Paul Woodruff is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin

The consensus of modern scholars seems to have been that Plato’s Socrates is an egoist eudaimonist in a strong sense—that he believed that every purposeful act is an effort to achieve one’s own eudaimonia.  Socrates’ virtue, on this view, would be merely instrumental for his happiness. Socrates, such scholars supposed, set the tone for ancient ethics generally. Prichard criticized the whole of ancient ethics for this; if he is right, today’s ethicists should dismiss the ancients out of hand.  More recently, Thomas Hurka made the basic point; writing about Aristotle, he said: “What makes something like benevolence a virtue isn’t its benefitting me but its caring properly about goods in other people’s lives”—as if ancient virtues were never other-regarding.  But in the last few years, I think, the consensus has been shifting away from such criticism of the ancients.

In this paper I focus on Socrates as represented in Plato. I start by clarifying the terms “egoist” and “eudaimonist.” Then, on the basis of a number of texts, I argue that Socrates is not the same sort of eudaimonist as Aristotle. Eudaimonia has a different meaning for him and a different role in his ethical thinking than in Aristotle.  Second, I will show that Socrates is not an egoist; his concept of the human virtue is essentially other-regarding.  True, he places a high priority on avoiding moral injury to one’s own soul, but he does so in the service of a morality that by its nature benefits one’s community. If I am right, we ethical thinkers can safely follow in Socrates’ footsteps.

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