On the Good Life by Cristina Ionescu;

Author:Cristina Ionescu;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2019-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

V

Pleasures of Learning and the Role of Due Measure in Experiencing Them

Let us continue the exploration of the role of due measure begun in the previous chapter, this time with specific focus on our pleasures of learning. Since Plato’s Socrates says very little explicitly with regard to the pleasures of learning in our dialogue yet allows for several insights to emerge between the lines, and since the topic is at once complex and crucial for our understanding of pleasure, this chapter will undertake its exploration to some extent beyond the letter of the text, while remaining faithful to its spirit.

The text mentions explicitly only a very narrow category of pleasures of learning, those that are pure, and true, and reserved to the very few (52b), which I take to mean in this context pleasures taken in practicing dialectic. The “learning” at issue must, correspondingly, be restricted most likely to the contemplation of intelligible objects, rather than be inclusive of any attempt to study through trial and error, since it is said to occur without any “hunger for learning” or some other pain and since it is said to be available “not to the masses, but to the very few” (52b). Nevertheless, side by side with this restricted sense of learning, there must be implicitly at work throughout the Philebus a much broader understanding of “learning” corresponding to the study that we undertake in the various crafts or branches of knowledge that Socrates mentions, from the most imprecise ones based on guesswork to the very precise ones of pure mathematics and, finally, dialectic itself (55c–59d). My focus in this chapter will be primarily on this broader sense of “learning” that is only implicit in the text, and the corresponding pleasures we take in exercising it. I hope to show that when we take learning in this broader sense, Plato’s account leaves room for mixed (impure) pleasures of learning in a variety of fields, and perhaps also for outright false ones. The importance of mediation comes to the fore as we realize that Plato’s account is complex and flexible enough to allow the use of mixed (impure) pleasures of learning as stepping stones for pure ones, and to regard a genuine experience of a mixed (impure) pleasure of learning as intrinsically valuable. Sensitivity to due measure helps us choose the right pleasures of learning given the level of self-awareness that we have as well as the concrete circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Upon distinguishing pleasures that are intrinsically mixed with pains from pleasures that are free (pure) of any admixture of pain, Socrates places the pleasures of learning (ta peri ta mathēmata hēdonas) that he discusses in the latter category (52a–b). A handful of puzzles stem from this situation. To begin with, (1) Can pleasures of learning be pure and unmixed with pain even when they emerge in response to the experience of aporia, which seems to be painful? The uneasiness arises here from the fact that at least in the most

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.