Daniel Russell develops a fresh and original view of pleasure and its pivotal role in Plato's treatment of value, happiness, and human psychology. This is the first full-length discussion of the topic for fifty years, and Russell shows its relevance to contemporary debates in moral philosophy and philosophical psychology. Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life will make fascinating reading for ancient specialists and for a wide range of philosophers.

Daniel Russell is a research fellow in the School of Philosophy and Bioethics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

• Introduction: Pleasure and the good life


• 1: Goodnes and the good life: the Euthydemus


• 2: Pleasure, virtue, and happiness in the Gorgias


• 3: Pleasure as a conditional good in the Phaedo


• 4: Pleasure and moral psychology in Republic^ IV and IX


• 5: The Philebus I: virtue, value, and 'likeness to God'


• 6: The Philebus II: pleasure transformed


• 7: Pleasure, value, and moral psychology in the Republic, Laws, and Timaeus


• Epilogue: Pleasure and happiness in Plato's Protagoras