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The character of Socrates provides an illustration of a historical conundrum. If Socrates ever wrote a single word, it has not survived. As such, the entirety of modern knowledge concerning Socrates must be drawn from a limited number of secondary sources, such as the works of Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon. Aristophanes was known as a satirist, and so his accounts of Socrates may well be skewed, exaggerated, or totally falsified. Fragmentary evidence also exists from Socrates' contemporaries. Giannantoni, in his monumental work Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae collects every scrap of evidence pertaining to Socrates. It includes writers such as Aeschines Socraticus (not the orator), Antisthenes, and a number of others who knew Socrates. Plato, following Greek tradition, appears to have attributed his own ideas, theories, and possibly personal traits, to his mentor. Due to the problems inherent in such sources, all information regarding Socrates should be taken as possibly, but not definitely, true.

According to accounts from antiquity, Socrates' father was Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and his mother Phaenarete, a midwife. He was married to Xanthippe, who bore him three sons. By the cultural standards of the time, she was considered a shrew. Socrates himself attested that he, having learned to live with Xanthippe, would be able to cope with any other human being (supposedly), just as a horse trainer accustomed to wilder horses might be more competent than one not. He also saw military action, fighting at the Battle of Potidaea, the Battle of Delium and the Battle of Amphipolis. It is believed, based on Plato's Symposium, that Socrates was decorated for bravery. In one instance he stayed with his wounded friend Alcibiades, and probably saved his life; despite the objections of Alcibiades, Socrates refused any sort of official recognition and instead encouraged the decoration of Alcibiades. During such campaigns, he also showed his extraordinary hardiness, walking without shoes and a coat in winter.

It is unclear what exactly Socrates did for a living. He did not work; in Xenophon's Symposium he explicitly states that he devotes himself only to discussing philosophy, and that he thinks this is the most important art or occupation. It is unlikely that he was able to live off of family inheritance, given his father's occupation as an artisan. In the accounts of Plato, Socrates explicitly denies accepting money for teaching; however, Xenophon's Symposium clearly has Socrates state that he is paid by his students, and Aristophanes depicts Socrates as running a school of sophistry with his friend Chaerephon. It is also possible that Socrates survived off of the generosity of his wealthy and powerful friends, such as Alcibiades.

In the early dialogues of Plato, there seems to be an incoherent portrait of Socrates. He seems in the Apology and Crito to make virtue the supreme good in human life, but in the Protagoras to make pleasure that supreme good, yet in the Gorgias to deny that pleasure is the supreme good. This essay reconciles the hedonist of the Protagoras with the anti-hedonist of the Gorgias by distinguishing two theories of pleasure: Socrates argues against one but accepts the other. It reconciles Socrates the (properly understood) hedonist with Socrates the virtue supremacist of the Apology and Crito by showing how Socrates can identify pleasant activity (according to his theory of pleasure) with virtuous activity. It is part of my project to provide a deeper philosophical understanding of Socrates' ideas that virtue is sufficient for happiness, that nothing bad can happen to a good man (Ap. 41d1). Such ideas can cause a fundamental change in one's life. On the strength of Socratic argument, I believe such ideas should be given serious consideration.

Plato's Socratic dialogues on the nature of virtue, knowledge, and the good life stand at the beginning of Western ethical thought. Yet basic questions about these dialogues remain unsettled. This is in large part due to the fact that they are full of apparent inconsistencies. For example, Socrates appears in the Apology to be willing to break the law; in the Crito unwilling. Inconsistencies such as these lead some to conclude that there is no coherent theory underlying these dialogues, that they are not to be seen as arguing for an implicit positive doctrine. But a majority of scholars think it reasonable to seek a plausible ethical theory in these dialogues.

Probably the most divisive of the unsettled questions concerns the issue of hedonism, the doctrine that all good and evil, in the last analysis, is a matter of pleasure and pain. There is an astonishing split of scholars over whether the Socrates portrayed in these dialogues is a hedonist.

Yet the hedonism issue is so basic that without resolving it in some satisfactory way an assessment of the place of the Socratic dialogues in the history of philosophy cannot be made. For without such a resolution it is difficult to know whether to place Socrates in the Stoic and Kantian ethical tradition, which postulates an absolute value for virtue apart from pleasure, or in the Epicurean and Utilitarian tradition, which allows virtue only the value of a means that happens to produce what an individual wants. By interpreting and defending the thesis that pleasure and virtue are the same in human activity, I place Socrates outside both traditions.

Some of the Socratic dialogues refute various theses but end with no thesis endorsed. Plato, aware of this, gives the reader the means for understanding (in the coils of the arguments he lays out) but few explicit slogans. If there are positive theses in the dialogues, there is a point to looking for coherence among them.

In the Protagoras, Socrates defends hedonism as a premise in an argument whose conclusion he accepts. He allows the people with whom he is talking to take him as accepting that premise himself. Thus it is natural to conclude on the basis of the Protagoras that Socrates is a hedonist. But there is a problem with this natural conclusion. In the Gorgias, Socrates attacks and refutes hedonism. . .

A distinction between two species of hedonism, only one of which Socrates defends, still leaves a problem. In the Protagoras, Socrates defends the claim that pleasure is the only good. But in the Apology and elsewhere Socrates unquestionably believes that virtue is a good above all others. Socrates cannot, it seems, have it both ways. Either virtue, as in the Apology, or pleasure, as in the Protagoras, may be the supreme good - but not both. Since the supremacy of virtue is unquestionable for Socrates, it would seem that hedonism is an impossible doctrine for Socrates to hold.

Pleasure, in English as in Greek, is spoken of in two ways. I may speak of the pleasure I get from various activities. In this manner of speaking, pleasure is a sensation. I may also speak of a person's pleasures. In this manner of speaking, pleasure is a mode of activity, that is, an activity done in a certain way -- one which is anticipated, which absorbs one's attention without effort, from which one is reluctant to break off - but which need not be associated with any sensations in particular. For example, a tennis player may enjoy intensely the activity of a match, yet -- owing to chronic disease or injury -- feel predominately or only sensations of pain while playing. I have mentioned some of the symptoms of modal pleasures -- anticipation, absorption, unwillingness to break off -- but Aristotle identified the reason why modal pleasures have these symptoms: they are essentially "unimpeded activities of the soul," which may be understood as the exercise of a capacity central to doing well as a human being.

The Apology gives us grounds for ascribing a modal notion of pleasure to Socrates. There Socrates argues that dreamless sleep -- a sensationless activity -- is a surpassing pleasure (40d6). If Socrates held a sensate account of pleasure, such a claim would be laughably false (as indeed it has seemed to sensatist interpreters). But, with a modal account of pleasure, a defense can be given of this Socratic argument. . .

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