Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.)

Socrates claimed to know nothing and mostly just asked questions (the famous Socratic method of teaching) but does seem to have had a few definite beliefs:

    1. To be good is to be happy and to be bad is to be unhappy

    2. To be happy or good is to have self-control

    3. "The unexamined life is not worth living"

    4. Wisdom is a matter not just of knowing what is good but of doing it

    5. All wrong is done out of ignorance

    6. A good person cannot be harmed

    7. Life with a corrupted soul is not worth living

    8. It is better to suffer evil than to do evil

The point of the Socratic method appears to be:

    a) to teach humility and arouse curiosity,

    b) to clarify which proposed definitions of key concepts will not work and what features must be included in any satisfactory definition,

    c) to include all people more or less equally in the search for truth. 

In the Euthyphro the main question raised is: Are right/good acts right/good just because God (or the gods) says so, or does God say so because they are right/good?  If it is just because God says so, then God's commandments seem arbitrary.  And what if God does not exist?  Does anything go?   On the other hand, if God's commandments are made for a reason, i.e. if there is something else (other than God's arbitrary decree) about bad acts that makes them bad, what is it?  And is God then irrelevant to ethics?

Click here for more on the idea that good is what God says it is.

In the Crito Socrates suggests that we should always obey the law, because:

    1. If individuals do not obey the state it will collapse

    2. We owe a debt of gratitude to the state for all it has given us (security, education, etc.)

    3. By living in a state when we could leave we are implicitly contracting or promising to obey the laws, whether we like them or not  

Click here for more on the idea of a social contract.