"Why, my friend, the inference is that the good is not the same as the pleasant, of the evil the same as the painful; there is a cessatation of pleasure and pain at the same moment; but not of good and evil, for they are different. How can pleasure be the same as good, or pain as evil? ...Are not the good good because they have good present within them, as the beautiful are those who have beauty present in them?"

Plato was one of the first great philosophers. He lived in ancient Athens during a time of social turmoil just before it's fall. He was a student of Socrates, and put Socrates' work down in writing. As a philosopher, his theories were opposite that of the reining school of thought during his time period. Sophists, as the intellectuals of his time were called, believed that happiness was the same as pleasure and that if you could get away with doing something that gives you pleasure, then that act is good. Plato and Socrates, on the other hand, believed in a theory of forms. That is, that there are perfect ways things should be that we as humans can see but can never achieve. For example, anyone knows what a perfect circle looks like, yet can never recreate an absolutely perfect circle in this universe. This is also true for happiness and goodness. There are universal forms of goodness that if not followed to the fullest of your abilities make you evil, like sophist.

Plato, unlike Socrates, wrote down his work in the Republic, Gorgias, and other works. In the quote above, taken from Gorgias,Plato uses dialogue to show Socrates' argument refuting the Sophist argument that pleasure and pain can not occur at the same time. Thereby showing that pleasure is not equal to good and pain is not equal to evil. Plato uses this dialogue format in his work constantly.

There is text and hypertext of some of Plato's work on the Internet. Follow the following links to find them.