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"In the early dialogues, Socrates is unable to find a meaning of certain excellences, or virtues, such as temperance, courage, friendship, that is acceptable to the participants. Each dialogue ends as Socrates finds that people do not really know what they think they know ; that every opinion offered as to the nature of a virtue can be countered by another opinion; and that even among the Sophists, the best teachers of Greece, there is disagreement about the nature and meaning of the highest standards of human excellence and the best ways of knowing them. As Socrates' inquiry proceeds, he comes to see that a somewhat different question needs to be asked: Not, what is the meaning of the separate virtues, such as courage, friendship, and temperance; but rather, what is virtue in itself, a virtue of a kind such that, if known, the knower would be enabled to know the separate virtues of which it is the highest possible consummation." (p.6)
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(pp.8-10)
-J. J. Chambliss, Imagination and Reason in Plato, Aristotle, Vico, Rousseau and Keats. An Essay on the Philosophy of Experience, La Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1974, 76 pages.
