Socrates, pleasure, and value /

Socrates praises virtue as the highest human good in several Platonic dialogues and argues against Callicles' hedonism in the Gorgias. Yet Socrates himself argues from a hedonist perspective in the Protagoras. Is there a consistent position here? In this excellent book, Rudebusch (Northern Arizona Univ.) pursues this question to the heart of Socrates' ethics and concludes that Socrates is indeed a hedonist of an unusual kind. The highest good, in Socrates' view, consists not in sensory pleasure, but in what Rudebusch calls "modal pleasure"--that constituted by "unimpeded activity in accordance with the nature of one's condition"--the kind of pleasure skillful people enjoy while engaging in their skill. A tennis player might enjoy a match, for example, even while an injury causes her pain the entire time. Rudebusch shows how everything Socrates says about the good life can be understood in this way, and the view he attributes to Socrates is worth taking seriously on its own merits. Every page of this extraordinary book offers spare but subtle argument without embellishment or distraction--a model of philosophical writing. Certainly the best book on Socratic ethics. Strongly recommended for college and university libraries. N. D. Smith; Lewis and Clark College