What Is Pre-Socratic Ethics?

AbstractThe analogy between virtue and crafts is the core of Socratic ethics, whose fundamental principle is that virtue is a kind of knowledge similar to technical skills. Moral knowledge, however, is on a superior level and is different from other crafts since it concerns the ends of human action. This article aims to show that the main purpose of Laches, Charmides, Lesser Hippias and Protagoras is to bring out this distinction. More specifically, all the four dialogues follow a similar pattern, i.e. they lead to the conclusion that virtue is moral knowledge by means of preliminary argumentations which consider the opposite view, supposing that it consists in technical knowledge. Thus we are shown the difficulties arising if we fail to distinguish moral knowledge, before the dialogue reaches its positive conclusion.

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Socrates and Business Ethics. Considerations on the ethical origins of responsibility

Annales Etyka w życiu gospodarczym ◽

10.18778/1899-2226.20.8.01 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 20 (8) ◽

pp. 7-18

Author(s):

Ewa Podrez

Keyword(s):

Practical Wisdom ◽

Self Awareness ◽

Ethical Considerations ◽

The Awakening ◽

Global Responsibility ◽

Starting Point ◽

The World ◽

Self Knowledge ◽

Socratic Ethics

The presented work attempts to show a link between business and global responsibility, and the Socratic idea of self-knowledge. Today’s ethics discusses the fundamental issues of man’s place in the world. The human existence is one of the causes of the contemporary crisis. This crisis between man and the world obliges us to raise a radical question of the ethical origins of individual and global responsibility for the quality of life and the future of human generations. This question requires going back to the historical and ethical considerations about the Socratic project of the good life. The starting point for Socratic ethics is an inter-personal and inner-personal dialogue; the subsequent result is man’s practical wisdom of how to build his life with others. Socrates argues that the key issue of responsibility is the awakening of self-awareness and the way to achieve this objective is through dialogue.

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Socratic Method and Socratic Ethics: The Meno

Plato's Ethics ◽

10.1093/0195086457.003.0009 ◽

1995 ◽

pp. 127-147

Author(s):

Terence Irwin

Keyword(s):

Socratic Method ◽

Socratic Ethics

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The Good, Advantage, Happiness and the form of the Good: How Continuous with Socratic Ethics is Platonic Ethics?

Pursuing the GoodEthics and Metaphysics in Plato's Republic ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748628117.003.0006 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 93-123

Author(s):

Terry Penner

Keyword(s):

Socratic Ethics

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Indifference readings: Plato and the Stoa on Socratic ethics

Classics in Progress ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197263235.003.0015 ◽

2006 ◽

Author(s):

Mary Margaret McCabe

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

Analytic Tradition ◽

The Difference ◽

Socratic Ethics

In trying to understand Plato, this chapter suggests that Plato himself may be used as a guide to reading Plato, and that such a guide does indeed lead to a philosophical destination of which the analytic tradition might approve. A comparison of two short and markedly different passages, one from the Meno and the other from the Euthydemus shows us that the difference may be one between a Socratic view (the Meno), and its Platonic replacement in the Euthydemus. This account, however, seems not to meet the present case: in particular because both the two passages are significantly indeterminate. The indeterminacy of the Meno, this chapter argues, is teased out by the Euthydemus; it is this feature that should encourage one to see the latter as a ‘reading’ of the former.

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4. Socrates and later philosophy

Socrates: A Very Short Introduction ◽

10.1093/actrade/9780198835981.003.0004 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 76-102

Author(s):

C. C. W. Taylor

Keyword(s):

19Th Century ◽

15Th Century ◽

Socratic Ethics

‘Socrates and later philosophy’ examines the legacy of Socrates, the most important aspect of which was his influence on Plato. Antisthenes, another personal associate, adhered to some of Socrates’ ethical doctrines and his austere lifestyle. The Stoics accepted the cardinal doctrines of Socratic ethics—that virtue is knowledge and that virtue is sufficient for eudaimonia—while the Epicureans were consistently hostile to his ideas. The major medieval philosophers showed little interest in Socrates, but the revival of Platonism in the late 15th century changed that. The tradition of adapting the figure of Socrates to fit the general preconceptions of the writer is discernible in his treatment by three 19th-century philosophers: Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.

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