Socrates

The foundational figure of Western philosophy never wrote a single book. Our entire understanding of him comes from second-hand accounts—primarily his students Plato and Xenophon, and the playwright Aristophanes. This creates the "Socratic problem": these sources offer wildly different versions of the man. Xenophon portrays a practical, somewhat smug moralist; Plato uses Socrates as a brilliant, multifaceted mouthpiece for his own evolving metaphysics; and Aristophanes presents a satirical "Cloud"-dwelling atheist.

Because these authors had their own agendas, it is nearly impossible to tell where the "historical" Socrates ends and the literary character begins. Aristotle, who arrived later, attempted to parse the truth by analyzing these dialogues as a specific genre (logos sokratikos), yet even he couldn't fully resolve the inconsistencies. We are left with a ghost whose influence is certain, but whose exact words are lost.

Socrates didn't lecture; he interrogated. His signature approach, the elenchus or Socratic method, involved asking short, pointed questions to strip away an opponent's certainties. He focused on "the virtues"—asking people to define courage, justice, or piety—only to lead them into a state of aporia, or an intellectual dead-end where they realized they didn't know what they thought they knew.

Paradoxically, Socrates claimed his only true knowledge was the awareness of his own ignorance. By professing to know nothing, he positioned himself as the ultimate student, forcing his interlocutors to justify their own lives and beliefs. This shift moved philosophy away from abstract questions about the physical universe and toward the human soul and ethical conduct.

Socrates was a jarring figure in a society that prized physical beauty and material success. Descriptions highlight his bulging eyes, flat nose, and large belly. He lived in intentional poverty, walking barefoot and wearing the same ragged coat year-round. Despite being born to relatively affluent parents and serving with distinction in the Peloponnesian War, he largely abandoned the pursuit of wealth and hygiene to focus on "educating the souls" of the Athenian youth.

His self-control (enkrateia) was legendary. While he wasn't a total hermit—he enjoyed wine and social gatherings—he was famously resistant to physical temptation and the comforts of the body. This radical lifestyle, combined with his "inner voice" (daimonion) that warned him against certain actions, made him an enigmatic and often polarizing "gadfly" in the eyes of his fellow citizens.

In 399 BC, Socrates was charged with impiety and corrupting the youth, but the trial's subtext was deeply political. Athens had recently been crushed by Sparta and ruled by a brutal pro-Spartan junta known as the "Thirty Tyrants." Several of Socrates' former associates were linked to this regime. When democracy was restored, the city was looking for a scapegoat to explain its decline and to purge "dangerous" intellectual influences.

Though he could have likely escaped execution by proposing a reasonable fine or fleeing the city, Socrates chose to be defiant. He suggested the state should actually pay for his meals as a reward for his service. When sentenced to death by hemlock, he refused his friends' offers to help him escape, arguing that a citizen must obey the laws of the state even when they are applied unjustly. His final words—reminding a friend to pay a debt of a rooster to the god of healing—suggest he viewed death as a cure for the "sickness" of life.