• Login
    • Submit
    View Item 
    •   Repository Home
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    • Repository Home
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Pleasures in Republic IX

    Icon
    View/Open
    erginelmm042.pdf (503.8Kb)
    Date
    2004
    Author
    Erginel, Mehmet Metin
    Share
     Facebook
     Twitter
     LinkedIn
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    My dissertation is on Plato’s view on pleasure. I focus on the Republic, where Plato offers his first systematic treatment of pleasure and pain. Plato’s thought on pleasure, and in particular his view on the truth and falsity of pleasure, has received no small degree of attention in the secondary literature during the past few decades. Despite the amount of work that has been done, however, Plato’s thought on pleasure and pain has not been adequately understood, as scholars have persistently underappreciated the treatment offered in Republic IX. The account and evaluation of pleasures in Republic IX has often been criticized as fraught with serious problems and inadequacies. It has been argued that the account not only fails to describe the role of pleasure in our lives accurately, but is also inconsistent and full of ambiguity. The inconsistency attributed to the account in essays by Dorothea Frede is supposedly between two distinct criteria that the account employs for the evaluation of pleasures. Dorothea Frede also claims, with Gosling and Taylor, that Plato’s account contains fatal ambiguities. I argue that all of the above charges are false. I show that a careful examination of Plato’s text reveals his account of pleasure to be consistent, coherent, and compelling. Since Plato offers his account of pleasure by way of proving that the pleasures of the rational part of the soul are most pleasant, dismissing the charges also requires a close reading of the passages in Book IV concerning the Platonic division of the soul into three parts. I show that Plato’s view on pleasure and his division of the soul are mutually corroborative. The interpretation I develop allows us to see that Plato’s view on the best life is much less austere and much more livable than critics have claimed.
    Department
    Philosophy
    Description
    text
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/2152/1960
    Collections
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    University of Texas at Austin Libraries
    • facebook
    • twitter
    • instagram
    • youtube
    • CONTACT US
    • MAPS & DIRECTIONS
    • JOB OPPORTUNITIES
    • UT Austin Home
    • Emergency Information
    • Site Policies
    • Web Accessibility Policy
    • Web Privacy Policy
    • Adobe Reader
    Subscribe to our NewsletterGive to the Libraries

    © The University of Texas at Austin

    Browse

    Entire RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsDate IssuedAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartmentThis CollectionDate IssuedAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartment

    My Account

    Login

    Information

    AboutContactPoliciesGetting StartedGlossaryHelpFAQs

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics
    University of Texas at Austin Libraries
    • facebook
    • twitter
    • instagram
    • youtube
    • CONTACT US
    • MAPS & DIRECTIONS
    • JOB OPPORTUNITIES
    • UT Austin Home
    • Emergency Information
    • Site Policies
    • Web Accessibility Policy
    • Web Privacy Policy
    • Adobe Reader
    Subscribe to our NewsletterGive to the Libraries

    © The University of Texas at Austin