SOURCE: "The Ethics of Socrates," in The Philosophical Review, Vol. XXXVI, No. 200, March, 1925, pp. 117-43.

After reviewing the arguments for and against Xenophon and Plato as accurate sources of Socratic philosophy, Rogers argues that Plato provides sufficient evidence that Socrates's teaching focused on the proposition that "virtue is knowledge." Rogers then examines the meaning and significance of this statement.

The beginnings of ethics as a branch of human science it has been customary to trace to Socrates; and while any point of departure is bound to be arbitrary to some extent, since written history does not record a time when men showed no tendency whatever to reflect on the problems of conduct, there are good reasons for the usual procedure. It is true, at least, that it was Socrates who inspired the first efforts to think systematically about the moral life in a form that had historical continuity...