ABSTRACT
The Socratic paradoxes may be regarded as aphorisms that contain the essentials of the Socratic ethics. There are three Socratic paradoxes. They are: first, that no man desires evil, all men desire the good; second, that no man who (knows or) believes that an action is evil does it willingly – on the contrary, all the actions that a man does willingly he does with a view to achieving some good; and, third, that it is better to suffer injustice at the hands of others than to do unjust acts oneself. These paradoxes are related to psychological egoism and to the dictum that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance. In this essay I shall concentrate on the first paradox and the ways in which it relates to psychological egoism and to the dictum that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance.
