Tragedy and Comedy of Life Plato's Philebus

InThe Tragedy and Comedy of Life,Seth Benardete focuses on the idea of the good in what is widely regarded as one of Plato's most challenging and complex dialogues, thePhilebus.Traditionally thePhilebusis interpreted as affirming the doctrine that the good resides in thought and mind rather than in pleasure or the body. Benardete challenges this view, arguing that Socrates vindicates the life of the mind over against the life of pleasure not by separating the two and advocating a strict asceticism, but by mixing pleasure and pain with mind in such a way that the philosophic life emerges as the only possible human life. Benardete combines a probing and challenging commentary that subtly mirrors and illumines the complexities of this dialogue with the finest English translation of thePhilebusyet available. The result is a work that will be of great value to classicists, philosophers, and political theorists alike.Plato is the author of 'Tragedy and Comedy of Life Plato's Philebus', published 1993 under ISBN 9780226042398 and ISBN 0226042391.