Review of Philebus (ca. 360–347 BCE)
Plato (writer).
Read in 2024.
A Socratic dialogue about the moral value of hedonism, in opposition to reason.
The ridiculous is in short the specific name which is used to describe the vicious form of a certain habit; and of vice in general it is that kind which is most at variance with the inscription at Delphi.
The high point here is the discussion of theatrical genres, viewed by Socrates as producing mixed (impure) emotions: Laughing at the pitiably weak, etc. He ultimately concludes, on an otherwise unrelated tangent, that a mixed life is the best. It seems to me that Plato’s Socrates otherwise misses the point, mainly because psychology hasn’t been invented. See instead Soft drinks and ethical nihilism.
References here: Poetics (ca. 355 BCE).