Nor can we ignore an objection raised by an opponent who is difficult
to convince (Plato's Philebus): "Well, my friends, what then is this
entity that you celebrate in such pompous terms, ceaselessly repeating
that life and intelligence are goods, although you said that the
Good is above them? What sort of a good might the Intellect be? What
sort of a good should (a man) have, who thinks the Ideas themselves,
contemplating everything in itself? Perhaps, indeed, a man, when he
enjoys these (Ideas and contemplations), might be deceived into calling
them a good merely because he happened to be in pleasant circumstances;
but should these circumstances become unpleasant, on what grounds would
he call them a good? Merely because they (possess) existence? But what
pleasure or benefit could this afford him? If he did not consider
self-love as the foundation thereof, what difference could there be
for him between existence and non-existence? It is therefore to this
natural physical error (of self-love), and to the fear of death, that
we must trace the cause of the ascription of good to intelligence and
life."[118]
PLATO'S ANSWER TO PHILEBUS: THERE ARE TWO GOODS, THE HUMAN AND THE
UNIVERSAL.
25. Plato therefore mingled the Good with pleasure, and did not
posit the Good exclusively in Intelligence, as he wrote in the
Philebus.[119] Appreciating this difficulty, he very rightly decided
on one hand that good did not consist in pleasure alone, and on the
other, that it did not consist in intelligence alone, inasmuch as he
failed to discover in it anything to arouse our desire. Perhaps Plato
had still another motive (in calling the Good a mixture), because he
thought that, with such a nature, the Good is necessarily full of
charm, desirable both for the seeker and the finder; whence it would
result that he who is not charmed has not found the Good, and that,
if he who desires be not happy, he evidently does not yet possess the
Good. It is not without a reason (that Plato formed this conception of
the Good); for he was not seeking to determine the universal Good, but
the good of man; and as such human good refers to (man, who is) a being
different from the absolute Good, then it becomes for him something
different from the Good in itself; and would therefore be defective and
composite. That is why (according to Plato), that which is alone and
single has no good, but is good in another and a higher sense.