MARTHA KENDAL WOODRUFFArmed with these fl exible discursive skills, the dialogue progresses
to a similarly fl exible theoretical aim: defi ning the good life as “a life
that results from the mixture” of pleasure and intelligence (22a).^37 Pro-
tarchus concedes that if we had no thought or memory, we would not
even be aware of our own pleasure; that would be the life of a mollusk or
other shellfi sh (21b– d). A life of only thought, without any pleasure, is
not desirable either. Pleasure and thought have become rivals for deter-
mining this mixture. Since the speakers have learned how to determine
the middle ground through classifi cation, they can now determine the
middle way as the best human life.
In the midst of this discussion, Socrates urges Protarchus (and the
reader) to be patient, since “a long discussion [lovgo~],” and a hard one,
still awaits them:
For it seems that, in the battle about the second prize for reason, a dif-
ferent device [a[llh~ mhcanh`~] will be needed, different armament, as
it were, from that used in our previous discussion, though it may partly
be the same. (23b5– 9)This “different device” turns out to be a further taxonomy to reconcile
unity and plurality. Amid the critical debate over the relation between
this passage and the earlier one on the divine gift, my own position is
that the repetition of the terms pevra~ and a[peirovn, as well as the phrase “partly be the same,” suggest at the very least an important connection between the two passages.^38 The “different armament” revives the earlier method of collection and division, while expanding the senses of limit and the unlimited. Plato “repeats” the section on dialectical method, but with a twist, in order to unfold it gradually and dialogically to his readers. In the fourfold analysis of everything in the universe—the in- determinate or unlimited (a[peirovn), the determinant or the limit (pevra~), the mixture (suvmmixi~) of the two, and the cause (aijtiva) of the
mixture—the fi rst three are scattered and must each be rounded up
“into a unity again, in order to study how each of them is in fact one
and many” (23e7). Pleasure, at least when understood in the common
physical sense, belongs to the indeterminate class. Philebus, fi ttingly,
makes his point here again: “How could pleasure be all that is good
if it were not by nature boundless [a[peirovn] in plenty and increase?”
(27e7– 9). Socrates counters: “Nor would pain be all that is bad, Philebus!”
By contrast, the determinant class imposes defi nite relations: “The kind
that contains equal and double, and whatever else puts an end to the
confl icts there are among opposites, making them commensurate and