Socrates

470 BCE – 399 BCE

Athenian philosopher considered the father of Western philosophy.

philosopherancient greece

Socrates was born around 470 BCE in Athens, the son of a stonemason and a midwife, and he grew up during the city's brilliant Golden Age. He served as a citizen-soldier, a hoplite, in the long Peloponnesian War against Sparta, where he was remembered for his toughness and courage. In a culture that prized wealth and public honor, he chose instead a life of poverty and endless conversation, becoming the most famous, and most exasperating, questioner in the history of thought. Socrates left no writings of his own, which is one of the great puzzles of philosophy. Almost everything we know about him comes from others, above all his devoted student Plato, along with the soldier-historian Xenophon and a mocking portrait in the comedy 'Clouds' by Aristophanes. Because these sources disagree, historians speak of the 'Socratic problem,' the difficulty of separating the real Socrates from the character his followers created. The Socrates we know is, in part, a portrait painted by his admirers. His way of teaching, now called the Socratic method, was to ask questions rather than give answers. He would corner a confident expert, a politician, a poet, a general, and by patient questioning expose the holes and contradictions in what the person claimed to know. He insisted he was no teacher and had no wisdom to sell; his only advantage, he said, was that he knew how little he truly understood, an idea often summed up in the paraphrase that he knew that he knew nothing. According to a famous story, the oracle at Delphi declared that no one was wiser than Socrates. Puzzled, since he believed he knew nothing, he set out to test the claim by questioning the city's reputed wise men, and concluded that his wisdom lay precisely in recognizing his own ignorance while others only imagined they were wise. This relentless exposing of powerful people won him devoted students but also dangerous enemies. Socrates lived through Athens' painful defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the brief, brutal rule of a Spartan-backed oligarchy. In this bitter, unstable time, his associations with discredited figures and his habit of questioning everything made him a target. In 399 BCE he was put on trial on two charges: impiety, or failing to honor the city's gods, and corrupting the youth of Athens. Plato's 'Apology', whose title means 'defense,' not an expression of regret, records the speech Socrates gave at his trial. Rather than beg for mercy, he defended his life of questioning and insisted that 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' A jury of Athenian citizens found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Given chances to escape or to propose a milder punishment, he refused to abandon his principles. Socrates died by drinking hemlock, a slow poison, surrounded by friends, a scene Plato describes with great tenderness in the dialogue 'Phaedo.' His calm, principled death turned him into a lasting symbol of the philosopher who would rather die than betray the truth. Through Plato, and Plato's own student Aristotle, the questions Socrates raised about justice, virtue, and the good life became the foundation of Western philosophy, and the Socratic method still shapes how teachers and courtrooms probe for truth today. You can explore his world in the Ancient Greece journey.

Socrates

Further reading