Wallace I. Matson

Socrates' Critique of Cognitivism

Ethics and lexicography would seem, prima facie, to have little to do with each other. Yet Aristotle testifies that Socrates pursued both: Socrates was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions.1 Socrates occupied himself with the excellences of character, and in connection with them became the first to raise the problem of universal definitions.2