Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works (all lost)', 'comedies (frags)' and 'fragments/reports'

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3 ideas

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / a. Form of the Good

3032	I can form no notion of what the good is [Amphis]
	Full Idea: What the good is I no more can form a notion of, than of the good of Plato.
	From: Amphis (comedies (frags) [c.350 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 03.1.22
	A reaction: It was evidently a running joke in the ancient world that no one could define Plato's Form of the Good. He was said to have written a book on it, now lost.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / e. Character

541	Virtue comes more from habit than character [Critias]
	Full Idea: More men are good through habit than through character.
	From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B09), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 3.29.41

28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism

542	Fear of the gods was invented to discourage secret sin [Critias]
	Full Idea: When the laws forbade men to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, to frighten the wicked, even if they sin in secret.
	From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B25), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 9.54