Section 2: Refutation of the views that pleasure is the good and that pleasure is evil

The view that pleasure is the highest good

Eudoxus thought pleasure was the highest good because he saw all things, both rational and nonrational, aiming at it, and because he thought that in all things that which is choice-worthy is what is excellent, and that which is most choice-worthy is the greatest good. Thus the fact that all things moved towards pleasure indicated that this was for all things the highest good, since each thing, he argued, finds its own good, just as it finds its own nourishment, and that which is good for all things and at which all aim was the highest good.

His arguments were given more credited because of the excellence of his character than for their own sake. He was thought to be remarkably self-controlled, and therefore it was thought that he was not saying what he said as a friend of pleasure, but that things really were as he said.

He believed that the same conclusion followed no less plainly from a study of the contrary of pleasure. Pain was in itself an object of aversion for all things, and therefore its contrary must be similarly an object of choice. And again that is most choice-worthy which we choose not because of or for the sake of something else, and pleasure is admittedly of this nature. For no one asks what’s the point of feeling good, thus implying that pleasure is in itself choice-worthy.

Further, he argued that pleasure when added to any good, for example, to a just or temperate action, makes it more worthy of choice, and that it is only by itself that the good can be increased.

Why we should reject the view that pleasure is the highest good

But this argument seems to show pleasure to be merely a good, and no more a good than any other good. For every good is more worthy of choice along with another good than taken alone. And so it is by an argument of this kind that Plato proves the highest good not to be pleasure. Plato argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the highest good. For the highest good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it.

Now it is clear that nothing else, any more than pleasure, can be the highest good if it is made more desirable by the addition of any of the things that are good in themselves. What, then, is there that satisfies this criterion, which at the same time we can participate in? It is something of this sort that we are looking for.

Why we should reject the view that pleasure is evil

Those who object that that at which all things aim is not necessarily good are, we may surmise, talking nonsense. For we say that what everyone believes really is true. And the person who attacks this belief will hardly have anything more credible to maintain instead. If it is senseless creatures that desire the things in question, there might be something in what they say. But if intelligent creatures do so as well, what sense can there be in this view? But perhaps even in inferior creatures there is some natural good stronger than themselves which aims at their proper good.

Nor does the argument about the contrary of pleasure seem to be correct. They say that if pain is evil, it does not follow that pleasure is a good. For evil is opposed to evil and at the same time both are opposed to the neutral state–which is correct enough but does not apply to the things in question. For if both pleasure and pain belonged to the class of evils they ought both to be objects of aversion, while if they belonged to the class of neutrals neither should be an object of aversion or they should both be equally so. But in fact people evidently avoid pain as bad and choose pleasure as good; that then must be the nature of the opposition between them.