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

64 BTHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
for them grows most with what it feeds on, it is with the
pleasures of the body, and not with those of the mind or
the spirit, that the philosophy of Hedonism has been
historically associated. To tread the primrose path, to
drain the wine-cup to the dregs, and to sport with
Amaryllis in the shade, have been the almost unanimous
practices of those who have believed, and proposed to act
upon, the view that pleasure is the end of life. Thus a
school of Greek philosophers, known as the Cyrenaics,
who maintained that Hedonism was the only true philo-
sophy, were celebrated for their lives of self-indulgence.
Now it is in opposition to this particular school of thought
that the full significance of Plato's affirmation of the need
for a right relationship between the different parts of the
soul, and in particular of the subjection of the third part
to the first, will be realized.
Significance of Plato's view in relation to Hedonism
Scattered up and down Plato's Dialogues are a number of
important observations on the .subject of the hedonist
philosophy, at some of which we shall glance later. 1 His
answer to it is to be found in his doctrine of the parts
of the soul and his insistence upon the need for a right
relation between them. For in saying that the appetitive
part of the soul should be in subjection to the reasoning
part, Plato is in effect making two different affirmations.
The first is that the indulgence of the appetitive and
passional part of the soul is not the end of life, and that
the life which is dominated by passion and emotion is
not the best life; the second that, even by the standard
of Hedonism, the standard that measures the value of all
states of consciousness solely by reference to the amount
of pleasure they contain, it is prudent to subject the
appetitive to the reasoning part, since it is only when
they are subordinated to the rule of reason that the
appetites and passion can secure the greatest amount of
satisfaction of which they are capable. For an answer to
1 See Chapter XI, pp. 407-410.