Chapter 3 - Pleasure in the early physical tradition

Summary

Let us turn now from pleasure in the early ethical tradition to pleasure in the early tradition of physiologia, that is, the tradition of the study (logos) of what the Greeks call “physis.” Recall our encounter with the word “physis” in the context of the opening fragment of Democritus’ On Contentment. Democritus there speaks of a man’s “own power and physis.” Here and often, “physis” is translated as “nature.” In the context of physiologia, then, the Greeks were concerned with the study of nature. Yet their conception of physis or nature may be broader than ours. Physiologia also includes the study of non-terrestrial objects and phenomena; it saliently includes astronomy and cosmology.

Physiologia is the field from which Socrates turned when he took his path-breaking steps in ethics. In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, the character Socrates describes his early intellectual interests prior to the break. The passage is often referred to as Socrates’ early intellectual (auto)biography. Consider the beginning of the passage:

When I was a young man, I was wonderfully keen on that wisdom they call inquiry into physis, for I thought it splendid to know the factors responsible for each thing, why it comes to be, why it perishes, and why it exists. I was often changing my mind in the inquiry, in the first instance, of questions such as these: Are living creatures nourished when heat and cold produce a kind of putrefaction, as some say? Do we think with our blood or air or fire or none of these? And does the brain provide our senses of hearing and sight and smell, from which come memory and opinion? And does knowledge come from memory and opinion that has become stable? Then again, as I investigated how these things perish and what happens to things in the sky and on earth, finally I became convinced that I have no natural aptitude at all for that kind of inquiry.

(96a–b)