In this book I provide an interpretation of the dialogues of Plato that most centrally treat the concept of virtue. It may be of interest to some readers to summarize briefly the view that has emerged and in conclusion to say something, albeit brief and tentative, about the philosophical plausibility of this interpretation, its relation to certain later ethical theories with which it has the most in common, and its potential value.

In a number of respects I have treated these very familiar dialogues quite differently from the way they have been approached in recent years. Perhaps the most significant difference in approach is the avoidance of interpreting Plato's ethics in terms of the eudaimonist framework. As I say several times, it is not that I think that Plato's ethics is not eudaimonist. Rather it is that in the texts themselves the overwhelming focus is on virtue as a supreme end and aim. The typical way that the eudaimonist framework operates in interpreting ancient ethics is to say that we know what the highest good, what the supreme aim, is: eudaimonia. What we then need to do next is determine what eudaimonia is. Is it a state or an activity? Does it consist exclusively of virtue or are external goods part of it? The serious downside of this approach to reading Plato is that it obscures, I argue, what are in fact the more central puzzles about ethics in the dialogues.