Tuesdays, 2pm–4pm, Schwarzman Centre (Ryle Room)
Convenors: Prof Verity Harte & Prof Ursula Coope
In this seminar, we shall discuss Plato’s remarks about pleasure in the Philebus together with Aristotle’s account of pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics VII.11-14 and X.1-5. We shall be asking to what extent, and how, Plato and Aristotle are in conversation with each other in these works. We shall focus, in particular, on questions about the metaphysics of pleasure, and on what the answers to such questions tell us about the value of pleasure. What is at stake in the debate over whether or not pleasure is a kind of becoming or process? What is the relation between the pleasure we take in something and that which we take pleasure in? Can Plato and Aristotle accommodate the variety of different kinds of pleasure? And what does all this imply about the relation between pleasure and goodness?
Though we shall sometimes need to talk about the Greek, the seminar will also be accessible to those studying the texts only in translation. All graduate students are welcome, whether on the BPhil, MSts, or DPhil.
In advance of the first class, it would be helpful to have read through Plato’s Philebus in translation.
Texts
Plato Philebus
English translation for use in class: Dorothea Frede, Plato Philebus, Indianapolis: Hackett [available as standalone volume, 1993, with Introduction and Notes; also in John Cooper ed. Plato Complete Works, Indianapolis: Hackett]
Greek text: OCT Philebus ed. John Burnet [Note also more recent Diès ed., Budé text]
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics
English translation for use in class: Terence Irwin, Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (2nd or 3rd Edition) Hackett
Greek text: OCT Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea, ed I. Bywater
A full reading list will be distributed in the class and available on canvas.
Provisional Schedule
Week 1: Introductory questions
Weeks 2, 3 & 4: Plato Philebus
a) Pleasure and restoration: Philebus 31b-36c, with 42d-43d
b) Pleasure and purity: Philebus 50e-53c, against backdrop of 44b-50e
c) Pleasure as genesis: Philebus 53c-55c
Week 5: Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics VII.11-14 (especially 11-12)
against the view of pleasure as genesis.
Weeks 6 & 7: Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics X.1-5
a) Pleasure is not a process: esp Nicomachean Ethics X.3-4. (cf also Metaphysics Theta 6.1048b18-25)
b) Pleasure’s relation to activity, different kinds of pleasure: Nicomachean Ethics X.4, 1174b15ff and Nicomachean Ethics X.5.
Week 8: Conclusions: Aristotle and Plato in conversation.
