The Philêbus, which we are now about to examine, is not merely a Dialogue of Search, but a Dialogue of Exposition, accompanied with more or less of search made subservient to the exposition. It represents Sokrates from the first as advancing an affirmative opinion—maintaining it against Philebus and Protarchus—and closing with a result assumed to be positively established.

Character, Personages, and Subject of the Philêbus

The question is, Wherein consists The Good—The Supreme Good—Summum Bonum. Three persons stand before us: the youthful Philebus: Protarchus, somewhat older, yet still a young man: and Sokrates. Philebus declares that The Good consists in pleasure or enjoyment ; and Protarchus his friend advocates the same thesis, though in a less peremptory manner. On the contrary, Sokrates begins by proclaiming that it consists in wisdom or intelligence. He presently however recedes from this doctrine, so far as to admit that wisdom, alone and per se, is not sufficient to constitute the Supreme Good; and that a certain combination of pleasure along with it is required. Though the compound total thus formed is superior both to wisdom and to pleasure taken separately, yet comparing the two elements of which it is compounded, wisdom (Sokrates contends) is the most important of the two, and pleasure the least important. Neither wisdom nor pleasure can pretend to claim the first prize; but wisdom is fully entitled to the second, as being far more cognate than pleasure is, with the nature of Good.