display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 24239 | Perfect goodness always produces perfect beauty [Plato] |
| Full Idea: What is perfectly good can accomplish only what is perfectly beautiful; this was and is a universal law. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.362 BCE], 30a) | |
| A reaction: Beautiful must be 'kalon', which is better understood here as fine and noble, rather than looking pretty. This is a quintessential Plato opinion. At the highest level, the supreme Forms endorse one another. He is discussing cosmic creation. |
| 136 | Good should be the aim of pleasant activity, not the other way round [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Good should be the goal of pleasant activities, rather than pleasure being the goal of good activities. | |
| From: Plato (Gorgias [c.378 BCE], 500a) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Not far off what Aristotle says on the topic. So what activities should we seek out? Narrow the pleasures down to the good ones, or narrow the good ones down to the pleasurable? |
| 4322 | In slaking our thirst the goodness of the action and the pleasure are clearly separate [Plato] |
| Full Idea: When we drink to quench thirst, we lose the distress of the thirst and the pleasure of drinking at the same moment, but one loss is good and the other bad, so the pleasure and the goodness must be separate. | |
| From: Plato (Gorgias [c.378 BCE], 497d) | |
| A reaction: This is open to the objection that the good of slaking one's thirst is a long-term pleasure, where the drinking is short-term, so pleasure is still the good. |
| 332 | One should exercise both the mind and the body, to avoid imbalance [Plato] |
| Full Idea: One should preserve a balance and avoid exercising the mind or body without the other; mathematicians should exercise physically, and athletes mentally. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.362 BCE], 88c) | |
| A reaction: Excellent, and very modern. Use it or lose it. It suggests that Plato had a fairly holistic view of a human being, and saw mind and body as closely integrated. |
| 24223 | Admirable people are happy, and unjust people are miserable [Plato] |
| Full Idea: I say that the admirable and good person, man or woman, is happy [eudaimon], but that the one who's unjust and wicked is miserable. | |
| From: Plato (Gorgias [c.378 BCE], 470e) | |
| A reaction: This is eudaimonia, which is flourishing. So Socrates might consider them to be flourishing, when they saw themselves as failure. Parents said make money, but instead they lived altruistically, but guiltily. Note 'woman'. |
| 24257 | Unnatural modifications are painful, and restoring normality is pleasant [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Any modification that is unnatural (that is, forced) and sudden is painful, while any modification that restores the normal condition and is sudden is pleasant. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.362 BCE], 64d) | |
| A reaction: [see also 65a] Possibly circular, if the painful is defined as unnatural, but the unnatural is defined as painful. Nowadays we find it very hard to specify what counts as 'unnatural', but our ancestors used that label all the time. Not convincing. |
| 134 | Good and bad people seem to experience equal amounts of pleasure and pain [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There is little to tell between good and bad people (e.g. cowards) in terms of how much pleasure and distress they experience. | |
| From: Plato (Gorgias [c.378 BCE], 498c) | |
| A reaction: A very perceptive remark. If the good are people with empathy for others, then they may suffer more distress than the insensitive wicked. |
| 328 | Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Everything that takes place naturally is pleasant. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.362 BCE], 81e) | |
| A reaction: Not many people would agree with this. I recently watched a sparrowhawk eat a pigeon in my garden. This is the source of the stoic formula of living according to nature. |
| 4319 | In a fool's mind desire is like a leaky jar, insatiable in its desires, and order and contentment are better [Plato] |
| Full Idea: In a fool's mind desire is a leaky jar, …which is an analogy for the mind's insatiability, showing we should prefer an orderly life, in which one is content with whatever is to hand, to a self-indulgent life of insatiable desire. | |
| From: Plato (Gorgias [c.378 BCE], 493b) | |
| A reaction: This points to an interesting paradox, that pleasure requires the misery of desire. And yet absence of desire is like death. An Aristotelian mean, of living according to nature, seems the escape route. |
| 132 | If happiness is the satisfaction of desires, then a life of scratching itches should be happiness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Socrates: I want to ask whether a lifetime spent scratching, itching and scratching, no end of scratching, is also a life of happiness. | |
| From: Plato (Gorgias [c.378 BCE], 494c) | |
| A reaction: There are plenty of people who think 'fun' is the main aim of life, and who fit what Socrates is referring to. We don't admire such a life, but not many people can be admired. |