this is part of my hw so its not well edited

Socrates was convinced that our souls - where virtues and vices are found - are vastly more important for our lives than our bodies or external circumstances. The quality of our souls determines the character of our lives we must place the highest priority on the care of our souls. That means we must above all want to acquire the virtues, since they perfect our souls and enable them to direct our lives for the better. If only we could know what each of the virtues is we could then make an effort to obtain them. consistently concerned the aretai, the recognized 'virtues' or excellences of character (see Aret), such as justice, piety, self-control or moderation (sophrosyn), courage and wisdom; what these individual characteristics consist in and require of a person, what their value is, and how they are acquired, whether by teaching or in some other way. The virtues belong to the soul - they are the condition of a soul that has been properly cared for and brought to its best state. The soul is vastly more important for happiness than are health and strength of the body or social and political power, wealth and other external circumstances of life; the goods of the soul, and pre-eminently the virtues, are worth far more than any quantity of bodily or external goods. Socrates seems to have thought these other goods aretruly good, but they only do people good, and thereby contribute to their happiness, under the condition that they are chosen and used in accordance with virtues indwelling in their souls Socrates thought these virtues were essential if one was to live happily (see Â§4). But what exactly were they? What was it about someone that made them just, or courageous, or wise? If you did not know that, you would not know what to do in order to acquire those qualities. Furthermore, supposing you did possess a virtue, you would have to be able to explain and defend by argument the consequent ways in which you lived - otherwise your conviction that those are ways one ought to act would be shallow and unjustified. And in order to do that you would have to know what state of mind the virtue was, since that is essential to them (see Plato, Charmides 158e-159a). Consequently, in his discussions Socrates constantly asked for 'definitions' of various virtues: what is courage (Laches); what is self-control or moderation (Charmides), what is friendship (Lysis) and what is piety (Euthyphro). As this context shows, he was asking not for a 'dictionary definition', an account of the accepted linguistic understanding of a term, but for an ethically defensible account of an actual condition of mind or character to which the word in common use would be correctly applied. In later terminology, he was seeking a 'real' rather than a 'nominal' definition . He gives a much-discussed, elaborate argument to establish this stronger conclusion, starting from assumptions identifying that which is pleasant with that which is good (352a-357e). These assumptions, however, he attributes only to ordinary people, the ones who say they believe in the possibility of weak-willed action; he makes it clear to the careful reader, if not to Protagoras, that his own view is simply that pleasure is a good thing,

Resources

Top Categories

Product

Company