George Rudebusch addresses the question of whether Socrates was a hedonist -- that is, if he believed that the good is, at bottom, a matter of pleasure. Rudebusch claims that this issue is so basic that, unless it is resolved, no adequate assessment of the Socratic dialogues' place in the history of philosophy can be made. In attempting to determine Socrates's position, Rudebusch examines the passages in Plato's early dialogues that are most important to this controversy and draws important distinctions between two kinds of pleasure and between hedonism and Protagoreanism. His conclusion, that Socrates was a "modal hedonist," rather than a "sensate pleasure" hedonist, is supported by some very original readings of the early dialogues.

In the past quarter century, enormous philosophical attention has been paid to Plato's "Socratic" dialogues, as interpreters have sought to identify which dialogues are truly Socratic and interpret and defend the moral theories they find in those works. In spite of this intellectual energy, no consensus has emerged on the question of whether Socrates was a hedonist--whether he believed pleasure to be the good. In this study, George Rudebusch addresses this question and the textual puzzle from which it has arisen.
In the Protagoras, Plato has Socrates appeal to hedonism in order to assert his characteristic identification of virtue and knowledge. While in the Gorgias, Socrates attributes hedonism to his opponent and argues against it in defense of his own view that doing injustice is worse than suffering it. From the Apology and Crito, it is clear that Socrates believes virtue to be the supreme good. Taken together, scholars have found these texts to be incoherent and seek to account for them either in terms of the development of Plato's thinking or by denying that one or more of these texts was meant to reflect Socrates' own ethical theory.
Rudebusch argues instead that these texts do indeed fit together into a coherent moral theory as he attempts to locate Socrates' position on hedonism. He distinguishes Socrates' own hedonism from that which Socrates attacks elsewhere. Rudebusch also maintains that Socrates identifies pleasant activity with virtuous activity, describing Socrates' hedonism as one of activity, not sensation. This analysis allows for Socrates to find both virtue and pleasure to be the good, thus solving the textual puzzle and showing the power of Socratic argument in leading human beings toward the good.
Tackling some of the most fundamental debates over Socratic ethics in Plato's earlier dialogues, Socrates, Pleasure, and Value will generate renewed discussion among specialists and provide excellent reading for courses in ancient philosophy as well as ethical theory.

This volume presents essays on Ancient ethics from Homer to Plotinus with a focus on the significance of Ancient ethical thinking for contemporary ethics. Adapting Kant's words, we might describe philosophers today as holding that meta-ethics without normative ethics is empty; normative ethics without meta-ethics is blind. One fascinating feature of Ancient ethics is its close connection between content and method, between normative ethics and meta-ethics. In connecting ethical, epistemological, and cosmological issues, Ancient ethical theories strive for an integrated understanding of normativity. The project of this volume is to capture some of the colours of the bright spectrum of ancient ethics. The goal of bundling them together is, ultimately, to shed better light on the issues of contemporary ethics. Topics: Classical Chinese Ethics, Indian Ethics, Homeric Ethics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Plotinus, Ancient and Modern Moral Psychology, Hybrid Theories of Normativity, The Unity of the Virtues, The Art of Life and Morality (Lebenskunst und Moral).