While we need to understand Socrates' theory of desire in order to comprehend the view put forth in the Socratic dialogues, this is not sufficient in order to understand Socrates' claims concerning happiness, virtue, and knowledge. We also need to understand Socrates' theory of the good, the bad, and the neither-good-nor-bad. To put it simply, Socrates believed that the only good thing was happiness, the only bad thing was misery, and everything else was neither-good-nor-bad (NGNB). While this threefold classification falls out of the text in a relatively straightforward manner, it is difficult to figure out how virtue fits into it – nor is it immediately obvious how vice should be classified. We will take a careful look at how these elements fit into his schema in the next chapter.

In this chapter, through an analysis of what Socrates says about the good, the bad, and the NGNB, we will see that he provides no metric for evaluating any action or object other than its actual capacity to render its possessor either more or less happy. There is no principle, no “moral” notion of good, to which we must look, in order to decide what is the best action for us to perform in our current situation.

It is widely agreed that Socrates holds virtue to be identical to knowledge.