[Revised entry by Dorothea Frede and Mi-Kyoung Lee on February 1, 2023.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Like most other ancient philosophers, Plato maintains a virtue-based eudaemonistic conception of ethics. That is to say, happiness or well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of moral thought and conduct, and the virtues (arete: ‘excellence’) are the dispositions/skills needed to attain it. If Plato’s conception of happiness is elusive and his support for a morality of happiness seems somewhat subdued, there are several reasons. First, he nowhere defines the concept or makes it the…
Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More
