emphatically is it declared in the Laws that when we are “discoursing
to men, not to gods,” we must show that the life which
we praise as best and noblest is also that in which there is
the greatest excess of pleasure over pain. But though Plato
holds this inseparable connexion of best and pleasantest to be
true and important, it is only for the sake of the vulgar that he
lays this stress on pleasure. For in the most philosophical comparison
in the Philebus between the claims of pleasure and wisdom
the former is altogether worsted; and though a place is allowed
to the pure pleasures of colour, form and sound, and of intellectual
exercise, and even to the “necessary” satisfaction of appetite,
it is only a subordinate one. At the same time, in his later view,
Plato avoids the exaggeration of denying all positive quality of
pleasure even to the coarser sensual gratifications; they are undoubtedly
cases of that “replenishment” or “restoration” to
its “natural state” of a bodily organ, in which he defines pleasure
to consist (see Timaeus, pp. 64, 65); he merely maintains that the
common estimate of them is to a large extent illusory, or a false
appearance of pleasure is produced by contrast with the antecedent
or concomitant painful condition of the organ. It is not
surprising that this somewhat complicated and delicately balanced
view of the relations of “good” and “pleasure” was not long
maintained within the Platonic school, and that under Speusippus,
Plato’s successor, the main body of Platonists took up a simply
anti-hedonistic position, as we learn from the polemic of Aristotle.
In the Philebus, however, though a more careful psychological
analysis leads him to soften down the exaggerations of this attack
on sensual pleasure, the antithesis of knowledge and pleasure is
again sharpened, and a desire to depreciate even good pleasures
is more strongly shown; still even here pleasure is recognized
as a constituent of that philosophic life which is the highest
human good, while in the Laws, where the subject is more
popularly treated, it is admitted that we cannot convince man
that the just life is the best unless we can also prove it to be
the pleasantest.
When a student passes from Plato to Aristotle, he is so forcibly impressed by the contrast between the habits of mind of the two authors, and the literary manners of the two philosophers, that it is easy to understand how their systems have come to be popularly Plato and Aristotle. conceived as diametrically opposed to each other; and the uncompromising polemic which Aristotle, both in his ethical and in his metaphysical treatises, directs against Plato and the platonists, has tended strongly to confirm this view. Yet a closer inspection shows us that when a later president of the Academy (Antiochus of Ascalon) repudiated the scepticism which for two hundred years had been accepted as the traditional Platonic doctrine, he had good grounds for claiming Plato and Aristotle as consentient authorities for the ethical position which he took up. For though Aristotle’s divergence from Plato is very conspicuous when we consider either his general conception of the subject of ethics, or the details of his system of virtues, still his agreement with his master is almost complete as regards the main outline of his theory of human good; the difference between the two practically vanishes when we view them in relation to the later controversy between Stoics and Epicureans. Even on the cardinal point on which Aristotle entered into direct controversy with Plato, the definite disagreement between the two is less than at first appears; the objections of the disciple hit that part of the master’s system that was rather imagined than thought; the main positive result of Platonic speculation only gains in distinctness by the application of Aristotelian analysis.
Plato, we saw, held that there is one supreme science or wisdom, of which the ultimate object is absolute good; in the knowledge of this, the knowledge of all particular goods—that is, of all that we rationally desire to know—is implicitly contained; and also all practical virtue, as no one who truly knows what is good can fail to realize it. But in spite of the intense conviction with which he thus identified metaphysical speculation and practical wisdom, we find in his writings no serious attempt to deduce the particulars of human well-being from his knowledge of absolute good, still less to unfold from it the particular cognitions of the special arts and sciences. Indeed, we may say that the distinction which Aristotle explicitly draws between speculative science or wisdom and practical wisdom (on its political side statesmanship) is really indicated in Plato’s actual treatment of the subjects, although the express recognition of it is contrary to his principles. The discussion of good (e.g.) in his Philebus relates entirely to human good, and the respective claims of Thought and Pleasure to constitute this; he only refers in passing to the Divine Thought that is the good of the ordered world, as something clearly beyond the limits of the present discussion. So again, in his last great ethico-political treatise (the Laws) there is hardly a trace of his peculiar metaphysics. On the other hand, the relation between human and divine good, as presented by Aristotle, is so close that we can hardly conceive Plato as having definitely thought it closer. The substantial good of the universe, in Aristotle’s view, is the pure activity of universal abstract thought, at once subject and object, which, itself changeless and eternal, is the final cause and first source of the whole process of change in the concrete world. And both he and Plato hold that a similar activity of pure speculative intellect is that in which the philosopher will seek to exist, though he must, being a man, concern himself with the affairs of ordinary human life, a region in which his highest good will be attained by realizing perfect moral excellence. No doubt Aristotle’s demonstration of the inappropriateness of attributing moral excellence to the Deity seems to contradict Plato’s doctrine that the just man as such is “likest the gods,” but here again the discrepancy is reduced when we remember that the essence of Plato’s justice (δικαιοσύνη) is harmonious activity. No doubt, too, Aristotle’s attribution of pleasure to the Divine Existence shows a profound metaphysical divergence from Plato; but it is a divergence which has no practical importance. Nor, again, is Aristotle’s divergence from the Socratic principle that all “virtue is knowledge” substantially greater than Plato’s, though it is more plainly expressed. Both accept the paradox in the qualified sense that no one can deliberately act contrary to what appears to him good, and that perfect virtue is inseparably bound up with perfect wisdom or moral insight. Both, however, recognize that this actuality of moral insight is not a function of the intellect only, but depends rather on careful training in good habits applied to minds of good natural dispositions, though the doctrine has no doubt a more definite and prominent place in Aristotle’s system. The disciple certainly takes a step in advance by stating definitely, as an essential characteristic of virtuous action, that it is chosen for its own sake, for the beauty of virtue alone; but herein he merely formulates the conviction that his master inspires. Nor, finally, does Aristotle’s account of the relation of pleasure to human well-being (although he has to combat the extreme anti-hedonism to which the Platonic school under Speusippus had been led) differ materially from the outcome of Plato’s thought on this point, as the later dialogues present it to us. Pleasure, in Aristotle’s view, is not the primary constituent of well-being, but rather an inseparable accident of it; human well-being is essentially well-doing, excellent activity of some kind, whether its aim and end be abstract truth or noble conduct; knowledge and virtue are objects of rational choice apart from the pleasure attending them; still all activities are attended and in a manner perfected by pleasure, which is better and more desirable in proportion to the excellence of the activity. He no doubt criticizes Plato’s account of the nature of pleasure, arguing that we cannot properly conceive pleasure either as a “process” or as “replenishment”—the last term, he truly says, denotes a material rather than a psychical fact. But this does not interfere with the general ethical agreement between the two thinkers; and the doctrine that vicious pleasures are not true or real pleasures is so characteristically Platonic that we are almost surprised to find it in Aristotle.
In so far as there is any important difference between the Platonic and the Aristotelian views of human good, we may observe that the latter has substantially a closer correspondence to the positive element in the ethical teaching of Socrates,
