology. Socrates introduces Hedonism to deflect a threat to his view that virtue is knowledge. If the pleasant is an end – an ultimate object of desire – distinct from the good, then desires for the pleasant are different in kind from, and can potentially conflict with and overwhelm, desires for the good. Socrates attempts to neutralize this threat through the hypothesis that there is only one end of human desire: in desiring what they think of as the pleasant, people are in fact desiring the good. In the Republic he will reject this hypothesis: there are three distinct ends, the pleasant, the beneficial, and the noble, and with them three distinct species of desire; hence motivational conflict is possible, and virtue involves more than just knowledge.
© De Gruyter
