Socrates

Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, born around 470 BC and put to death in 399 BC. He is often described as perhaps the first Western moral philosopher, and he became a major inspiration for his student Plato, whose work helped found the tradition of Western philosophy. Socrates remains an unusual figure in that he authored no texts of his own. What is known about him comes from others, especially Plato and Xenophon, both his pupils, along with the comic dramatist Aristophanes and later writers such as Aristotle.

Because the surviving accounts often disagree, Socrates is hard to pin down with certainty. Scholars call this difficulty the Socratic problem: the challenge of separating the historical Socrates from the portraits created by writers who used him as a character, teacher, opponent, or example. Plato’s dialogues are among the most complete ancient accounts, but even they raise questions about how closely they reflect Socrates himself. Xenophon also wrote about him in works such as the Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Symposium, and Apology of Socrates. Aristophanes placed him at the center of the comedy The Clouds, where he appears in caricature.

Socrates is best known for the style of inquiry that bears his name. In the Socratic method, or elenchus, he and his interlocutors move through short questions and answers, usually examining a virtue or an abstract idea. Again and again, the discussion ends in an impasse, with people unable to define what they thought they understood. This form of questioning helped give rise to the Socratic dialogue as a literary genre. Socrates is also linked with Socratic irony, and with the repeated claim that he knew only that he did not know.

The concerns that shaped his thought, at least as they appear in the surviving dialogues, were moral and philosophical rather than practical instruction in the ordinary sense. Plato’s accounts show him pressing questions in ethics and epistemology, asking how people know what they claim to know and what makes a life or action good. Xenophon admired him for intelligence, patriotism, and courage on the battlefield, though Xenophon’s Socrates differs from Plato’s in tone and emphasis. In every version, Socrates is shown as a man who made conversation into a searching test of belief.

That habit also made him a polarizing figure in Athens. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted one day, he was sentenced to death. As Plato relates it, Socrates refused offers from allies who wanted to help him escape, and he was put to death by poison. The words attached to Socrates still resonate because they do not settle for easy answers. They invite readers to pause, ask better questions, and admit the limits of what they know.