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Socrates is known for proclaiming his total ignorance; he used to say that the only thing he was aware of was his ignorance, seeking to imply that the realization of one's ignorance is the first step in philosophizing. Socrates exerted a strong influence on philosophers in later antiquity and has continued to do so in the modern era.
Socrates rarely used the method to actually develop consistent theories, and he even made frequent use of creative myths and allegories. The Parmenides dialogue shows Parmenides using the Socratic method to point out the flaws in the Platonic theory of forms , as presented by Socrates; it is not the only dialogue in which theories normally ...
For Socrates (469–399 BC), intellectualism is the view that "one will do what is right or best just as soon as one truly understands what is right or best"; that virtue is a purely intellectual matter, since virtue and knowledge are cerebral relatives, which a person accrues and improves with dedication to reason.
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics. Normative ethics aims to find general principles that govern how people should act.
Socrates is said to have pursued this probing question-and-answer style of examination on a number of topics, usually attempting to arrive at a defensible and attractive definition of a virtue. While Socrates' recorded conversations rarely provide a definite answer to the question under examination, several maxims or paradoxes for which he has ...
Socrates' thought was therefore influential for many of these schools of the period, leading them to focus on ethics and how to reach eudaimonia. [3] Early Platonism, known as the "Old Academy" begins with Plato, followed by Speusippus (Plato's nephew), who succeeded him as the head of school (until 339 BC), and Xenocrates (until 313 BC).
Besides utilitarianism and Kantianism, natural law jurisprudence has in common with virtue ethics that it is a live option for a first principles ethics theory in analytic philosophy. The concept of natural law was very important in the development of the English common law.
In the sixth book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, he distinguished the concepts of sophia (wisdom) and phronesis, and described the relationship between them and other intellectual virtues. [4]: VI He writes that Sophia is a combination of nous , the ability to discern reality, and epistēmē , things that "could not be otherwise". [ 5 ]