Abstract

This article aims at showing that the definition of pleasure in Plato’s dialogues cannot be separated from a political educational program and an anthropology that consider pleasure as the main vehicle towards virtue. The political use of pleasure is as important as its definition, insofar as its manifestation and content are the prerogatives of the legislator. All pleasures are politically meaningful in the Republic and in the Laws, and among them especially the triad hunger, thirst and sex ; in making pleasures a “public” issue, as pleasures are object of surveillance and political control, Plato gives several means in order to shape the way pleasures are felt in the city, and in order to make the community of pleasure and pain a fundamental role in unifying the city under the reason’s commands.