Socrates' Search for Justice
This indirect method of searching for the truth often left Socrates's interlocutors in
a state of puzzlement because they were forced to conclude that they were ignorant of
what they began by assuming they knew very well. Socrates insisted that he, too, was
ignorant of the best definition of virtue but that
his wisdom consisted of knowing
that he did not know.1 He was trying to
improve rather than undermine his interlocutors' beliefs in morality, even though, as
one of his conversationalists put it, a conversation with Socrates made a man feel numb
just as if he had been stung by a
stingray2. Socrates wanted to discover through reasoning the universal standards that
justified morality. He especially attacked the view of the sophists that proclaimed
conventional morality the
“fetters that bind nature.”3 This view, he asserted, equated human happiness with power and
“getting more.”
Socrates passionately believed that just behavior was better for human beings than
injustice and that
morality4 was justified because it created happiness. Essentially, he seems to have argued
that
just behavior, or virtue, was identical to knowledge5 and that true
knowledge of justice would inevitably lead
people to choose good over evil and therefore to have truly happy lives6, regardless of their material success. Since Socrates believed that knowledge
itself was sufficient for happiness, he therefore asserted that no one knowingly behaved
unjustly and that behaving justly was always in the individual's interest. It might
appear, he maintained, that individuals could promote their interests by cheating or
using force on those weaker than themselves, but this appearance was deceptive. It was
in fact ignorance to believe that the best life was the life of unlimited power to
pursue whatever one desired. Instead, the most desirable human life was concerned with
virtue and guided by rational
reflection7. Moral knowledge was all one needed for the good life, as Socrates defined
it.
