Conversion of Platon's moral thoughts

Key words: Plato, Socrates, Ethics, Virtue, Ancient Philosophy Plato's dialogues are considered as three periods: Early dialogues transitional dialogues, middle dialogues and the late dialogues. Plato develops the fundamental concepts of his moral conception in these periods. To understand how Plato generates his moral thought we should look at the process how his dialogues are developed. Early dialogues are Socratic dialogues in which Plato follows his teacher Socrates who brings forth the moral theory. In this dialogues, Plato, as his teacher, challenges Sofists Plato's aim is to construct a theory of virtue and episteme which are the basis of his moral theory. Unity and plurality of virtue, individual virtue and the concept virtue in general, and knowledge of virtue and acquiring of virtue become the main problems which are to be solved. In addition, all the dialogues implying a selection between virtue and episteme constitute a starting point for Platonic arguments. It can be seen that Plato begins to form his own philosophy in the dialogues of the "transition period". He describes the virtuous life as reaching to the highest good. According to this, virtue is to fulfill the good through knowledge. Therefore, he passes to the "idea of good" from the concept of "good". The thought that, the state of happiness in the dialogues of the transition period can become true with a social order is processed much mpre in the middle dialogues. In his late period dialogues, Plato develops the idea of social morality instead of individual morality. According to this idea, with a law arranged according to "morality good", the state can provide each citizen to live a virtuous and a happy life. This is the state's duty. Also the statesman should be virtuous and wise. Finally Plato completes his moral theory idea with binding a relation between virtue, knowledge, morally good, correct law and virtuous statesman. IV