  The pleasure proofs tempt some readers to suppose that Socrates must  have a hedonistic conception of happiness. After all, he claims to  have shown that the just person is happier than the unjust (580a–c),  and he says that his pleasure arguments are proofs of the same  claim (580c–d, 583b). But these arguments can work just as the first  proof works: Socrates can suppose that happiness, whatever it is,  is marked by pleasure (just as it is marked by the absence of regret, frustration, and fear). This is not to say that one should take  pleasure to be one’s goal any more than it is to say that one should  pursue fearlessness as one’s goal. Pleasure is a misleading guide  (see 581c–d and 603c), and there are many false, self-undermining  routes to pleasure (and fearlessness).