Philebus

The Philebus, as Plato's most deliberate and thorough attempt to describe the good life, may be regarded as the canonical Platonic text on the subject of the way people ought to live - a theme that runs through the majority of the other dialogues. It is one of the earliest discussions of ethics - not in the sense of discussing what goodness is, but in the more direct sense of how, as human beings with a particular nature, we can hope to live the good life.

The dialogue dismisses hedonism or the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, as espoused by Philebus, and establishes the pursuit of knowledge as a higher goal. It also contains methodological and metaphysical passages of considerable profundity and interest.

Robin Waterfield's excellent introduction to this edition contains a detailed analysis of Plato's argument.

SOCRATES: Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure for all who are able to partake of them, and that to all such who are or ever will be they are the most advantageous of all things.