Platos View on Virtue

Virtue is the conformation of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles. Virtue is a trait that many people would see as good. This word means many different things to many different people as described in this paper. I will be describing The Sophists, Socrates, and my own view on virtue and what it is means in all of our minds.

Back in the fifth century B.C.E. (Before Common Era) many Athenians such as Socrates believed that there was a basis for stable and certain knowledge. They believed that by arguing and trying to figure out life's true meaning he would be able to understand the concept of truth. He also believe that goodness and knowledge were derived from the very same thing. He believed that if a person committed a sin or had an evil heart that they did not have the knowledge they needed to be good. Every day we decide the choices that we make and those choices can make us happy or sad. Plato said that it took Socrates who was a student of the sophists, to unravel the real truth of what virtue is and to establish a meaning that all of his students could also believe. This is exactly what Socrates believed.

The sophists Protagoras, Gorgias, and Thrasymacus, believed virtue meant different things. Protagoras believed that only the person themselves can judge themselves. While Socrates believed that a person can learn as much as they want to Protagoras believed that a person is only capable of learning so much. He believed that when a society has a set of rules that it will change a humans behavior because it will establish a moral order among the people. Just as laws of every state are made he also thought that we should follow the same rules of the religion we choose to believe in. What he is basically saying is that even though religious groups such as Christians do not see God on an everyday basis that doesn't mean that we shouldn't follow along with the rules of the bible. Gorgias on the other hand believed that nothing really exists in this world and if it did it would be impossible to explain. He believes that things such as love, you would never be able to find the words to explain the feelings that you get when you are in love. He believed that what all humans thought was knowledge was really not and therefore there was no real truth in life. He believed that persuasion was why we thought we knew the things that we do when all in all it could never be shown to be the absolute truth. Last