Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life

Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 283
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780199282845
ISBN-13 : 0199282846
Rating : 4/5 (45 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life by : Daniel Russell

Download or read book Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life written by Daniel Russell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Russell examines Plato's subtle and insightful analysis of pleasure and explores its intimate connections with his discussions of value and human psychology. Russell offers a fresh perspective on how good things bear on happiness in Plato's ethics, and shows that, for Plato, pleasure cannot determine happiness because pleasure lacks a direction of its own. Plato presents wisdom as a skill of living that determines happiness by directing one's life as a whole, bringing aboutgoodness in all areas of one's life, as a skill brings about order in its materials. The 'materials' of the skill of living are, in the first instance, not things like money or health, but one's attitudes, emotions, and desires where things like money and health are concerned. Plato recognizes thatthese 'materials' of the psyche are inchoate, ethically speaking, and in need of direction from wisdom. Among them is pleasure, which Plato treats not as a sensation but as an attitude with which one ascribes value to its object. However, Plato also views pleasure, once shaped and directed by wisdom, as a crucial part of a virtuous character as a whole. Consequently, Plato rejects all forms of hedonism, which allows happiness to be determined by a part of the psyche that does not direct one'slife but is among the materials to be directed. At the same time, Plato is also able to hold both that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and that pleasure is necessary for happiness, not as an addition to one's virtue, but as a constituent of one's whole virtuous character itself. Plato thereforeoffers an illuminating role for pleasure in ethics and psychology, one to which we may be unaccustomed: pleasure emerges not as a sensation or even a mode of activity, but as an attitude - one of the ways in which we construe our world - and as such, a central part of every character.


Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life Related Books

Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life
Language: en
Pages: 283
Authors: Daniel Russell
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005-09-15 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Daniel Russell examines Plato's subtle and insightful analysis of pleasure and explores its intimate connections with his discussions of value and human psychol
Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life
Language: en
Pages: 284
Authors: Daniel Russell
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005-09-15 - Publisher: Clarendon Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Daniel Russell examines Plato's subtle and insightful analysis of pleasure and explores its intimate connections with his discussions of value and human psychol
Pleasure and the Good Life
Language: en
Pages: 234
Authors: Fred Feldman
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-03-25 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since ancient times, hedonism has been one of the most attractive and controversial theories. In this text, the author presents a careful, modern formulation of
The Ten Golden Rules
Language: en
Pages: 75
Authors: M. A. Soupios
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-03-31 - Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living a Richer, More Meaningful Life Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Epictetus, Epicurus, Pythagorus, Aesop—such wisdom, now at your
The Quest for the Good Life
Language: en
Pages: 318
Authors: Øyvind Rabbås
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How should I live? How can I be happy? What is happiness, really? These are perennial questions, which in recent times have become the object of diverse kinds o