Sunday, December 05, 2004

Republic 328d2-4

"For you should know that, for me, as the other pleasures, those of the body, wither away, the desires and pleasures concerning speeches grow the more."

[There's a question here about translating "emoige," i.e., "for me." I followed Shorey in translating it as a dative proper, whereas Bloom puts it in the locative dative. I didn't like Bloom's decision since emoige appears outside the relative phrase containing its purported object, "pleasures."

This is the first contrast in the Republic of bodily pleasures with something else. Shorey says that "Plato characteristically contrasts the transitory pleasures of the body with the enduring joys of the mind," but here we have not a mind/body contrast but a contrast between the pleasures of the body and the pleasures "connected with" (to use Bloom's translation) tous logous. Does Cephalus realize that the pleasures of speeches are pleasures of the highest part of the soul? Plato certainly seems to make that connection later in the dialogue, but does Cephalus know about the tripartite soul?]

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