1. In retrospect it may seem curious that the rich
intellectual legacy of ancient Greece included no sys-
tematic economic study apart from a few uninteresting
works on oikonomia, on rules for good housekeeping.
But the attention of an inquisitive mind will never be
arrested by a stationary process. The ancient Greeks
were a nation of busy traders and navigators over many
seas, but their economy was nevertheless stationary,
in the sense that, apart from random fluctuations
caused by natural phenomena, economic life went from
day to day without any perceptible change. What
should surprise us, therefore, is that in spite of this fact
many of their writings are studded with ideas on value
and utility which even nowadays, after the theory of
consumer behavior has become a highly developed
branch of the economic science, retain their full sig-
nificance.
No modern utilitarian has been able to add anything
substantial to Plato's clear formulation of the doctrine.
He tells us repeatedly that life is a “juxtaposition” of
pleasure and pain, and that “each one of us has in his
bosom two counsellors, both foolish and also antago-
nistic; of which we call the one pleasure, and the other
pain” (Protagoras 357; Laws I. 644, V. 733). After more
than two thousand years, Bentham, the modern archi-
tect of utilitarianism, echoed this very thought in the
opening sentence of An Introduction to Principles of
Morals and Legislation: “Nature has placed mankind
under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain
and pleasure.” Hermann H. Gossen, the first author of
a mathematical theory of utility, in 1854 also began
his Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschliches Verkehrs
und der daraus fliessenden Regeln für menschliches
Handeln (1854; “Exposition of the Laws of Human
Relations and the Resulting Principles for Human Ac-
tions”) with it: “Man wants to enjoy life, and on this
he sets his life goal,” because this is the Creator's law.
In a quite modern vein, Plato (Philebus 21, trans. B.
Jowett), further argues that “... and if you had no
power of calculation you would not be able to calculate
on future pleasure, and your life would be the life,
not of a man, but of an oyster or 'pulmo marinus.'”
This time, however, Bentham's echo—that “all men
[even madmen] calculate” pleasure and pain—falls
much short of the convincing power of Plato's original
argument.
Even though Plato's analysis of pleasure and pain,
spread throughout the Dialogues, is not as systematic
as Bentham's, recent trends in utility theory show that
Plato's is superior. Whilst Bentham maintains that
pleasures and pains are “addible” so that in any situa-
tion the net result is a quantum of either pleasure or
pain, Plato argues that although they “both admit of
more and less” neither can be subtracted from the other
because “the negation of pain will not be the same
with pleasure” (Philebus 41, 43). This idea is further
strengthened by several observations in The Republic
on the nature of wants and, especially, on their hierar-
chy. Plato even notes that new wants emerge with the
increase in income and also touches the important idea
that basic wants are irreducible to one another. Else-
where (Euthydemus 299), he adumbrates another vital
principle for the theory of utility, namely, the principle
that every want is satiable.
