Socratic Ethics and Moral Psychology

This chapter considers the following question: If Plato is our main source of knowledge about Socrates, how can we tell when Plato’s “Socrates” speaks for Socrates and when he speaks for Plato? Among the 30 or so dialogues traditionally attributed to Plato, there is a group of 11 or 12 that share certain features setting them apart from the rest. In these dialogues, which are considerably shorter than the others, Socrates always has the role of questioner. Many scholars agree that these shorter dialogues were intended to portray the characteristic views and arguments of the historical Socrates; for this reason, these dialogues are also called “Socratic.” In fact, a number of scholars believe that these dialogues contain a Socratic “theory” of the virtues: a unified, systematic account of their nature and value. According to this view, one of Plato’s intentions in writing these dialogues was to set out this systematic account of the virtues, and to defend it with arguments used by Socrates. However, there are problems with this view. The chapter suggests that while these dialogues are “Socratic” in the sense that they focus on the views and style of discussion of the historical Socrates, they were not intended to give a unified Socratic theory of the virtues—for the good reason that Socrates in all likelihood did not have a unified theory of the virtues.

James Frederick Ferrier's Socratic Ethics

James Frederick Ferrier is probably best known for the idealism he presents in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness and Institutes of Metaphysic, in which Ferrier critiques and offers an alternative to Common Sense Realism – the dominant school of thought in Scotland in the 18th and early 19th centuries – spearheaded by Thomas Reid and his followers. What has received significantly less attention in the literature, however, is Ferrier's 1866 Lectures on Greek Philosophy, which serves as an important point of connection between the moral philosophy that Ferrier develops in the Introduction and Institutes and what Ferrier takes to be the ethics that Socrates taught and according to which he lived. In this paper, I examine Plato's early dialogues in order to demonstrate that Ferrier's ethics should be understood as a descendent of Socratic ethics insofar as both Ferrier and Socrates endorse the view that individual freedom is only possible through a life of thought that transcends the particularities of sensation.

4. Socrates and later philosophy

‘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.

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

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.

Dalla tecnica all’etica: argomentazioni peirastiche in Lachete, Carmide, Ippia minore e Protagora

The 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.