Socrates

phil:thinker:socrates

Socrates (c.470–399 BCE) — Athenian founder of Western moral philosophy. He claimed to know nothing, and examined others by relentless questioning (the Socratic method / elenchus). 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' He left no writings; we know him through Plato and Xenophon. Tried and condemned in Athens, he drank hemlock rather than flee.