It is one thing for Plato to make a general statement, as he does in the Gorgias, connecting all good with virtue. It is quite another for him to have realized the implications of that general claim for our understanding of appetitive goods and to have indicated the connection between such good and a virtue like moderation in such a way that this particular instance of a href=”http://www.africanmangolabs.co.uk/”>African Mango his generalization doesn’t seem like a counterexample to it. I want to claim now that Plato does in fact take such an additional step—though, as we shall also see, he does so somewhat obscurely and in somewhat metaphorical language. I think we can see this best by looking at Plato’s Philebus.20 When we examine that dialogue, I think we see Plato working on (or struggling with) the idea that appetitive personal good has to be constituted out of two elements that correspond pretty well to the two elements Platonic elevationism (as we have described it) says need to exist in order for an appetitive good to occur: namely, appetitive pleasure and some degree of satisfaction with it.cheap wedding dresses But in order to make this plausible, we need to take a look at some of the more general themes of that dialogue. (I am going to be brief penny stocks to watch” and rather selective.) The Philebus raises some general issues about how things are constituted— what makes them be what they are—in terms of a contrast between the infi nite and the fi nite. Everything in the world and even the world trade show booths itself can be seen as a mixture or coming together of fi nite with infi nite, and Plato illustrates this idea with respect to music, language, and a number of other areas. Both linguistic and musical sound are, he says, infi nite in their potential, but something defi nite (and good) is achieved through electric cigarette language and music only if infi nity is ordered or circumscribed in fi nite ways (S. 17). Plato also discusses pleasure in relation to the issue of fi nite versus infi nite. He says that “pleasure "">SEO Services is infi nite and belongs to the class which neither has, nor ever will have in itself, a beginning, middle, or end of its own.” (S. 31). He seems to think that pleasure is not in itself good (S. 32 and 66), and the issue of when and how pleasure is or becomes good then naturally arises. Plato’s answer seems to be that pleasure can be good only if it is ordered or constrained by measure or harmony that partakes of the fi nite rather than of the infi nite. The
leather furniture infi nite, he thinks, cannot make pleasure good (after all, pleasure is by its very nature infi nite, but not all pleasure is good), so it can be or become good in relation to the infi nite only by being limited (see S. 28). Now Plato does talk at various points in the Philebus about the (for him)
pokies problematic status of “mixed” pleasures, pleasures admixed with pain (including the pain of desire itself ).

But his view that not all pleasure is good and that it is or becomes good only by being limited or subject to measure in some way isn’t, I think, (exclusively) based on the problem of mixed pleasures. What he 20. Let me just say in advance, though, that I haven’t found any other commentators (and among them is Donald Davidson in his Harvard doctoral dissertation) who interpret the

Philebus in the way I am going to suggest. But I can’t claim to have read all the commentaries there

are on the Philebus. the opposite email lists of reductionism 31 says about the fi nite versus the infi nite suggests sole f80 to me at least that he holds the logically independent thesis that pleasure is good only when it is taken in measure and only when there are limits to one’s desire or appetite for pleasure. And because Plato takes measure in the soul to be a constitutive element of the sole-f63 psychic harmony that constitutes virtue (see, e.g., S. 64 and 65), he is saying that we gain something really good from pleasure only if our desire is measured, limited, non-insatiable, moderate, and virtuous (see especially S. 52). In that case, Plato seems to accept the idea that appetitive goods require virtue in the soul that enjoys them, and given the general claim he makes in the Gorgias total gym xls and the fact that the virtue requirement is much more obvious with respect to non-appetitive goods than with respect to appetitive ones, he seems to be committed to elevationism as a general thesis about the relation between virtue and human well-being. Thus Plato pokies says that “from a[n] . . . admixture of the fi nite and the infi nite come the seasons and all the delights of life . . . ” (S. 26); and because Plato, on the present interpretation, so thoroughly anticipates the ways in which I have here been developing an elevationist account of human good (that is more plausible than what Stoicism and Aristotle offer us), my choice of the name “Platonic elevationism” will now, I hope, make sense (if it didn’t earlier).

But before we close the present, brief discussion of this, as I take it, most plausible form of elevationism, I would like to address some issues in the metaphysics of ethics that help us (even) more deeply recognize or nurture the Platonic roots of Platonic elevationism. We have been saying that appetitive goods (or pleasure-related goods like those we get from listening to music) require both pleasure and a measure of satisfaction with pleasure, but that doesn’t yet tell uggs us whether the satisfaction with pleasure that is necessary to the emergence/ existence of an appetitive good is part of that good or merely its necessary accompaniment. One might hold, in other words, that when appetitive goods occur, they consist merely in a certain kind of pleasure or enjoyment, but that such an enjoyment doesn’t constitute a personal good for someone unless it possesses the relational property of being accompanied by satisfaction with it on the part of the person in question. But there is also the alternative of saying that appetitive goods contain both pleasure and satisfaction with pleasure. Similarly, with regard to the personal good of achievement, one can say that it consists merely in the attaining of the goal one has sought, but that attaining doesn’t count as a personal good unless its way is paved weight loss pills by a virtuous perseverance or persistency that makes it possible. Or one can say that both the attaining of one’s goal and the persistence one shows in doing so are elements in (the good of ) any achievement. (There are also issues I won’t address seo firms about whether achievement occurs only at the end of a certain process or occurs throughout that process.) However, if we say that satisfaction with pleasure is part of any appetitive
hair removal good and likewise say that persistence is part of (the good of) achievement and so on for the other goods we have spoken of, then Plato may turn out to have been right in claiming that for something to be good, there must be virtue in it. Wouldn’t it be interesting and lovely if, in such an unexpected way,
replica handbags Plato 32 essays on the history of ethics turned out to be correct on this issue? Yes—but are there good philosophical reasons for agreeing with him? Consider, for example, the possibility that appetitive pleasure and satisfaction with it don’t merely accompany one another, but interpenetrate stationary bike stand one another, so that the
cyprus company character or quality of pleasure differs to the extent one is satisfi ed with it (or the pleasure one has already had). If this were the case, then it wouldn’t make much sense to separate the two phenomena and say that the pleasure constitutes an appetitive good, when one is satisfi ed with it, but the satisfaction lies outside the good funny t shirts thus constituted. However,
pet supplies the “interpenetration thesis” is hardly obvious, and I don’t think this argument is enough to persuade us that we should regard “satisfaction with” as part of the appetitive goods that require it. But what about the widespread assumption that pleasure, wisdom, and the like are intrinsically good? Doesn’t this require us to hold that such goods can’t depend, for their constitution or existence, on entities outside themselves? Not necessarily. A number of philosophers have in recent years defended the view that various good things may be noninstrumentally valuable (to us) even if that value exists only in relation to certain other facts or entities. So the idea that wisdom, pleasure, etc. are more than (mere) means to our well-being (are ends sought for their own sake) can arguably be accommodated without insisting that such goods depend on nothing external to themselves. edmonton home builder In addition, it has been plausibly maintained that noninstrumental goods or ends that are constituted in relation to external facts or objects can naturally be regarded as having (a certain kind of ) intrinsic goodness.21 So I don’t think we really have to regard the personal goods that require certain virtues as containing those virtues as part of themselves. It would be very nice if Plato were right, but nothing really requires us to assume that he is. So Platonic elevationism can plausibly remain agnostic on this issue, though we can also say that it may have a motive of methodological conservatism to hold onto Plato’s view that goods
replica watchescontain virtues until loveseat and unless there is a better argument against it than anything we have unearthed so far. But having focused almost exclusively on personal well-being, it is time we said something about how Platonic elevationism might account for personal ills or evils. What it can say in fact works symmetrically with what we have been saying about (its views about) Atkins Diet Food List personal goods. It can hold that nothing counts as intrinsically bad for a person unless it involves (and contains) some measure of vice (or an absence of total virtue). Thus on such a view, pain is a (constituent of ) personal evil only if there is something less than fully virtuous or admirable about how a person takes or reacts to a pain, and just as it is best to be in some degree satisfi ed with substantial pleasure, so too does it seem appropriate and 21. See, for example, Christine Korsgaard, “Two Distinctions in Virtue,” Philosophical Review 92: 169–85, 1983; my Goods and Virtues, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, ch. 3; Shelly Kagan, “Rethinking Intrinsic Value,” Journal of Ethics 2: 277–97, 1998; and Thomas Hurka, “Two Kinds of Organic Unity,” Journal of Ethics 2: 299–320, 1998. The last two articles make a fairly

persuasive case for saying that noninstrumental, but relational, goods can make some claim to being regarded as intrinsically good. the opposite of reductionism 33 admirable—a kind of strength—not to be totally dissatisfi ed with, but, rather, (in some measure) to accept unavoidable, and perhaps also even (some) avoidable, pain.22 For that reason, the Platonic elevationist may claim that where (a) pain is totally accepted, it doesn’t constitute anything intrinsically bad for a person. Only when someone minds his pain or is (to some extent) bothered by it, does the pain enter into or count as something intrinsically bad for the individual. (Of course, there may be kinds of pain that no human is capable of accepting, and Platonic elevationism will regard such pains as entailing personal evils.) Thus, the Platonic elevationist can say that it takes a “package” Essay writing of pain (or discomfort) and the vice or non-virtue of nonacceptance for there to be a personal evil, and this implication of the theory strikes me as by no means implausible. Certainly, it is far less implausible than saying, with the Stoics, that pain is never (part of ) a personal evil, but it also seems somewhat intuitive to suppose
Pizza Express vouchersthat a person who so totally accepts (a state of ) pain that he doesn’t (any longer) at all mind it is suffering no intrinsic ill. (Of course, if one wants to claim that something can’t count as a pain if it is
no no hair removal totally accepted, that makes things easier, not harder, for the view that every personal ill requires some measure of vice.) Moreover, when one applies Platonic elevationism to more spiritual forms of human ill, one arrives at a view with some obvious attractions. Given its assumptions, failure to succeed in one’s goals doesn’t amount to an independent personal ill (an ill independent of painful feelings of frustration and possibly lesser income) unless some vice was involved in the failure. But this means that if someone fails, despite valiant efforts and through no fault of her own, that failure merely constitutes the absence of something good rather than a “positive” personal evil; whereas if someone fails through a total lack of virtuous effort and perseverance, the failure really does amount to a personal evil. And this distinction has some intuitive force, since ergohuman it is natural to think there is something far more pathetic and unfortunate about a life where failure results from fecklessness than about one where it is due to bad luck. By the same token, it seems acceptable to suppose that a lack of wisdom that results from sheer cowardice is to that extent more unenviable and pathetic free ipad 2 than a lack of wisdom that results, say, from the cultural unavailability of certain kinds of knowledge, and this is precisely what Platonic elevationism claims. If the above discussion is on the right track, then intra-ethical elevationism in a form inspired by Plato is capable of avoiding the problems that beset the 22. Could one totally accept a pain and yet wish/want it not to continue into the future and, knowing that its future continuation is avoidable, take steps to end it? Well, of course, one

might want to end it if one knew it would distract one from reaching certain practical goals, but I

am asking about what one could want/do if such (other) instrumental considerations digital signagewere not at

issue. The answer may depend on whether one knows one would (without too much diffi culty) totally accept the future pain as well. If one does, then, on the view I am advocating, one who

totally accepts present pain won’t make an effort to avoid the continuation of the pain. Indeed,

under the conditions mentioned, such an effort would show that one didn’t totally accept the present

pain. I am grateful to
Data Mining Software Richard Kraut for initially raising these interesting issues.

Plato notably holds that all good things possess a common element or exemplify a common property or pattern, and Aristotle famously criticizes this fundamental view in the Nicomachean Ethics. But Plato makes a somewhat more specifi c claim about the things that are good in a rather neglected passage in the Gorgias (S. 506), where he says that “all good things whatever are good when some virtue is present in . . . them.” (I use the Jowett translation here and in later quotations.) Leaving aside judgments about functional goodness (but remembering that good knives and good doctors are commonly spoken of as having their “virtues”) and focusing solely on judgments about intrinsic personal good or well-being, Plato’s claim implies that all personal good or well-being contains an element of virtue and thus has something in common with the virtues themselves. And notice too that the claim is consistent with saying that different kinds of goods contain different virtues. Clearly, if Plato’s thesis were correct, then we would be able to defend a form of virtue-ethical elevationism, but what Plato is saying clearly sounds odd or undermotivated, to say the least, so let us at this point see what can be said in its defense.11 To defend Plato’s idea here, we would need in particular to show that even common pleasures and enjoyments, in order to count as an intrinsic part of our well-being, must contain or be accompanied by some form or instance of (one of the) virtue(s). And at this point, such a view seems perilously close to the idea, previously rejected, that pleasure is a good thing in someone’s life only if it is achieved compatibly with the dictates of (moral) virtue.

However, the Platonic view we are considering in fact allows that a person who viciously steals food and then enjoys it may, contrary to Stoic and Aristotelian elevationism, have his well-being enhanced as long as he exemplifi es and exhibits one (particular) virtue in the course of that enjoyment; and what I want to argue in what follows is that appetitive pleasures and enjoyments must be accompanied by at least some degree of moderation, a quality we admire and think of as a virtue, in order to count toward a person’s wellbeing. (Actually, I shall only argue that appetitive goods require that one not be totally immoderate, but for simplicity’s sake I shall continue to speak of virtue rather than of the absence of vice.) The idea that appetitive goods demand some sort of virtue is far from obvious and represents, I believe, the largest stumbling block to any acceptance of the Platonic approach I am 11. Julia Annas has pointed out to me that arête (excellence or virtue) is the noun that normally corresponds to the Greek adjective agathos (good). But she agrees that  slippage” between the two is possible in Greek the way it isn’t possible, in English, between “goodness” and “good.” My view, then, is that in the passage cited from the Gorgias, Plato is moving to deny or cut off the possibility of such slippage. That is a substantive (nontrivial) ethical move or thesis, and my acceptance of it as the basis for the kind of elevationist view of well-being, I shall be proposing here, is also substantive. 24 essays on the history of ethics proposing.

But before we consider more closely what can be said about the relations between appetitive satisfactions and the virtue of moderation and before I then go on to show in greater detail how such ideas were anticipated by Plato, let me say a bit more about other sorts of personal good or wellbeing whose connection to one or another virtue seems far less problematic. (I shall also later on say something about how Platonic elevationism treats personal ills or evils.) Most accounts of human well-being that don’t reduce such well-being to pleasure or desire satisfaction and that seek some sort of intuitive account or understanding of the kinds of things that are (intrinsically) good for people regard not only appetitive enjoyments, but also certain kinds of wisdom or knowledge, certain kinds of friendly or loving relationships, and certain kinds of achievement or accomplishment as (fundamental) human goods.12 And in each of the last three intuitive categories of human (personal) good, it is not diffi cult to fi nd a (different) particular virtue that is essential to constituting them as goods. For example, the connection between the personal good that one gains from (but that is also inherent in) certain kinds of relationships and a certain kind of virtue is fairly evident. Love and friendship essentially depend on loving or (at least) caring about the welfare of one’s friend or loved one; for, intuitively, a relationship doesn’t count as love or friendship if its participants are entirely selfi sh in their relations with one another. Even some of the less intimate social ties we might regard as elements of an individual’s well-being—for example, (participating in) “civic friendship”—seem to require some connection to virtue, some degree of intrinsic concern, for example, for the well-being of (other members of ) a community, association, or nation. Where there is no concern for others, we simply have people using one another, and though, arguably, various personal goods can come from such interaction, the interaction itself is not commonly regarded as an independent and substantial personal good on its own, the way friendship, love, and membership in a genuine community, etc., tend to be. (What I have just said holds a fortiori of relationships involving abuse or enmity.) 12. Views that regard these sorts of things as elements of our well-being often include other kinds of personal good as well, and this sort of approach is often called the “objective list” view of personal good or well-being. I fi nd the “objective” part of this appellation helpful because it indicates that one isn’t trying to reduce human good to facts about what we desire (under appropriate circumstances)—but then one can also say (as I believe Shelly Kagan somewhere has said) that hedonism, the view that only pleasure is an intrinsic part of our good, is also an objective theory or view about human good. But in any event, I do object to the “list” part of the above name because that word suggests a mere hodge-podge with no underlying unity. If the Platonic elevationism I shall be describing and to some extent defending in what follows is correct, then every element of human good will contain or be accompanied by a virtue. And even though it will be different virtues in the case of different (kinds of ) goods, there will still be enough unity to make it inappropriate or misleading to apply the term “objective list account” to what we shall have said about the relation(s) between human good and human virtue. the opposite of reductionism 25 The goods of personal interaction or relationship—goods like love and civic friendship—thus seem to require a certain virtue,13 and it shouldn’t be surprising that that virtue is focused on other people. But the other “objective” goods we mentioned above are not essentially (or in every instance) interpersonal and, therefore, not surprisingly, involve only virtues that are typically or often self-regarding. Thus almost anyone who thinks there are elements of personal well-being other than pleasure would mention achievement or accomplishment as a good thing in life, and if one regards achievement and accomplishment in this way, one will presumably want to hold that despite all the suffering and sacrifi ce that may be involved, a life can be made good or better through the achieving of the goals that required all the suffering and sacrifi ce. This talk of suffering and, especially, sacrifi ce will help to pinpoint the virtue that the good of achievement depends upon. A certain degree of talent or aptitude is certainly necessary to most achievements, but talent and aptitude are arguably not virtues, whereas strength of purpose or perseverance pretty clearly is a virtue, and I think any genuine achievement will essentially depend on the presence of some degree of perseverance. Even Mozart, in whom musical invention seems to have arisen spontaneously, had to write down the tunes that occurred to him, and develop and orchestrate them, in order to produce his actual compositions. But talent itself doesn’t depend on effort and perseverance; indeed, one needn’t at all develop a talent one knows one has, but, interestingly, most of us are much less inclined to treat the presence of raw talent as in itself a personal good in someone’s life. If the talent isn’t developed, is left fallow, then it doesn’t seem to represent any sort of life good for the individual who has it, and so the case of talents contrasts intuitively with what we think about achievements, about successfully making something out of and with a talent or ability. Achievements seem to qualify a life as better in a way that mere unused talents do not, and I think part of what leads us to such a distinction is our sense of the effort and perseverance that go into actual achievements.

Talent doesn’t require any application or exemplifi cation of virtue, but achievement always requires some degree of perseverance, and the latter fact infl uences, I think, our willingness to treat achievement, but not sheer talent, as a genuine life good somewhat independent of pleasure and enjoyment and despite the hardship and sacrifi ce that are likely to be involved. But what about knowledge or wisdom? Do these putative personal goods also require the presence of virtue? Now knowledge, at least of deep or important facts, and wisdom may themselves be thought to be virtues, intellectual virtues, so once again, and fairly straightforwardly, there is a connection between what we tend to think of as personal goods and certain possible virtues, in this 13. I may have been speaking a bit loosely. Perhaps one shouldn’t say that one person’sfriendship with another person counts as a personal good for each of them, but should claim, more accurately, that being in the (two-person relation of) friendship is inherently good for each. Or one could talk of the good of having a certain friend. Similar points apply to “the good of love.” 26 essays on the history of ethics case a relation of absolute identity. But more can be said about the connection between wisdom or deep knowledge and at least one familiar ethical virtue: courage. Nowadays we tend to think that some of the deepest and most important facts about the universe and our relation to it are frightening or at least highly unpalatable. In consequence, we also think that it takes a certain kind of courage to face those facts rather than deceive ourselves or think wishfully about them (or avoid thinking at all about certain topics). I say nowadays because (for reasons it would be very interesting to pursue on another occasion) very little of this attitude is to be found in ancient thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, despite all their emphasis on the virtue of wisdom.14 Consider one famous example of the courage it takes to face facts about the universe. In the nineteenth century (though not merely then), accumulating evidence of the age of the earth and cosmos and of the evolutionary origin of plants and animals led many people to doubt the Biblical account of things and reexamine their religious beliefs. But it took some courage to face and “take in” this evidence against the Biblical account of human life and human destiny. It is much easier and more comfortable, in the main, to believe that there is a God who has a plan for human beings, and one (Whiggish, I admit) way to interpret the struggle that occurred in the nineteenth century (and is far from over yet) between secular science and religious tradition is to see it as a test of the courage of human beings. But the test of courage versus self-deception and wishful thinking occurs in a host of other areas.

It takes courage to face some of one’s own deepest fears and desires, and to the extent wisdom as a life good requires facing one’s inner demons, the important connection between wisdom and courage is further underscored. Finally, it can take courage to face the results of philosophical argument. What we initially hope for from philosophy, philosophy in many instances proves itself incapable of providing: Hume, Goodman, Quine, and Wittgenstein all show us that philosophy can run out of justifi cations more quickly and more irrecusably than we hope or desire. And it is interesting that Wittgenstein himself seems to be noticing the connection between 14. In the Meno (S. 86), Plato’s Socrates urges us to have the courage to seek philosophical wisdom despite all the disagreement and skepticism that exist about philosophical questions.

But none of this has anything to do with how frightening or daunting the facts of the universe or our place in it are. There is nothing I have seen in Plato or, for that matter, in Aristotle to indicate such a “modern” view of things. Interestingly too, though we moderns also place enormous emphasis on creativity and would want to say that Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies were great creative achievements, this too is not something Plato or Aristotle would likely have said or believed. And the reason isn’t modesty. I think, rather, that Plato and Aristotle both saw themselves as philosophically able enough to just report or record how things are in the universe. We might in fact, then, see this as far from modest; but, if I am correct, their view of what they were accomplishing—and they would certainly have each thought that they were accomplishing something of importance— would in any event have to downplay the creative element in (their) philosophical thinking and achievements. the opposite of reductionism 27 philosophical understanding or wisdom and moral virtue when he says: “You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.”15 I believe that Wittgenstein is basically right here. Many of the conclusions philosophy tends toward are unsettling and uncomfortable, and it requires courage rather than wishful thinking to accept them. More generally, Platonic elevationism will say that knowledge constitutes a distinctive form of personal good, and counts as wisdom, only when it takes courage to acquire it.16 It would seem, then, that some of our best candidates for status as (intrinsic) personal goods have an intimate connection to one or another virtue or set of virtues—and, in the light of what we have just said, a Platonic elevationist could also say that the various goods or elements in human well-being that we have discussed are distinguished by which virtue (or, possibly, virtues) they require. But there are other plausible candidates for status as personal goods that we haven’t mentioned and that we really don’t have time to discuss. So let me just say at this point that most or all of them do seem to require a tight connection to some virtue—different virtues for different ones of them; and let us then turn and return to the chief challenge facing any Platonic elevationist treatment of human goods, the question whether it is or can be made plausible to suppose that appetitive goods have to be tied to, accompanied by, some virtue. This challenge can, I think, be met if we can show, or show that it isn’t implausible to hold, that someone totally lacking in the virtue of moderation, someone insatiably immoderate in their desires, gains no personal good from the pleasures she frenetically or restlessly pursues and obtains. A moderate individual who is enjoying food or drink will at a certain point decide that she has had enough (enjoyment) and stop pursuing, perhaps even turn down further gustatory enjoyment(s). But the totally insatiable person will never feel she has (had) enough and will remain thoroughly unsatisfi ed no matter how much she has had or enjoyed, and it is not counterintuitive to suppose that such an individual gains nothing good (at least noninstrumentally) from her pursuit of pleasure or power or whatever. We feel sorry for someone who is never even partially satisfi ed with what she has or has obtained, and in feeling thus, I don’t think we are necessarily assuming that the insatiable pursuit of power, gustatory sensations, sexual pleasure, or whatever is automatically frustrating and painful; rather, it seems somewhat plausible to suppose that we feel sorry for such people because their frenetic pleasure and desire for pleasure are never “rounded off ” by any sense of satisfaction with what they have 15. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980, p. 52e. 16. Elevationism is then committed to saying that sheer information, however instrumentally valuable, is not intrinsically good for people.

Note, however, that where knowledge doesn’t require courage but is diffi cult to attain, the elevationist can still regard (attaining) it as a personally benefi cial achievement. (Something similar may even be true of the insatiable person who gains more and more power or pleasure through persistent efforts—see our forthcoming discussion of appetitive personal goods.) 28 essays on the history of ethics or have had. When people gain something good for themselves from pleasure, it is, I am arguing (and the elevationist can say), because the pleasure is part of a “package” containing both pleasure and some degree of satisfaction with that pleasure. (We will say more just below about how, according to a Platonic elevationist, the elements in this package may metaphysically relate to one another and to the personal good that requires them.) Moreover, I am assuming that there is nothing unintuitive about the supposition that (some substantial degree of ) satisfaction with pleasure is necessary for an appetitive (or any other pleasure-related) good to occur in someone’s life.17 The Platonic elevationist is saying, in effect, that the pleasure or enjoyment we take from an activity in some (perhaps metaphorical or analogical) sense anticipates some measure of satisfaction and that where the satisfaction, the sense of having had enough, never comes, the pleasure seems empty, the activity not worth it (except perhaps instrumentally). There is something pitiable about insatiability that reminds us of Sisyphus and also of Tantalus. (Everyone knows about Sisyphus, but Tantalus, according to mythology, was condemned by the gods to stand under luscious grapes that always eluded his reach and in water that always receded when he tried to drink it.) For surely we can say that the totally insatiable individual wishes to have or obtain something good in her life, yet, on the Platonic view I am exploring and in some measure defending, personal good seems always to recede from the insatiable individual as she seeks to approach and attain it. So the appetitively insatiable individual may not only fail to be admirable, because of her immoderate, indeed unlimited, need for and dependence on appetitive (or other) pleasures, but, in addition and as a result of that lack of virtue, also act self-defeatingly in regard to her own good. But why not say, rather, that the insatiable individual does get something good out of his restless and insatiable pursuit of more and more pleasure, namely, whatever pleasure he obtains along the way? Is this view really so contrary to common sense? I think not; but neither, as I have been saying, is the claim that the appetitively insatiable individual gets nothing good from his appetitive pursuit. I don’t think common sense is really decisive on this issue, and so a Platonic elevationist can propose letting theoretical considerations resolve the issue for us. If we say that pleasure needs to be accompanied by some measure of satisfaction with it in order for an appetitive good to occur in someone’s life, then Platonic elevationism has a chance 17. Georges Rey has pointed out to me that sexual pleasure can seem like a good thing even in the absence of (eventual) orgasm. However, that might simply mean that one can be to some extent satisfi ed with sexual pleasure even without “achieving” an orgasm. And this point won’t be disturbed by the additional assumption that a failure to achieve orgasm might lead to later painful sensations (of frustration). Those sensations may be (momentarily) a bad thing for the individual, but such an individual might still see the earlier pleasure as a strongly counterbalancing good. The nonorgasmic pleasure might personally outweigh the painfulness (and let’s not exaggerate that painfulness) of the later sensations. the opposite of reductionism 29 of succeeding.18 Such an account unifi es our understanding of (the relations between) human good and virtue in a presumably desirable way, and in the name of such unity, one might wish to make assumptions which, though not counterintuitive, are also not overwhelmingly obvious apart from such theoretical considerations. (Compare the way linguists like Chomsky have allowed considerations of theory, sometimes in different directions depending on the theory then being espoused, to decide the syntactic status—that is, the grammaticality or ungrammaticality—of “don’t care” sentences like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”)

If we assume that virtue needs to accompany personal good in appetitive cases, then since it is much easier also to make such an assumption for the other personal goods that common sense tends to acknowledge, we end up with a more satisfactory elevationist account of human well-being than Stoicism or Aristotle provides. In that case, accepting the idea that pleasure is not a suffi cient condition of personal good might seem a small price to pay for an elevationist view that achieves so much theoretical/ethical unifi cation and that can plausibly stand up against the kind of reductive ethical unifi cation utilitarianism entails.19 What we have seen thus far is that the Platonic claim in the Gorgias that all goods require (their) virtues is or may well be borne out in what would naturally seem to many to be its most problematic instance. However, what would really show Plato to have anticipated the elevationism I have been describing would be evidence that Plato regarded appetitive good in particular as requiring a virtue 18. Of course, someone might claim that nothing counts as pleasure unless the individual is in some degree satisfi ed with it. But this assumption clearly makes it easier for Platonic elevationism to hold that appetitive goods require some degree of virtue; and it is in any event very questionable. The French use the term “alumette” (literally “match”) to refer to hors-d’oeuvres that are supposed to infl ame one’s appetite, and this more than suggests that such appetizers are pleasurable yet the very opposite of satisfying. 19. Platonic elevationism as developed in these pages entails not only that pleasure may not give rise to an appetitive (or other) good, but also that appetitive desire fulfi llment may also fail to result in any good for the individual. Someone insatiably seeking a certain kind of pleasure may have an open-ended desire that is never fulfi lled, but will certainly have particular desires along the way: the desire for a given piece of pâté de foie gras, for example. That desire may certainly be fulfi lled, but on the account being worked out here, the insatiable person gains nothing good thereby. (We also speak of the desire being “satisfi ed,” but if the individual is in no way satisfi ed with her resultant state, then she has, in Platonic elevationist terms, gained nothing good from the fulfi llment or satisfaction of the particular desire. I am indebted here to discussion with Richard Wollheim.) Let me fi nally mention an intermediate case that was brought to my attention by Richard Kraut. It is conceivable that someone might be somewhat satisfi ed with the gustatory (or other) pleasure they have been enjoying and still prefer to continue enjoying (new instances of ) such pleasure—even though they also wouldn’t be unhappy or miserable if that turned out to be impossible. This constitutes a kind of insatiability, but not what I have been calling total insatiability or a total lack of moderation, and I am inclined to say that such a person gets something good from the pleasures they are somewhat satisfi ed with. Still, a different person who could more easily become totally satisfi ed might get more personal good from less pleasure than the kind of person I have just been describing would get from more pleasure. This is a delicate matter that would need to be explored further.