Socrates

Athens (antiquity)

Philosophy before him is still called 'Presocratic'.

💡 Did you know? Socrates was active in 5th-century BC Athens: at the city's peak and the start of its decline.

none

Everything we know comes second-hand: mainly from Plato and Xenophon.

💡 Did you know? The difficulty of separating the 'real' Socrates from Plato's character is called the 'Socratic problem'.

maieutics

Through skilful questioning he helps his interlocutor 'give birth' to insights of their own.

💡 Did you know? „Maieutics“ (midwifery) is Socrates's method of „delivering“ knowledge from his interlocutor through skilful questioning.

I know that I know nothing

Strictly speaking a sharpened paraphrase: what is meant is awareness of one's own ignorance.

💡 Did you know? „I know that I know nothing“: admitting one's own ignorance was, for Socrates, the beginning of all wisdom.

the oracle of Delphi

Socrates read the pronouncement thus: he was wise only because he knew that he did not know.

💡 Did you know? The Oracle of Delphi declared Socrates the wisest: which he took to mean only that he at least knew he knew nothing.

corrupting the youth and impiety

In court he proposed, instead of a punishment, that the city feed him at public expense: like an Olympic champion.

💡 Did you know? The charge was „corrupting the youth“ and „impiety“: in truth probably a political trial.

hemlock

He refused his friends' escape plans: one must not evade the laws of the city one has lived under.

💡 Did you know? Sentenced to death, Socrates calmly drank the cup of poison (hemlock); he could have fled but refused on principle.

Plato

Socrates is the main character in almost all of Plato's dialogues and the chain continues: Plato taught Aristotle.

💡 Did you know? Socrates wrote not a word himself: we know everything through his pupil Plato, who made him the central figure of his dialogues.

stonemason and midwife

His 'midwifery' of questioning alluded to his mother's trade.

💡 Did you know? His father was a stonemason, his mother a midwife; it was to her that Socrates alluded with his „midwifery“ of questioning.

as a hoplite

His toughness was famous: he reportedly marched barefoot over ice and saved comrades' lives.

💡 Did you know? In the Peloponnesian War he saved the life of the later general Alcibiades.

on the agora

He philosophised with anyone (craftsmen, politicians, young men) instead of teaching in a school.

💡 Did you know? Socrates taught in no school but held his conversations in the middle of the Agora, Athens's marketplace.

Xanthippe

Her bad reputation stems mainly from later anecdotes: little is historically certain.

💡 Did you know? 'Xanthippe' became a byword for a nagging wife: probably unfair to the historical woman.

Socrates

Socrates was an Athenian philosopher who founded Western philosophy through relentless questioning and paid for it with his life.

💡 Did you know? He wrote not a single word himself: we know all his thought only through his pupils.