In recent Socratic scholarship, much debate has centered on two questions: first, did Socrates find virtue to be sufficient for happiness? And second, regardless of whether virtue is sufficient for happiness, is it necessary for happiness? In this chapter I will show that these questions are irrelevant to Socrates' mission. I will also connect the question of the necessity of virtue for happiness to the debate over whether virtue is a mere instrument for the procurement of happiness (which I discussed above, 116–17 and 128–32).

Debates over necessity and sufficiency are fueled by the assumption that we must attribute to Socrates a theory that post-Kantians would recognize as a moral one. The volatility of these debates is a symptom of the fact that it is difficult to find a post-Kantian notion of morality in Socrates' statements concerning virtue and happiness. The project of finding a moral view in the Socratic dialogues is complicated by the fact that Socrates evidently reduces the (now – intuitively – moral) notion of virtue to craft or scientific knowledge, and also by the fact that he sees the goal of human life as the maximization of individual happiness. Furthermore, as if this didn't make the project of uncovering some sort of moral underpinnings for Socratic ethics difficult enough, Socrates – at critical moments – even reduces happiness to pleasure!