- 著者
-
村上 正治
- 出版者
- 日本西洋古典学会
- 雑誌
- 西洋古典学研究 (ISSN:04479114)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.51, pp.31-44, 2003
In the Philebus, Socrates (Soc) attempts to attribute a true-false distinction to pleasure and pain On the contrary, Protarchus (Prt) insists that pleasure can never be false My aim in this paper is to make cleai what supposition underlies Prt' insistence, and how Soc undermines it I would like to show Soc' view about pleasure and pain Soc introduces an analogy between belief and pleasure, and distinguishes the mental process (believing that, being pleased that)from its content (which can be described in the that-clause) Most interpreters suppose that Soc tries to prove the falsity of being pleased depending on the falsity of its content, just as one believes p falsely when p is false However, they fail to see that Prt denies such attribution of falsity to pleasure Prt thinks that the actuality of being pleased is always true for the person in pleasure, even if the content with which one is pleased is false All Soc must prove is that one can be pleased falsely in spite of the actuality of being pleased The Book-Simile explains how belief and pleasure are differently formed in our mind When we perceive and judge something unknown, we form a belief about it We believe p in judging something If p is false, the falsity is equally, not derivatively, attributed to believing p, since we fail to judge something correctly On the other hand, we do not make a direct judgment about something, concerning whether it is pleasure or pain Once we judge something and believe p about it, we are pleased or suffer with a mental image based on judgment or belief How are pleasure and pain related with our judgment or belief? First, Soc takes the physiological form of pleasure and pain when we are thirsty (in the state of deficiency), we suffer, then, when we are drinking (getting satisfied), we are pleased This form of pleasure and pain reveals their basic features 1 Pleasure and pain function as the indications of satisfaction and deficiency in our body 11 The occurrence of pleasure and pain contributes to the restoration of our body's nature Next, anticipatory pleasure explains more clearly the occurrence of pleasure and pain When we are now suffering from deficiency in our body, and also in anticipation of what we think is satisfaction, we are already pleased with the anticipation although we are not yet satisfied The occurrence of pleasure depends on what we think is satisfaction So, if our cognition about satisfaction is false, that is, what we think is satisfaction does not really satisfy our deficiency, then, our pleasure which arose from our false cognition is false in spite of our being pleased, because pleasure and pain are supposed to contribute to the restoration of our body's nature Soc thinks that pleasure and pain are not directly given, but arise from our cognitive state about satisfaction, deficiency, and also our nature Therefore, the occurrence of pleasure and pain can be modified through revising our cognitive state about them