ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the internal connection between certain items of Plato's presentation of Socratic ethics, the attempt to reach definitions and the two theses which have come to be labelled as 'the Socratic paradoxes', that virtue is knowledge and that no one does wrong willingly or intentionally. It considers what Plato's Socrates is looking for when he looks for an ethical definition, and how the search for definitions connects with the Socratic paradoxes. The chapter suggests that while Plato falls short of presenting Socrates as possessing a single clear conception of definition, one paradigm of definition predominates. The text of the dialogue does confirm that that type of account is predominant in Plato's mind, but the evidence is by no means unambiguous: indeed the complexities are such as to force us to acknowledge that the distinction between conceptual elucidation and explanatory theory emerges with less than total clarity.
