Plato's Pleasures: New Perspectives

This conference aims to provide an occasion for developing interpretations of Plato’s views on pleasure that counterbalance the dismissive readings dominating the secondary literature in the past half-century. Recent work on the dialogues that offer a theory of pleasure – Republic, Timaeus, Philebus – as well as dialogues that contain substantial passages on pleasure and pain – Gorgias, Protagoras, Phaedo – has been more sympathetic and sophisticated than the harshly critical received view. Plato’s Pleasures: New Perspectives will bring together leading scholars on pleasure in ancient philosophy with the hope of generating not only more charitable readings of Plato’s thought on pleasure but also a reassessment of how his thought may inform contemporary debates on this subject.