GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

48 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
I have deliberately used ambiguous language in the
exposition of the view that the motive of every action is
to obtain pleasure for the agent because, as we shall see
later, it is difficult to state the hedonist position with
precision without exposing some of the difficulties which
underlie it Some of these difficulties will be considered
in a later chapter. 1 My present purpose is to state the
view as persuasively as I can, in order that it may serve
to illustrate the very similar view which Socrates advanced
in regard to virtue.
Socrates on Virtue. While the hedonists maintained
that men always pursue what they take to be their pleasure,
Socrates asserted that men always pursue what they take to
be their good. Indeed they cannot help themselves, for they
are so constituted that what they believe to be good,
that they must always pursue. For Socrates, as for the
hedonists, any apparent examples to the contrary can
always on analysis be shown to be cases of miscalculation.
Just as, according to the hedonists, human beings act in
such a way as to induce boredom or cause themselves
pain because they have falsely estimated the results of
their actions, thinking that they will enjoy
these results
when in fact they do not, so, for Socrates, any apparent
examples of a man's failure to pursue the Good are always
due to his false estimate of what the Good is. Such cases
occur because men think that something is good when
in point of fact it turns out not to be so. Now not to do what
one thinks to be right, not to pursue what one takes to
be the Good is wrong; it is an evil. Evil, then, turns out
to be due to a false estimate of what is good; it is, that
is to say, a form of intellectual deficiency.
Courage and Temperance as Forms of Knowledge.
The arguments by which Socrates maintains this view areas
follows. Let us, he would say, consider the case of any
virtue, for example the virtue of courage. Now it is
1 See Chapter XI, pp. 396-415, for a discuttion of Hedonism.