Philosophy
c. 470 to 399 BC, Athens
The father of Western philosophy, who taught by questioning and died for it.
Start learning Socrates →Socrates’s revolutionary way of philosophizing - not by lecturing but by relentless questioning, exposing the contradictions in what people only thought they knew.
Socratic wisdom - the paradoxical insight that the beginning of true understanding is the honest recognition of one’s own ignorance, and that this is the only wisdom available to human beings.
Socrates’s conviction that the unexamined life is not worth living - that the care of the soul, through relentless self-examination, is the most important task of a human being.
Socrates’s startling doctrine that virtue is a kind of knowledge, that no one does wrong willingly, and that all wrongdoing springs ultimately from ignorance.
Socrates’s trial, condemnation, and death - his refusal to abandon philosophy or flee unjust punishment, and his founding example of dying for one’s principles and obeying conscience over the state.
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