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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.
Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC). The first historical figure who is usually called an "intellectualist" was the Greek philosopher Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC), who taught that intellectualism allows that "one will do what is right or [what is] best, just as soon as one truly understands what is right or best"; that virtue is a matter of the intellect, because virtue and knowledge are related ...
Socrates's theory of virtue states that all virtues are essentially one, since they are a form of knowledge. [151] For Socrates, the reason a person is not good is because they lack knowledge. Since knowledge is united, virtues are united as well. Another famous dictum—"no one errs willingly"—also derives from this theory. [152]
Socrates said that his awareness of his ignorance made him wiser than those who, though ignorant, still claimed knowledge. This claim was based on a reported Delphic oracular pronouncement that no man was wiser than Socrates. While this belief seems paradoxical at first glance, in fact it allowed Socrates to discover his own errors.
There are several lists of virtues. Socrates argued that virtue is knowledge, which suggests that there is really only one virtue. [32] The Stoics identified four cardinal virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Wisdom is subdivided into good sense, good calculation, quick-wittedness, discretion, and resourcefulness.
Socrates (c. 469–399 BCE) [145] identified the highest good as the right combination of knowledge, pleasure, and virtue, holding that active inquiry is associated with pleasure while knowledge of the good leads to virtuous action. [146] Plato (c. 428–347 BCE) [147] conceived the good as a universal and changeless idea.
There is a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of Socrates' definition of justice and the differing means through which Socrates and Clitophon view virtue and justice as being achieved, by speech and deed, respectively.
Here, Socrates aims at the change of Meno's opinion, who was a firm believer in his own opinion and whose claim to knowledge Socrates had disproved. It is essentially the question that begins "post-Socratic" Western philosophy. Socrates begins all wisdom with wondering, thus one must begin with admitting one's ignorance.