The Philebus, like the Cratylus, is supposed to be the continuation of a
previous discussion. An argument respecting the comparative claims of
pleasure and wisdom to rank as the chief good has been already carried on
between Philebus and Socrates. The argument is now transferred to
Protarchus, the son of Callias, a noble Athenian youth, sprung from a
family which had spent 'a world of money' on the Sophists (compare Apol.;
Crat.; Protag.). Philebus, who appears to be the teacher, or elder friend,
and perhaps the lover, of Protarchus, takes no further part in the
discussion beyond asserting in the strongest manner his adherence, under
all circumstances, to the cause of pleasure.

Socrates suggests that they shall have a first and second palm of victory.
For there may be a good higher than either pleasure or wisdom, and then
neither of them will gain the first prize, but whichever of the two is more
akin to this higher good will have a right to the second. They agree, and
Socrates opens the game by enlarging on the diversity and opposition which
exists among pleasures. For there are pleasures of all kinds, good and
bad, wise and foolish--pleasures of the temperate as well as of the
intemperate. Protarchus replies that although pleasures may be opposed in
so far as they spring from opposite sources, nevertheless as pleasures they
are alike. Yes, retorts Socrates, pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is
like figure and colour like colour; yet we all know that there is great
variety among figures and colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of
this remark; and Socrates proceeds to ask how he can have a right to
attribute a new predicate (i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he
cannot deny that they are different? What common property in all of them
does he mean to indicate by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert
that there is some trivial sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may
retort by saying that knowledge is one, but the result will be that such
merely verbal and trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure,