We now come to know Socrates' thoughts on the NGNB rather well. We have analyzed Socrates' description of it in the Gorgias and Euthydemus, we have seen how it informs his discussion of friendship in the Lysis, and we have noted its operation as a background assumption in the Charmides. We have also seen that it allows us to discern an appropriate Socratic connection between virtue and happiness. In this chapter, we will look at yet another dialogue in which Socrates' views on the NGNB loom large, despite the fact that there is no direct mention of it. We will see that Socrates' assertions in the Protagoras, that pleasure is what is good and pain is what is bad, also get their stark and elegant structure from his thesis concerning the good, the bad, and the NGNB. Once we recognize that Socrates' discussion of pain and pleasure in the Protagoras contains both the structure and the substance of his views on the NGNB, we will begin to at least approach an answer to the question of what Socrates thought happiness was.

PAIN AND PLEASURE IN THE PROTAGORAS

We have already discussed Protagoras 351b–358e as our source for Socrates' rejection of synchronic belief akrasia and knowledge akrasia (77–81).