Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 148
The Pursuit of Happiness 
Pleasure, Part 1: Plato’s Gorgias

^[1]53:16 / 149 words

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Beginning in August of 1999, I gave a series of eight lectures on “The Pursuit of Happiness: Philosophies East and West,” dealing with different conceptions of the good life.

The syllabus was:

1. Introduction
2. Harmony, Inner and Outer (Plato, Lao Tzu)
3. Self-Actualization (Montaigne, Nietzsche)
4. Detachment (Epictetus, the Buddha)
5. Duty (Confucius, Kant, Montaigne)
6. Pleasure (Callicles, Epicurus)
7. The Conquest of Nature (Ayn Rand)
8. The Spiritual Life (William James)

The first half of the lecture of pleasure deals with the argument between Socrates and Callicles, a hedonist, in Plato’s Gorgias. The edition I used is Plato, Gorgias ^[4], trans. and ed. James H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). As usual, the sound quality is clear but rather harsh due to the necessity of heavy noise reduction.