Overcome by Pleasure

⊕   "Come, Protagoras, and reveal this about your mind: What do you believe about knowledge (ἐπιστήμην)? Do you go along with the majority? They think this way about it, that it is not powerful, neither a leader nor a ruler, that while knowledge is often present, what rules is something else, sometimes anger, sometimes pleasure, sometimes pain, at other times love, often fear. They think of knowledge as being dragged around by these other things, as if it were a slave. Does the matter seem like that to you? Or does it seem to you that knowledge is a fine thing and rules a man, so that if someone were to know what is good and bad, he would not be forced by anything to act otherwise than knowledge dictates, and that intelligence would be sufficient to save him?
  Not only does it seem exactly as you say, but it would be shameful for me of all people to say that wisdom and knowledge are anything but the strongest in human affairs.
  Well and truly spoken, I said. Now you know that most people will not listen to you and me, but say that many, while knowing what is best, refuse to perform it, though they have the power, and do other things instead. And whenever I have asked them to tell me what can be the cause of this, they say that those who act so are acting under the influence of pleasure or pain, or under the control of one of the things I have just mentioned.
  Yes, Socrates, he replied, I regard this as but one of the many erroneous sayings of mankind.
  Come then, and join me in the endeavor to persuade the world and explain what is this experience of theirs, which they call 'being overcome by pleasure,' and which they give as the reason why they fail to do what is best though they have knowledge of it" (Protagoras 352a).

  "Now if our welfare consisted in doing and choosing things of large dimensions, and avoiding and not doing those of small, what would be our salvation in life? Would it be the art of measurement), or the power of appearance? Is it not the latter that leads us astray, as we saw, and many a time causes us to take things topsy-turvy and to have to change our minds both in our conduct and in our choice of great or small? Whereas the art of measurement would have made this appearance ineffective, and by showing us the truth would have brought our soul into the repose of abiding by the truth, and so would have saved our life. Would men acknowledge, in view of all this, that the art which saves our life is measurement, or some other?
  It is measurement.
  Well now, if the saving of our life depended on the choice of odd or even, and on knowing when to make a right choice of the greater and when of the less—taking each by itself or comparing it with the other, and whether near or distant—what would save our life? Would it not be knowledge (ἐπιστήμη); a knowledge of measurement, since the art here is concerned with excess and defect, and of numeration, as it has to do with odd and even? People would admit this, would they not?
  Protagoras agreed that they would.
  Well then, my friends, since we have found that the salvation of our life depends on making a right choice of pleasure and pain—of the more and the fewer, the greater and the smaller, and the nearer and the remoter—is it not evident, in the first place, that measurement is a study of their excess and defect and equality in relation to each other?
  This must needs be so.
  And being measurement, I presume it must be an art and knowledge?
  They will assent to this.
  Well, the nature of this art and knowledge we shall consider some other time; but the mere fact of its being knowledge will suffice for the demonstration which Protagoras and I are required to give in answer to the question you have put to us. You asked it, if you remember, when we were agreeing that there is nothing stronger than knowledge, and that knowledge, wherever it may be found, has always the upper hand of pleasure or anything else; and then you said that pleasure often masters even the man of knowledge, and on our refusing to agree with you, you went on to ask us: Protagoras and Socrates, if this experience is not 'being overcome by pleasure,' whatever can it be, and what do you call it? Tell us. If on the spur of the moment we had replied, 'Ignorance,' you would have laughed us to scorn: but now if you laugh at us you will be laughing at yourselves as well. For you have admitted that it is from defect of knowledge that men err, when they do err, in their choice of pleasures and pains—that is, in the choice of good and bad; and from defect not merely of knowledge but of the knowledge which you have now admitted also to be that of measurement. And surely you know well enough for yourselves that the erring act committed without knowledge is done through ignorance. Accordingly 'to be overcome by pleasure' means just this—ignorance in the highest degree which Protagoras here and Prodicus and Hippias profess to cure. But you, through supposing it to be something else than ignorance, will neither go yourselves nor send your children to these sophists, who are the teachers of those things—you say it cannot be taught; you are chary of your money and will give them none, and so you fare badly both in private and in public life.
  Such would have been our answer to the world at large. And I ask you now, Hippias and Prodicus, as well as Protagoras—for I would have you make a joint reply—whether you think what I say is true or false.
  They all thought what I had said was absolutely true" (Protagoras 356d).

  "[Y]ou agree that the pleasant is good and the painful bad. And let me entreat my friend Prodicus to spare me his distinction of terms: for whether you say pleasant or delightful or enjoyable, my excellent Prodicus, or in whatever style or manner you may be pleased to name these things, pray reply to the sense of my question.
  At this Prodicus laughed and consented, as did the rest.
  Well now, my friends, I said, what of this? All actions aimed at living painlessly and pleasantly are honorable and beneficial, are they not? And honorable activity is both good and beneficial?
  They agreed.
  Then if the pleasant is good, no one who has knowledge or thought of other actions as better than those he is doing, and as possible, will do as he proposes if he is free to do the better ones; and this yielding to oneself is nothing but ignorance, and mastery of oneself is as certainly wisdom.
  They all agreed.
  Well then, by ignorance do you mean having a false opinion and being deceived about matters of importance?
  They all agreed to this also.
  Then surely no one willingly goes after what is bad or what he thinks is bad; it is not in human nature, apparently, to do so—to wish to go after what one thinks to be bad in preference to the good; and when compelled to choose one of two bads, nobody will choose the greater when he may the lesser?
  All this met with the assent of everyone.
  Well is there something you call dread, or fear? And is it—I address myself to you, Prodicus—the same as I have in mind—something I describe as an expectation of bad, whether you call it fear or dread?
  Protagoras and Hippias agreed to this description of dread or fear; but Prodicus thought this was dread, not fear.
  No matter, Prodicus, I said, but my point is this: if our former statements are true, will any man wish to go after what he dreads, when he may pursue what he does not? Surely this is impossible after what we have admitted—that he regards as bad that which he dreads? And what is regarded as bad is neither pursued nor accepted willingly, we saw, by anyone.
  Here also they were all in agreement" (Protagoras 358a).


Socrates elsewhere argues that the pleasant is not the good.

   "[T]ell me, Callicles, whether a man who has an itch and wants to scratch, and may scratch in all freedom, can pass his life happily in continual scratching.
   I say, Socrates, that the man also who scratches himself will thus spend a pleasant life.
   And if a pleasant one, a happy one also?
   Certainly.
   Is it so if he only wants to scratch his head? Or what more am I to ask you? See what your answer will be, if you are asked everything in succession that links on to that statement; and the culmination of the case, as stated—the life of catamites—is not that awful, shameful, and wretched? Or will you dare to assert that these are happy if they can freely indulge their wants?
   Are you not ashamed to lead the discussion into such topics?
   What, is it I who am leading it there, noble sir, or the person who says outright that those who enjoy themselves, with whatever kind of enjoyment, are happy, and draws no distinction between the good and bad sorts of pleasure? But come, try again now and tell me whether you say that pleasant and good are the same thing, or that there is some pleasure which is not good.
   Then, so that my statement may not be inconsistent through my saying they are different, I say they are the same" (Gorgias 494c).

See also Republic VI.505c. To preserve his conception of knowledge "as a powerful thing and a leader and a ruler" in human beings, Socrates argues against the common view the many hold that someone can know what is best but do something else because he is overcome by pleasure.

Socrates' argument against the many is worth trying to set out and understand in detail.

The Argument against the Many

Socrates' argument is a reductio ad absurdum.

He secures his premises in this argument against the many from what the many themselves believe about the phenomenon in which they claim knowledge is overcome by pleasure. They believe that someone can be "overcome by pleasure" and do something other than "what is best, even though [he] know[s] what it is and [is] able to do it" (Protagoras 352d).

This belief gives Socrates the following premises to use against them in the dialectic:

1.  The best thing S can do is a (go to the gym).
2.  S does b, where b (go to a party) ≠ a, because S is overcome by pleasure.

The many also believe that

PG.  The pleasant is the good.

Since the dispute between them is whether "knowledge is ruler" and hence whether S can be overcome by pleasure if he knows what is best in the situation, the assumption for reductio is

3.  S knows that the best thing he can do is a.

Further, since the many think that S is not confused about what is best in the situation in which he is overcome by pleasure, the first inference in the reductio is from (3) to

4.  S does not believe that doing b is as least as good as doing a.

This inference provides the conclusion from the assumption for reductio that Socrates tries to get the many to contradict. He argues that from the premises (2) and (PG), it follows that

5.  S believes that doing b is as least as good as doing a.

If the many admit that (5) does follow, they will have contradicted themselves.

Note too that from (1) and b ≠ a, it follows that the belief in (5) is false. So whatever explanation of being overcome they might have had seems to have collapsed. They talk about pleasure overcoming knowledge, but all we see is that S acts from a false belief.

Filling a Gap in the Argument

We still need to see the reasoning in the argument that (5) follows from (2) and (PG).

The many can accept that from (2), it follows that S desires to do b. There is no action without desire, but how the argument is supposed to go after this is much less clear.

One way we might fill in the details is to take Socrates to understand the many to have a views about how S gets this desire. He, on this interpretation, takes them to believe

6.  S desires to do b because S believes that doing b is more pleasant than doing a.

The many, in this case, think that S believes that doing a is pleasant, that doing b is pleasant, and that the pleasure S expects from doing a is less than S expects from doing b.

Since the many also accept that (PG) is true, (6) for them is the same proposition as

7.  S desires to do b because S believes that doing b is better than doing a.

Since it follows that doing b is at least as good as doing a if doing b is better than doing a, Socrates can think the many are committed to (5) because they are committed to (7).

⊕

Experiences of Pleasure and Pain

The ordinary meaning of δόξα, which traditionally translates into English as "belief," makes it a little easier to see how Socrates could understand the many this way.

The noun δόξα and the verb δοκεῖν share the root δοκ-. This root, in turn, is from the root δεκ- in the verb δέξασθαι. The verbs δοκεῖν and δέξασθαι mean "to appear or seem" and "to take, accept, or receive what is offered." This etymology indicates that the emphasis in the conditions for application in the meaning of δόξα is on the passiveness of the cognitive response. A δόξα is an "appearance" we "receive" from our experiences.

When the experiences are of pleasure and pain, Socrates takes the δόξαι to be appearances of what is good and bad we use to form particular desires in particular circumstances.

When, for example, someone has experiences of eating different foods, he naturally comes to like eating the kinds he takes pleasure in eating and to dislike the kinds he takes displeasure in eating. These likings, as Socrates understands them, are δόξαι about which foods are good and which are bad that the person uses to decide what to eat in particular circumstances.

Ignorance is Yielding to Oneself

It remains to know what happens in this "yielding" as Socrates understands it.

Socrates, as we have been understanding him, takes our beliefs about what is good and what is bad to be the sources of our motivation. In terms of these beliefs, he thinks that human beings calculate the values of their alternatives in partiuclar circumstances. He thinks that if they believe some alternative is best, this belief is a desire for this alternative.

The following example helps show his this is supposed to work.

If I believe that eating something sweet is the best alternative, I desire to eat something sweet. If I believe that a and b are sweet things I can eat and that eating a is better, I desire to eat a.

So, when someone is "overcome by pleasure," what does Socrates think happens?

What he says is that the overcome does not have "mastery of himself." This attributes some sort of failure to the person who does something else because he is overcome by pleasure, but unfortunately Socrates does not make very clear what this failure is supposed to be.

Here is one possibility for what he might have had in mind.

From my experiences of eating sweets when I was young, I developed the δόξα that eating them is good. Later I become aware of the arguments from medicine that this behavior is not healthy. I believe that my health is good. So I resolve to stop eating sweets, but this itself does not cause me to stop believing that eating them is good. When I act on this belief, the many try to explain what happened by saying that I know that eating sweets is bad but do it anyway because I am overcome by pleasure. This, though, Socrates thinks, is not true. I do not know that eating sweets is bad as long as I continue to believe that eating them is good.

Socrates, on this interpretation, identifies my failure as my lack of control over my beliefs. I am not "master" of my belief that eating sweets is good. I continue to "yield" to it.

The Tripartite Theory of the Soul

Plato continues to think about the phenomenon of being overcome by pleasure.

In the Republic, which traditionally is a middle dialogue (and so is traditionally after the Protagoras), Plato seems to come to the conclusion that knowledge can be overcome and that Socrates was wrong about what "being overcome by pleasure" is.

Plato tries out the idea that the soul, contary to what Socrates thought, is more than the power of reason, that appetite is part of the soul too, and that what happens when someone is "overcome by pleasure" is that appetite, not reason, is in control in the soul.

  "Is not the expression mastery of oneself ridiculous? He who is stronger than himself would also presumably be weaker than himself, and he who is weaker than himself, stronger, since the person is the same.
  Of course, Socrates.
  Nonetheless, the expression seems to me to mean that, in the soul there is a better part and a worse part and that, whenever the naturally better part is in control of the worse, this is expressed with the words mastery of oneself. This, at any rate, is a term of praise. But when the smaller and better part is overpowered by the larger part, because of bad upbringing or bad company, this is called yielding to one's self" (Republic IV.430e).

This Platonic idea that the soul has parts is the subject of a subsequent lecture.

Perseus Digital Library:
Plato, Protagoras

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon:
ἑκών, hekōn, adjective, "willing, of one's own accord"

ἑκών behaves like a participle, but no verb exists.
When ἑκών is in the predicate position and agrees with the subject, it is translated as adverb.
The contrast is with ἄκων (Attic contraction for ἀέκων), aekōn, adjective, "unwilling, not of one's own accord"

δοκέω, dokeō, verb, "expect," hence "think," "suppose," "imagine"
From δέχομαι, dechomai, verb, "to take, accept, receive"

δόξα, doxa, noun, "(something) seeming or appearing (to someone)", i.e., "expectation," "view," "belief," "opinion"

προσδοκία, prosdokia, noun, "looking for, expectation"
From πρός ("towards") +‎ δοκεύω ("keep an eye on, watches")

"If one holds a belief which is incompatible with another belief, [which is what Socrates uses dialectic to show his interlocutors is true of them,] the explanation may be, not that one lacks a sufficiently developed sense for incompatibility, but that the belief one holds on to in spite of its incompatibility with some other belief is so firmly lodged in the way one is used to thinking and feeling about things that it is not easily displaced by having it pointed out to one that it is incompatible with a belief we are, or should be, unwilling to discard. It seems particularly important to keep this in mind in the case of extremely intellectualistic positions like that of Socrates or that of the Stoics, for whom even desires are beliefs of a kind. They certainly do not assume that ridding oneself, or others, of mistaken beliefs is just a matter of cogent argument (Michael Frede, "Introduction," 15. Rationality in Greek Thought, 1-28).

"[I]n spite of his extreme intellectualism--that is to say, his view that the way we act is completely determined by our beliefs, in particular our beliefs concerning the good and related matters--Socrates' life seems to have been characterized by a remarkable degree of asceticism. This [asceticism together with and extreme intellectualist understanding of desire] strongly suggests that Socrates thought that it is not a matter of pure rational argument which beliefs we espouse and which we fail to espouse, but that, precisely because some of our beliefs are so deeply embedded in the way we feel and behave, our openness to their rational rejection, also is a matter of our pattern of behavior and the control we have over our behavior" (Michael Frede, "The Philosopher," 9-10. Greek thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge, 3-16).