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Opinions greatly differ in moral matters, but for Socrates it is the philosopher's duty to dig out the
eternal and universal truths hidden beneath the confused mass of opinion. Beginning with real or
professed ignorance (his irony) and making self‐consistency as the criterion of truth, he brought
under discussion opinions about such matters as good, beauty, ugliness, nobility, wisdom, justice,
courage, friendship, State, and citizenship, in order to know their real moral significance and to
arrive at their precise definitions.
He was convinced that all evil‐doing is due to ignorance. If people knew what was right, they
would do no wrong. As knowledge alone is needed to make people virtuous, he declared that
knowledge is virtue. It is the highest good and the sole end of life and its pursuit is the only source
of abiding happiness.
By over‐emphasizing one aspect or another of Socrates system, his followers developed divergent
lines of thought. The school of the Cyrenaics, founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, lay hold of his idea
of happiness and joy in the pursuit of knowledge, and made the greatest amount of pleasure the
highest good for man, a view later on taken and modified by the Epicureans. His emphasis on
knowledge as virtue, as the supreme good worthy of being sought for its own sake, irrespective of
the joy that it brings, made the school of the Cynics, established by Antisthenes, couple their
doctrine of virtue and duty with asceticism, i.e., with extreme self‐restraint, self‐renunciation, and
freedom from want a doctrine later on developed by the Stoics. Euclides and Plato combined his
idea of the highest good with the Eleatic conception of the unity of Being and developed the
doctrine that matter and change and motion are unreal, and the one ultimate Being‐the Good‐is
the essence of all things .
4. Plato
Plato (427‐347 B.C.) was a descendant of Solon from his mother's side and, if his father's claim is
accepted of the last kings of Athens from the father's side. He was a disciple of Socrates and
teacher of Aristotle. He remained attached to the Socratic circle from his own age of twenty to the
death of Socrates. His works were exceedingly well preserved. Out of these, twenty‐six authentic
Dialogues have come clown to us. At the age of forty or forty‐one he founded an educational
institution known as the Academy, where he taught till his death at the age of eighty. The
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