Editing Plato (section)

=== Ethics ===
{{see also|Form of the Good}}
Several dialogues discuss [[ethics]] including virtue and vice, pleasure and pain, crime and punishment, and justice and medicine. Socrates presents the famous [[Euthyphro dilemma]] in the [[Euthyphro|dialogue]] of the same name: "Is the [[piety|pious]] ([[:wikt:ὅσιος|τὸ ὅσιον]]) loved by the [[deity|gods]] because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" ([[Stephanus pagination|10a]]) In the ''Protagoras'' dialogue it is argued through Socrates that virtue is innate and cannot be learned, that no one does bad on purpose, and to know what is good results in doing what is good; that knowledge is virtue. In the ''Republic'', Plato poses the question, "What is justice?" and by examining both individual justice and the justice that informs societies, Plato is able not only to inform metaphysics, but also ethics and politics with the question: "What is the basis of moral and social obligation?" Plato's well-known answer rests upon the fundamental responsibility to seek wisdom, wisdom which leads to an understanding of the Form of the Good. Plato views "The Good" as the supreme Form, somehow existing even "beyond being". In this manner, justice is obtained when knowledge of how to fulfill one's moral and political function in society is put into practice.