Socratic philosophy

Socrates

Σωκράτης

c. 469 BCE – 399 BCEHistorically documented person

Athenian philosopher (c. 469–399 BCE) who wrote nothing and changed the course of philosophy by making the question of how one should live its central concern. He conversed in the agora, examining those who believed they knew, without charging fees. Accused of impiety and of corrupting the young, he was sentenced to death and drank hemlock. We know him through Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes and Aristotle, whose portraits disagree: the "Socratic problem".

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works: 31works
editions: 104editions
quotes: 9quotes
videos: 13videos
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Busto de Sócrates (Louvre) · Public domain

In their words

«The unexamined life is not worth living.»

Platón, Apología 38a. Griego: ed. Burnet (OCT); inglés: Benjamin Jowett (1892); español: traducción propia. Son palabras que Platón atribuye a Sócrates.

To begin, one work

Apology of Socrates

Read the full text

Their central idea

Elenchus (Socratic refutation): The *elenchus*—"test", "refutation"—is the procedure Plato's early dialogues attribute to Socrates.

See in context

Biography

5 min read

The man who wrote nothing

Socrates left not a single written line. Everything we know about him comes from others: from the dialogues of his pupil Plato, from Xenophon's Socratic works, from the comedy in which Aristophanes mocked him in his lifetime, from the reports Aristotle—born fifteen years after his death—gathered in the Academy, and from the late compilation of Diogenes Laertius in the third century CE. These witnesses do not agree. Aristophanes' Socrates is a charlatan who speculates about the clouds and teaches how to win unjust lawsuits; Xenophon's is a sensible moralist who gives his friends sound advice; Plato's is a thinker of incomparable depth who, in the late dialogues, becomes the mouthpiece for doctrines he probably never held.

This gap between the sources is called the "Socratic problem". Friedrich Schleiermacher formulated it in 1818, asking what Socrates must have been for Plato and Xenophon to portray him as they did. Since then some have trusted Xenophon for his apparent sobriety; others, like Gregory Vlastos, have reconstructed a historical Socrates from Plato's early dialogues; and others, like Olof Gigon or Charles Kahn, have stressed that "Socratic discourses" were a literary genre practised by several disciples, none of whom meant to keep minutes. What follows separates, as far as possible, what the sources share from what each contributes.

Alopece

He was born in Athens around 469 BCE—Diogenes Laertius, following Apollodorus' chronology, places the birth in the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad—in the deme of Alopece, of the tribe Antiochis. His father, Sophroniscus, was a stonemason or sculptor; his mother, Phaenarete, a midwife, a craft Socrates himself would turn into an image of his method in the Theaetetus. He married Xanthippe late and had three sons by her—Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus; Aristotle, quoted by Diogenes, also credits him with a second wife, Myrto, a report scholars consider doubtful.

He grew up in the Athens of Pericles, in the generation that saw the Parthenon rise and tragedy, sophistry and the inquiry into nature flourish. Plato has him converse as a young man with Parmenides and Zeno, probably a literary encounter, and presents him as interested in his youth in Anaxagoras' physics, which he supposedly abandoned because it gave no answer to the question of the good.

Soldier and citizen

He served as a hoplite, which implies some means in his youth. He fought at Potidaea (432–430 BCE), where, according to the account Plato gives Alcibiades in the Symposium, he saved Alcibiades' life and endured the winter barefoot; in the retreat from Delium (424 BCE), where his composure impressed the generals; and at Amphipolis (422 BCE). The Apology recalls these three campaigns as proof that he never deserted the post assigned to him.

He held only one public office, and by lot. In 406 BCE, as a member of the Council during his tribe's prytany, he opposed trying en bloc, against the law, the generals who had won at Arginusae, accused of failing to rescue the shipwrecked. Two years later, under the oligarchy of the Thirty, he and four others were ordered to arrest Leon of Salamis for execution, and he went home. Plato and Xenophon agree on both episodes.

Questioning as a calling

His calling was conversation. He practised it in the agora, in the gymnasia and in his friends' houses, without charging fees—unlike the sophists, with whom many confused him—and in a poverty the Apology calls extreme. His ugliness was famous: snub nose, bulging eyes, the look of a silenus. According to the Apology, his friend Chaerephon asked at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates and the Pythia answered no; Socrates, puzzled, examined politicians, poets and craftsmen, and concluded that his only advantage was not thinking he knew what he did not know. From then on he understood his examination of others as a service to the god.

That examination—the elenchus—consisted in asking for a definition of courage, piety or justice, obtaining the interlocutor's assent to other propositions and showing him that the initial definition was inconsistent with them. Aristotle credits him with two contributions: inductive arguments and the search for universal definitions, applied to moral questions, without separating those universals from things, as Plato would with the Forms. Socrates also spoke of a divine sign, his daimonion, a voice that since childhood had held him back from certain acts and never urged him to do anything.

The Clouds

In 423 BCE Aristophanes staged the Clouds, in which a Socrates suspended in a basket runs a "thinkery" where celestial phenomena are studied, Zeus is replaced by vortices and the unjust argument is taught. The comedy came third, but the caricature survived: in the Apology Socrates counts among his "first accusers" those who spread that image and names the comic poet explicitly. His association with Alcibiades, who betrayed Athens, and with Critias, the most radical of the Thirty, also weighed against him.

The trial

In the spring of 399 BCE Meletus, backed by Anytus and Lycon, accused him of not recognising the city's gods, of introducing new divinities and of corrupting the young; he asked for the death penalty. Since the amnesty of 403 barred prosecution for earlier political offences, the charge was framed in religious terms. Before a jury of some five hundred citizens Socrates defended himself without pleas or tears. He was convicted by a margin of about sixty votes, as can be inferred from Plato's Apology; invited to propose an alternative penalty, he first suggested being maintained at public expense in the Prytaneum and then a fine of thirty minae guaranteed by Plato, Crito, Critobulus and Apollodorus. The jury voted for death.

The execution was postponed for about thirty days because the sacred ship sent to Delos had not returned, and the city could execute no one in its absence. Crito offered him escape, and Socrates refused: in the dialogue that bears Crito's name, the Laws of Athens remind him that he has lived seventy years under their protection and may not answer one injustice with another.

The death

The Phaedo narrates the last day. Plato was not present—"Plato, I believe, was ill", says the narrator—and the dialogue, centred on proofs of the soul's immortality, is a work of art and doctrine rather than a record. Towards evening Socrates bathed, said farewell to his wife and sons, drank the poison—hemlock, by the traditional identification—and walked about until his legs felt heavy. As the cold rose towards his heart he uncovered his face and told Crito that they owed a cock to Asclepius and must not forget to pay it. They were, according to Phaedo, his last words.

What remained

His circle gave rise to rival schools: Plato's Academy, the Cynics who claimed descent from Antisthenes, Aristippus' Cyrenaics, Euclides' Megarians. The Stoics held him up as the model sage, and Epictetus quotes him constantly. In modern times Kierkegaard devoted his dissertation to Socratic irony (1841), Nietzsche made him the symptom of a decadence (1889) and Jacques-Louis David fixed in 1787 the image of his serene death. He remains, for the Western tradition, the figure of the philosopher who preferred death to ceasing to examine life.

Sources: Platón. Platonis Opera, ed. John Burnet, 5 vols. Oxford University Press (Oxford Classical Texts), 1900–1907; tomo I (Eutifrón, Apología, Critón, Fedón) consultado en la edición digital del Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University). · Plato. The Dialogues of Plato, trad. Benjamin Jowett, 3.ª ed., 5 vols. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1892 (Project Gutenberg, n.º 1656 Apology, 1657 Crito, 1658 Phaedo y otros). · Platón. Obras completas, trad. Patricio de Azcárate, 11 vols. Medina y Navarro, Madrid, 1871–1872 (edición digital en Filosofía en español). · Jenofonte. Memorables (Recuerdos de Sócrates), Apología de Sócrates, Banquete y Económico. Texto griego: Xenophontis opera omnia, ed. E. C. Marchant, vol. 2, 2.ª ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1921 (Perseus); trad. inglesa de H. G. Dakyns, The Works of Xenophon, Macmillan, Londres, 1890–1897 (Project Gutenberg). · Aristófanes. Las nubes (Νεφέλαι), representada en 423 a. C.; trad. inglesa de W. J. Hickie, The Comedies of Aristophanes, Bohn's Classical Library, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 2562).

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

469 BCE451 BCE434 BCE416 BCE399 BCE

c. 469 BCEage 0Alopece (Atenas)

Birth

Born in the deme of Alopece, son of the stonemason Sophroniscus and the midwife Phaenarete. Diogenes Laertius (II 44), following Apollodorus, gives the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad (469/468 BCE); Wikidata records 470. Years BCE are expressed as negative numbers.

ProbableDiógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres, libro II, 18–47 (Sócrates), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. española de José Ortiz y Sanz, Madrid, 1792 (Wikisource).

After their death

c. 395 BCEThe "Socratic discourses"
c. 387 BCEFounding of the Academy
1787David's Death of Socrates
1818Schleiermacher poses the "Socratic problem"
1841Kierkegaard on irony

c. 469 BCE · age 0
Birth
Born in the deme of Alopece, son of the stonemason Sophroniscus and the midwife Phaenarete. Diogenes Laertius (II 44), following Apollodorus, gives the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad (469/468 BCE); Wikidata records 470. Years BCE are expressed as negative numbers.
Probable
c. 432 BCE · age 37
The Potidaea campaign
Serves as a hoplite at the siege of Potidaea (432–430 BCE). In the Symposium (219e–220e) Alcibiades says Socrates saved his life and endured the winter barefoot.
Probable
424 BCE · age 45
The retreat from Delium
Takes part in the Athenian defeat at Delium; the Laches (181b) and the Symposium (221a–b) praise his composure during the retreat.
Probable
423 BCE · age 46
Aristophanes' Clouds
Aristophanes stages the Clouds at the City Dionysia, caricaturing Socrates as a teacher of speculative physics and unscrupulous rhetoric. It comes third; the surviving text is a later revision that was never staged.
Documented
422 BCE · age 47
Amphipolis
Last military campaign attributed to him in the Apology (28e).
Probable
406 BCE · age 63
The Arginusae trial
As a member of the Council, during the prytany of the tribe Antiochis, he opposes trying the generals of Arginusae en bloc, against the law (Apology 32b; Xenophon, Hellenica I 7.15).
Documented
404 BCE · age 65
Leon of Salamis
Under the Thirty Tyrants he refuses the order to arrest Leon of Salamis for execution (Apology 32c–d; Xenophon, Memorabilia IV 4.3).
Documented
403 BCE · age 66
Democratic restoration and amnesty
Fall of the Thirty. The amnesty forbids prosecution for earlier political offences, which partly explains the religious framing of the 399 charge.
Documented
399 BCE · age 70
Trial
Meletus, Anytus and Lycon accuse him of impiety and of corrupting the youth. He is convicted by about sixty votes before a jury of some five hundred citizens and sentenced to death.
Documented
399 BCE · age 70
Death
After some thirty days' wait for the return of the Delian ship, he drinks the poison in prison, surrounded by his friends (Phaedo 116a–118a; Xenophon, Memorabilia IV 8.2).
Documented
c. 395 BCE
The "Socratic discourses"
Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines of Sphettus, Antisthenes, Phaedo and others write dialogues with Socrates as protagonist; Aristotle (Poetics 1447b) treats them as a genre of their own. Except for Plato's and Xenophon's, almost all survive only in fragments.
Documented
c. 387 BCE
Founding of the Academy
Plato founds his school in the grove of Academus; the dialogues read there will fix the image of Socrates for posterity.
Probable
1787
David's Death of Socrates
Jacques-Louis David shows at the Salon the painting that fixes the modern image of Socrates' death, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Documented
1818
Schleiermacher poses the "Socratic problem"
In "Über den Werth des Sokrates als Philosophen" Schleiermacher asks how to reconcile Plato's and Xenophon's portraits: the critical question of the historical Socrates is born.
Documented
1841
Kierkegaard on irony
Søren Kierkegaard defends his dissertation On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.
Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Recorded oral teaching · c. 395 BCE

Apology of Socrates

Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους

Socrates' defence speech before the Athenian court in 399 BCE, in three parts: the defence against the "first accusers" and against Meletus; the counter-proposal of a penalty after the verdict; and closing words to the jurors. It contains the account of the Delphic oracle, the image of the gadfly that rouses the city, the statement that he will obey the god rather than the Athenians and the dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living. It is the main source for reconstructing the trial and Socrates' understanding of himself.

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6 editions

Recorded oral teaching · c. 395 BCE

Crito

Κρίτων

In prison, at dawn, his old friend Crito tells Socrates that the ship from Delos is about to arrive and offers him an escape, already arranged and paid for. Socrates examines whether it is just to flee: one must not answer an injustice with another, and the personified Laws of Athens remind him that for seventy years he has accepted living under them. It is the classic text on the obligation to obey the law and one of the first arguments about the compact between citizen and city.

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6 editions

Recorded oral teaching · c. 385 BCE

Phaedo

Φαίδων

Account of Socrates' last day, told by Phaedo of Elis to Echecrates at Phlius. Socrates talks with the Thebans Simmias and Cebes, who had frequented Pythagoreans, about why the philosopher does not fear death, and sets out four arguments for the immortality of the soul and a myth about the fate of souls. The dialogue closes with the death scene: the bath, the farewell to his family, the cup of poison and the last words to Crito about the cock owed to Asclepius (118a).

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6 editions

Later compilation · c. 371 BCE

Memorabilia (Memoirs of Socrates)

Ἀπομνημονεύματα

Four books that begin by refuting one by one the charges of impiety and corruption of the young, and go on to dozens of short conversations: Socrates advises his son Lamprocles to be patient with Xanthippe, talks with the sophist Antiphon about poverty, with Aristippus about self-mastery, with craftsmen and generals about their trades. It is the portrait of a practical and pious teacher and the second great source on Socrates alongside Plato.

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4 editions

Complete works (31)

See all 31 works in the library

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ

VerifiedPlatón, Apología 38a. Griego: ed. Burnet (OCT); inglés: Benjamin Jowett (1892); español: traducción propia. Son palabras que Platón atribuye a Sócrates.

1 / 9

Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (5)

«I know that I know nothing.»
The formula appears in no ancient text about Socrates. It is a later simplification of Apology 21d, where Socrates says something more precise: that he does not think he knows what he does not know. In Plato Socrates claims to know some things (for instance, that doing wrong is bad, Apology 29b).
«Know thyself.»
It is one of the maxims inscribed at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, older than Socrates and ascribed in antiquity to several of the Seven Sages. Socrates quotes and discusses it (Phaedrus 229e, Charmides 164d), but it is not his.
«There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.»
Only Diogenes Laertius (II 31) transmits it, more than six centuries later and without naming a source. It sums up Socratic intellectualism as a slogan, but it is not found in Plato or Xenophon.
«Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.»
Attributed to Socrates online, it comes from Plutarch, On Listening (Moralia 48c), who says the mind is not a vessel to be filled but kindling to be set alight. Plutarch lived five centuries later.
«The "triple filter test": before you tell me something, is it true, is it good, is it useful?»
A moralising anecdote circulating in self-help books and chain emails since the late twentieth century. It has no ancient source.

Last words

Later account by witnesses

«"Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it."»

ὦ Κρίτων, ἔφη, τῷ Ἀσκληπιῷ ὀφείλομεν ἀλεκτρυόνα· ἀλλὰ ἀπόδοτε καὶ μὴ ἀμελήσητε.

Plato, Phaedo 118a. According to the narrator, Phaedo of Elis, he spoke them when the chill of the poison had reached his abdomen: he uncovered his face and said these words, "which were his last". Crito answered that it would be done and asked whether he had anything else to say; Socrates no longer replied. The testimony is literary and second-hand—Plato states in the same dialogue (59b) that he was ill and absent—hence its classification as a witness account transmitted by another. The Greek verb is plural, "we owe": Jowett translates "I owe", Azcárate "debemos un gallo a Esculapio". Asclepius was the god of healing, to whom a cock was offered after recovery. The sentence has been interpreted in many ways: Nietzsche saw in it the confession that life is a disease; Georges Dumézil (1984), thanks for the cure of a false opinion; others, an outstanding vow for Plato's illness or a simple act of piety. Xenophon transmits no last words.

Source: Platón. Platonis Opera, ed. John Burnet, 5 vols. Oxford University Press (Oxford Classical Texts), 1900–1907; tomo I (Eutifrón, Apología, Critón, Fedón) consultado en la edición digital del Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University).

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What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?
A god who entrusts him with a mission and warns him by a sign
A personal GodStated explicitly
Socrates wrote nothing; his relation to the divine is known through Plato and Xenophon, who agree on the essentials. In Plato's Apology he speaks of “the god” of Delphi as someone who has assigned him a post in the city and whom he will obey rather than the Athenians, and he describes a divine sign, a voice that since childhood turns him away from what he should not do. Xenophon, in the Memorabilia, attributes to him an argument from design: eyes, eyelids or affection for offspring show the work of a wise craftsman who loves living beings, and the gods care for humans and see everything. It is a personal dealing with the divine, though Socrates avoids speculating about its nature.
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Who am I? Is there a true self?
What we are is the soul, and caring for it matters above all
A created, immortal soulInferred from their doctrine
In Plato's Apology Socrates sums up his life in an exhortation: not to care for the body or for wealth before the soul, so that it may become as good as possible. The Alcibiades I, of disputed authenticity, draws the conclusion that the human being is his soul, and the Delphic command to know oneself becomes a lifelong task. On immortality, the Socrates of the Apology is cautious and leaves two possibilities open; the arguments of the Phaedo are already Plato's elaboration. Xenophon, for his part, attributes to him the idea that the soul is what in the human shares in the divine. The core attributable to Socrates is that the true self is the soul.
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Why do we suffer?
Nobody does wrong knowingly: evil is ignorance and harms the soul
Ignorance of what we areInferred from their doctrine
Plato's dialogues attribute to Socrates two theses that together answer the question. First: no one errs willingly; whoever does wrong does so because he takes for good what is not, so that evil is a form of ignorance. Second: the greatest harm is not to suffer injustice but to commit it, because it spoils the only thing that matters, the soul; hence he would rather suffer it than commit it. Thus his reproach to the Athenians in the Apology: they care for wealth, fame and honours and not for the soul or for truth. The suffering that truly counts arises from not knowing oneself and confusing the goods of the body with one's own good.
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What happens after death?
Either a dreamless sleep or a journey: in either case, not an evil
Silence or reserveStated explicitly
In Plato's Apology, already condemned, Socrates reasons that fearing death is thinking one knows what one does not know. He proposes two possibilities: either death is being nothing and feeling nothing, like a dreamless sleep, which would be a gain; or it is a migration of the soul to another place, where he could converse with poets and heroes of the past, which would be an immense good. To the good man, he concludes, no evil befalls in life or after death. His last words to the court leave the question open: who goes to the better lot, nobody knows but the god. The proofs of immortality in the Phaedo are already Plato's.
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How is liberation or salvation attained?
Examining oneself and others: an unexamined life is not worth living
Through direct knowledgeStated explicitly
Socrates promises no salvation, but his whole life is a method for making the soul better. In Plato's Apology he says that the greatest good for a man is to converse every day about virtue and to examine himself and others, and that an unexamined life is not worth living. The instrument is refutation: questioning until the interlocutor discovers that he does not know what he thought he knew, the first step to truly seeking it. If virtue is knowledge, as Aristotle attributes to him, knowing oneself — in the Delphic sense — is the way to become good. His own death, accepted without committing injustice, appears in the dialogues as proof of that freedom.
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Is a teacher necessary?
He does not teach: like a midwife, he delivers what the other carries
The teacher is withinStated explicitly
Plato's Socrates rejects the title of teacher: in the Apology he states that he has never been anyone's teacher nor charged for conversation. In the Theaetetus he describes himself as a midwife: barren of wisdom himself, he helps others give birth to what they carried within and to tell whether it is true or false offspring; what they find they learn not from him but from themselves. His own guidance was inner: a divine sign that turned him away from certain actions. The Meno adds the Platonic theory of recollection, by which seeking and learning are remembering. The outer teacher only asks; truth lies in the soul of the seeker.
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Is the world real?
A world arranged by provident gods, though physics does not occupy him
A good and real creationInferred from their doctrine
The sources agree that Socrates turned away from the investigation of nature. Aristotle states that he dealt with moral questions and not with nature as a whole; Xenophon says he did not discuss how the cosmos came about and considered those who did so foolish. In Plato's Apology he denies knowing anything of what lies beneath the earth or in the sky. But when he speaks of the world he does so in terms of providence: in the Memorabilia he argues that the arrangement of the organs and the beauty of the universe reveal a wise craftsman who cares for living beings, and that the gods have ordered the cosmos for the benefit of humans.
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What is love?
He claims to know only love: the desire that improves the beloved
Longing and unionInferred from their doctrine
The man who claimed to know nothing declared himself expert in one thing alone: love. So Plato has him say in the Symposium and the Lysis. In the Symposium Socrates sets out what, he says, Diotima taught him: Eros is the desire to possess the good for ever and to beget in beauty, and it leads by degrees from beautiful bodies to Beauty itself. The Alcibiades of Aeschines of Sphettus, another Socratic, presents his love for the young man as a force that, by divine gift, could make him better without teaching him anything. Xenophon adds conversations on friendship. Socratic love is longing for the good that raises both lover and beloved.
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Are we free, or is everything determined?
The god assigned him a post, and he answers for how he holds it
Destiny and responsibilityInferred from their doctrine
Socrates does not discuss the theoretical problem of freedom, but his life, as Plato and Xenophon tell it, is ordered by a charge. In the Apology he interprets the Delphic oracle as a mission: the god has set him beside the city like a gadfly, and abandoning that post for fear of death would be like deserting in battle. The divine sign turns him away from certain actions and, significantly, did not stop him on the day of the trial. At the same time, responsibility is fully his: in the Crito he chooses not to flee because committing injustice is never permitted. The thesis that nobody errs willingly, however, complicates any reading in terms of free will.
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Why meditate or pray?
Asking the gods for the good, unspecified, and to be beautiful within
Ritual and self-cultivationStated explicitly
The sources show a Socrates pious in the ways of his city. Xenophon relates that he sacrificed at home and at the public altars, consulted divination and asked the gods simply for good things, since they know best what is fitting; modest sacrifices from someone with little please them no less than great ones. In Plato's Phaedrus, at the end of the conversation, he prays to Pan and the gods of the place to grant him to be beautiful within and that what is outside be in friendship with what is within. Plato also relates that at Potidaea he stood absorbed in thought from dawn to the following dawn.
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Can reason know the ultimate?
He knows he does not know: he tests the god's word by reason
Faith and reason help each otherStated explicitly
Plato's Apology relates how Socrates received the reply of the Delphic oracle — no one was wiser than he — and, instead of simply accepting it, set out to examine it by questioning politicians, poets and craftsmen. He concluded that his wisdom lay in not thinking he knew what he did not know, and that human wisdom is worth little or nothing: the truly wise one is the god. Reason, exercised in dialogue, does not reach a final science of the ultimate, but it purges false opinions and guides life; divine signs and dreams complete that limited knowledge. Aristotle credits him with the search for universal definitions and inductive arguments.
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Withdraw from the world or transform it?
True politics is making the citizens' souls better
The revolution is innerStated explicitly
Socrates did not withdraw from Athens: he spent his life in the agora, served as a hoplite and fulfilled his public offices, opposing the majority and the Thirty when justice required it. But, according to Plato's Apology, he abstained from active politics because his divine sign prevented him and because whoever truly fights for justice does not survive long in it. His task was another: to urge each citizen, in private, to care for the soul before wealth. In the Gorgias he claims to be one of the few Athenians practising the true political art, because he seeks his fellow citizens' good and not their pleasure. Changing the city begins with changing souls.
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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Thinks most like

Thinks most unlike

Anecdotes and stories

Testimonyantes del 431 a. C. (incierto)

The Delphic oracle

Chaerephon, Socrates' friend since youth and an impetuous man, went to Delphi and dared to ask the Pythia whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. The priestess answered that no one was. Socrates, who did not think himself wise in anything, wondered what the god meant, since he cannot lie. To find out he visited a politician reputed to be wise and discovered that he thought he knew what he did not; then the poets, who said beautiful things without understanding them; and the craftsmen, who mastered their trades but thought themselves wise in everything else on that account. He concluded that the oracle had used him as an example: wise is the one who, like him, recognises that his wisdom is worth nothing. Since then, he says, he goes about the city examining anyone who seems wise, and in this service to the god he has fallen into poverty and made many enemies.

Origin of the story: Plato, Apology 20e–23b, where Socrates calls Chaerephon's brother as witness, Chaerephon being dead. Xenophon (Apology 14) gives a different version: the oracle supposedly said no one was more free, just or sensible than Socrates. Some scholars doubt the consultation took place; others accept it because it appears in a speech delivered before hundreds of Athenians.

Testimony432–424 a. C.

Potidaea and Delium

At the end of the Symposium, a drunken Alcibiades tells what he saw of Socrates on campaign. At Potidaea, where they shared a tent, he bore hunger better than anyone and walked barefoot on the ice in a terrible winter, while the others wrapped themselves in furs. One day he stood motionless, absorbed in a thought, from dawn until the following dawn, while Ionian soldiers brought out their bedding into the cool to see whether he would stay there all night. In battle, when Alcibiades fell wounded, Socrates would not leave him and saved both the man and his armour; then he let Alcibiades have the prize for valour. In the retreat from Delium, years later, he walked among the fugitives "stalking like a pelican and rolling his eyes", as Aristophanes says, so composed that no one dared attack him.

Origin of the story: Plato, Symposium 219e–221c; the Laches (181b) confirms the conduct at Delium through the general Laches. It is a literary testimony in a character's mouth, but it agrees with the Apology (28e) on the three campaigns. The Aristophanes quotation comes from the Clouds (362).

Documented406–404 a. C.

The Arginusae generals and Leon of Salamis

In 406 BCE the Athenian fleet defeated the Spartans off the Arginusae islands, but a storm prevented the rescue of the shipwrecked. The furious assembly wanted to try the eight generals in a single vote, which the law forbade. Socrates was that day one of the prytaneis presiding over the session and refused to put the motion to the vote, though the orators threatened to indict him and the crowd shouted. The generals were condemned anyway; six were executed. Two years later, under the tyranny of the Thirty, the oligarchs summoned Socrates and four other citizens and ordered them to bring Leon from Salamis to be put to death: they wanted to implicate as many as possible in their crimes. The other four went to fetch him. Socrates went home. "Perhaps I would have been killed for it," he says in the Apology, "had the government not fallen soon afterwards."

Origin of the story: Plato, Apology 32b–e; Xenophon, Hellenica I 7.14–15 and Memorabilia I 1.18 and IV 4.2–3. It is one of the few episodes in Socrates' life attested by two independent authors and by a historian narrating the events apart from Socrates.

Source: Jenofonte. Memorables (Recuerdos de Sócrates), Apología de Sócrates, Banquete y Económico. Texto griego: Xenophontis opera omnia, ed. E. C. Marchant, vol. 2, 2.ª ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1921 (Perseus); trad. inglesa de H. G. Dakyns, The Works of Xenophon, Macmillan, Londres, 1890–1897 (Project Gutenberg).

Disputed423 a. C.

Socrates stands up in the theatre

During the performance of the Clouds, Aelian relates, foreigners in the audience kept asking who this Socrates mocked by the comedy was. Socrates, who was seated in the theatre, rose and remained standing for the whole performance so that they could compare him with the mask imitating him. Aelian adds that he did not mind the mockery: if it was just, he should correct himself; if not, it did not touch him. The scene fits the character his pupils give him, but it comes from an author writing six centuries later who holds the unfounded theory that Anytus and Meletus paid Aristophanes to prepare the trial, which took place twenty-four years later.

Origin of the story: Aelian, Varia Historia II 13 (2nd–3rd century CE). There is no contemporary testimony. Plutarch (On the Education of Children 14) attributes a similar reaction to Socrates when mocked by comedy. The story of a bribe to Aristophanes is incompatible with the chronology.

Source: Eliano, Claudio. Historias curiosas (Varia historia) II 13, s. II–III d. C. Trad. esp. de Juan Manuel Cortés Copete, Gredos, Madrid, 2006.

Unverifiables. V a. C. (tradicional)

Xanthippe and the water

Xanthippe, Socrates' wife, has gone down in history as the model of the shrewish wife. Diogenes Laertius relates that one day, after abusing him, she threw a bucket of water over him, and Socrates remarked: "Did I not say that Xanthippe, after thundering, would end by raining?" To Alcibiades, who told him Xanthippe's temper was unbearable, he replied that he had grown used to it as one grows used to the constant noise of a pulley, and that horsemen prefer spirited horses because whoever masters those easily masters the rest. The portrait contrasts with that of the Phaedo, where Xanthippe, holding their youngest son, weeps on the last morning and bids her husband farewell, and with Xenophon's, where Socrates rebukes his eldest son for failing to respect his mother's care.

Origin of the story: Diogenes Laertius II 36–37 (3rd century CE); the image of the difficult wife is already in Xenophon, Symposium 2.10, where Antisthenes calls her "the most intolerable of women", and Memorabilia II 2. The bucket scene appears only in late sources and belongs to a repertoire of jokes about philosophers; it inspired many Baroque paintings.

Source: Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres, libro II, 18–47 (Sócrates), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. española de José Ortiz y Sanz, Madrid, 1792 (Wikisource).

Testimony401 a. C.

Xenophon asks for advice

In 401 BCE the Boeotian Proxenus invited his friend Xenophon to join Cyrus the Younger's expedition in Asia. Xenophon consulted Socrates, who feared that serving Cyrus, Sparta's ally in the war, might bring him trouble with the city, and advised him to ask the god at Delphi. Xenophon went to Delphi, but instead of asking whether he should go he asked which gods he should sacrifice to so that the journey would go well. On his return Socrates reproached him for not asking the real question; but since he had asked it that way, he said, he must do what the god had indicated. Xenophon left, and when Socrates died he was in Asia; he was probably exiled from Athens in those years.

Origin of the story: Xenophon, Anabasis III 1.4–7, in which the author himself narrates the episode. It is the only surviving autobiographical testimony of a private conversation with Socrates.

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Elenchus (Socratic refutation)elenchos

The *elenchus*—"test", "refutation"—is the procedure Plato's early dialogues attribute to Socrates. It begins with a question of the form "what is X?" (piety, courage, temperance), to which the interlocutor answers with a definition he believes he knows. Socrates gets him to accept, one by one, other apparently obvious claims and then shows that they contradict the initial definition. The interlocutor is left in *aporia*, without a way out, and discovers that he did not know what he thought he knew. Gregory Vlastos gave the modern formulation of the problem in 1983: how can a method that only proves the inconsistency of a set of beliefs lead Socrates to assert confidently moral theses such as that it is worse to do injustice than to suffer it? For some the elenchus is purely negative and purgative; for others Socrates trusts that true beliefs always survive examination. Its aim, in any case, is not to win the argument but to care for the interlocutor's soul.

The method of Plato's "aporetic" dialogues (Euthyphro, Laches, Charmides, Lysis); Aristotle links it to the search for universal definitions.

Source: Vlastos, Gregory. Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cambridge University Press / Cornell University Press, Cambridge e Ithaca, 1991.

Socratic ironyironia-socratica

In Greek, *eironeia* was a reproach: the dissembling of someone who pretends to know less than he does in order to mock others. That is what Socrates' adversaries call him in Plato—Thrasymachus in the Republic (337a), Alcibiades in the Symposium. Socrates praises his interlocutors' wisdom, declares himself ignorant and asks them to teach him, only to expose afterwards the fragility of what they thought they knew. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics IV 7) turns it into a form of mock modesty, the opposite of boastfulness, citing Socrates as the example. Ever since, it has been debated whether the ignorance Socrates proclaims is feigned—a teaching strategy—or sincere, since what he denies having is the complete and certain knowledge only the god possesses. Vlastos proposed the notion of "complex irony", in which what is said is false in one sense and true in another. Kierkegaard made it, in his 1841 dissertation, the existential stance of one who negates without affirming.

A character trait attributed to Socrates by Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle; a central category of later rhetoric and philosophy.

Source: Vlastos, Gregory. Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cambridge University Press / Cornell University Press, Cambridge e Ithaca, 1991.

The daimonion (the divine sign)daimonion

Socrates claimed to have received since childhood a divine "sign" or "voice", *to daimonion*, which warned him when he was about to do something wrong. According to the Apology (31c–d, 40a–c) the voice only held him back and never urged him on; it had kept him out of politics and, significantly, did not oppose his defending himself as he did or going to trial, which he took as a sign that death was not an evil. Xenophon, by contrast, says it also told him what to do and that Socrates advised his friends according to it. The charge of "introducing new divinities" almost certainly referred to this sign. The ancients interpreted it in many ways: Plutarch and Apuleius wrote treatises on Socrates' "daemon", and the Platonic tradition made it a guardian spirit. Modern interpreters debate whether it was a form of moral intuition, a genuine religious experience or a manner of speaking.

The religious element in Socrates' figure, central to the impiety charge of 399 BCE.

No one does wrong willingly (moral intellectualism)nadie-obra-mal-voluntariamente

One of the most characteristic and debated theses of Plato's Socrates: virtue is knowledge, and whoever truly knows what is good does it; therefore no one does wrong knowingly, but out of ignorance of the true good. Everyone desires what they believe good for themselves, and the wrongdoer is mistaken about his own interest, because he harms the most valuable thing he has, his own soul. Other Socratic paradoxes follow: that the virtues form a unity, that virtue can be taught and that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics VII 2) objected that the thesis contradicts the experience of *akrasia*, weakness of will, in which one knows what is best and does the opposite; Plato himself, in the Republic, introduced irrational parts of the soul capable of overcoming reason.

The core of Socratic ethics in the Protagoras, the Gorgias and the Meno.

Source: Aristóteles. Metafísica A 6, 987b1–4, y M 4, 1078b17–32; Poética 1, 1447b11. Trad. inglesa de W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1908; Internet Classics Archive, MIT); trad. española de Patricio de Azcárate, Obras de Aristóteles, vol. 10, Madrid, 1875.

Care of the soulcuidado-del-alma

In the Apology (29d–30b) Socrates sums up his mission as a constant exhortation: not to care for wealth, reputation or the body before the soul, so that it may be as good as possible. The *epimeleia tes psyches* is the centre of his teaching: the soul—what in us thinks, chooses and is just or unjust—is what we really are, and its good is virtue. That is why injustice harms the wrongdoer more than its victim, and why Socrates can say that no evil befalls a good man. Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault, in their late lectures, read in this idea the origin of philosophy as a way of life and of the "technologies of the self" inherited by Stoics, Epicureans and Christians.

The ethical programme of the Apology and the First Alcibiades; the basis of the ancient idea of philosophy as spiritual exercise.

Maieuticsmayeutica

In the Theaetetus (148e–151d) Socrates presents himself as the son of the midwife Phaenarete and a practitioner of the same craft, applied to men's souls: he himself is barren of wisdom, like midwives who can no longer give birth, but he knows how to help others bring forth their ideas and to test whether what is born is true or a phantom. Some of his companions, he adds, made great progress without learning anything from him, finding many fine things within themselves. The image—*maieutike techne*, "the midwife's art"—appears only in this late dialogue and is probably Plato's elaboration, linked to his theory of knowledge as recollection, rather than a description of the historical Socrates. Even so it has become the common name for the Socratic method and the model of a pedagogy that does not transmit content but helps others to think.

An image from the Theaetetus, associated with the Meno and Platonic recollection.

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

2. Socratic Citizenship: Plato's Apology
Lecture· EN· 2008· 46 min
YaleCoursesOfficial channel
3. Socratic Citizenship: Plato's Crito
Lecture· EN· 2008· 47 min
YaleCoursesOfficial channel
Ancient Philosophies as a Way of Life: Socrates
Lecture· EN· 2012· 61 min
StanfordOfficial channel
Bettany Hughes | Socrates and his Athens
Lecture· EN· 2021· 61 min
The Ramsay Centre for Western CivilisationOfficial channel
PBS Broadcast - The Trial of Socrates
Documentary· EN· 2025· 58 min
National Hellenic MuseumOfficial channel
Paul Woodruff, "In Socrates' Footsteps: A Better Model for Virtue Ethics."
Lecture· EN· 2020· 85 min
International Society for Socratic StudiesOfficial channel
Socrates & Plato's Philosophy - Myles Burnyeat & Bryan Magee (1987)
Interview· EN· 1987· 44 min
Philosophy Overdose
Conferencia de Francesc Casadesús: 'Sócrates y sus enemigos'
Lecture· ES· 2022· 63 min
Fundación BBVAOfficial channel
Carlos Fernández Liria "Sócrates y el problema de la democracia"
Lecture· ES· 2021· 55 min
G.I. UCM: Metafísica, Crítica y PolíticaOfficial channel
«Apología de Sócrates» | Notas a Platón (3/27)
Analysis· ES· 2020· 107 min
Ernesto CastroOfficial channel
El juicio a Sócrates: ¿Por qué Atenas mató a su hombre más sabio? - H. Grecia #48
Lecture· ES· 2024· 40 min
Darío Sánchez VendraminiOfficial channel
Portrait de Socrate | Cours méthodiques et populaires de philosophie
Lecture· FR· 2014· 98 min
Bibliothèque nationale de France BnFOfficial channel
Geschichte der Philosophie (2): Von Sokrates zu Platon, Prof. Dr. Torsten Wilholt
Lecture· DE· 2013· 88 min
InstPhilOfficial channel

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

GRC · Minúscula griega · Diálogos compuestos c. 399–347 a. C.; copia de 895
Codex Oxoniensis Clarkianus 39 («Clarke Plato», B)
Surviving witness
Códice de pergamino de 418 folios, copiado por Juan el Calígrafo para Aretas de Patras
Custodian
Bodleian Library, Oxford · MS. E. D. Clarke 39
Digitisation
medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_40…

Manuscripts →

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

Teacher of
Plato
Plato frequented Socrates in his youth, attended the trial (Apology 34a, 38b) and made him the protagonist of almost all his dialogues.
Documented relation
Teacher of
Jenofonte
A pupil in his youth; he wrote the Memorabilia, the Apology, the Symposium and the Oeconomicus, and recounts in the Anabasis how he asked him for advice.
Documented relation
Teacher of
Antístenes
A follower of Socrates present at his death (Phaedo 59b); founder of the tradition that would lead to Cynicism.
Documented relation
Contemporary of
Aristófanes
He caricatured him in the Clouds (423 BCE); Plato seats them together in the Symposium.
Documented relation
Influenced
Aristotle
He never knew him, but in the Metaphysics credits him with induction and universal definition and discusses his moral intellectualism in the Nicomachean Ethics.
Documented relation
Influenced
Diogenes of Sinope
A pupil of Antisthenes according to Diogenes Laertius (VI 21); Plato allegedly called him "a Socrates gone mad" (VI 54).
Documented relation
Influenced
Zeno of Citium
According to Diogenes Laertius (VII 2–3), he became a philosopher after reading the second book of Xenophon's Memorabilia in Athens.
Documented relation
Influenced
Epictetus
The Discourses recorded by Arrian hold up Socrates as the constant model of the philosophical life.
Documented relation
Met
Parmenides
Plato narrates a meeting between a very young Socrates and the aged Parmenides in the dialogue Parmenides; it is almost certainly a literary fiction.
Similarity identified by analysis
Ideas akin to
Pythagoras
The speakers of the Phaedo, Simmias and Cebes, had frequented the Pythagorean Philolaus; the immortality of the soul and the philosophical life as purification bring Plato's Socrates close to the Pythagorean tradition.
Similarity identified by analysis
Ideas akin to
Confucius
Oral teachers known through their disciples, centred on virtue and self-examination; Karl Jaspers grouped them among the "paradigmatic individuals".
Similarity identified by analysis
Ideas akin to
Jesus of Nazareth
Neither wrote anything, both were executed by the authority of their city and their figure reaches us through disciples who disagree; the comparison has been a commonplace since the Christian apologists.
Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

Wikidata, entidad Q913 «Socrates» (276 enlaces entre wikis; P31=Q5). Registra nacimiento en 470 a. C. (precisión: año) y muerte en 399 a. C. (15 de febrero o mayo, fechas sin base antigua); lugar de nacimiento Alopece y Atenas.
Platón. Platonis Opera, ed. John Burnet, 5 vols. Oxford University Press (Oxford Classical Texts), 1900–1907; tomo I (Eutifrón, Apología, Critón, Fedón) consultado en la edición digital del Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University).
Plato. The Dialogues of Plato, trad. Benjamin Jowett, 3.ª ed., 5 vols. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1892 (Project Gutenberg, n.º 1656 Apology, 1657 Crito, 1658 Phaedo y otros).
Platón. Obras completas, trad. Patricio de Azcárate, 11 vols. Medina y Navarro, Madrid, 1871–1872 (edición digital en Filosofía en español).
Jenofonte. Memorables (Recuerdos de Sócrates), Apología de Sócrates, Banquete y Económico. Texto griego: Xenophontis opera omnia, ed. E. C. Marchant, vol. 2, 2.ª ed., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1921 (Perseus); trad. inglesa de H. G. Dakyns, The Works of Xenophon, Macmillan, Londres, 1890–1897 (Project Gutenberg).
Aristófanes. Las nubes (Νεφέλαι), representada en 423 a. C.; trad. inglesa de W. J. Hickie, The Comedies of Aristophanes, Bohn's Classical Library, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 2562).
Aristóteles. Metafísica A 6, 987b1–4, y M 4, 1078b17–32; Poética 1, 1447b11. Trad. inglesa de W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1908; Internet Classics Archive, MIT); trad. española de Patricio de Azcárate, Obras de Aristóteles, vol. 10, Madrid, 1875.
Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres, libro II, 18–47 (Sócrates), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, Londres, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342); trad. española de José Ortiz y Sanz, Madrid, 1792 (Wikisource).
Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. III: The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, parte 2: Socrates. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969 (publicado aparte como Socrates, 1971; trad. esp. Historia de la filosofía griega, vol. III, Gredos).
Vlastos, Gregory. Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cambridge University Press / Cornell University Press, Cambridge e Ithaca, 1991.
Nails, Debra y Monoson, S. Sara. «Socrates». The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta; primera publicación 2005, revisión sustancial del 26 de mayo de 2022.
Kahn, Charles H. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
Brickhouse, Thomas C. y Smith, Nicholas D. (eds.). The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies. Oxford University Press, Nueva York, 2002.
Waterfield, Robin. Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths. Faber and Faber / W. W. Norton, Londres y Nueva York, 2009.
«Socrates», Wikipedia en inglés, y «Sócrates», Wikipedia en español (consultadas para contrastar datos y bibliografía; texto propio).
Giannantoni, Gabriele (ed.). Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae, 4 vols. Bibliopolis, Nápoles, 1990 (fragmentos de Esquines de Esfeto, Antístenes y demás socráticos).
Eliano, Claudio. Historias curiosas (Varia historia) II 13, s. II–III d. C. Trad. esp. de Juan Manuel Cortés Copete, Gredos, Madrid, 2006.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jacques-Louis David, «The Death of Socrates» (1787), n.º de inventario 31.45.
Bodleian Libraries, Universidad de Oxford. MS. E. D. Clarke 39 («Clarke Plato»), códice de las tetralogías I–VI de Platón copiado en 895 por Juan el Calígrafo para Aretas. A Catalogue of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries.
Open Library (Internet Archive): ediciones de Platón, Jenofonte, Aristófanes y Diógenes Laercio verificadas por ISBN.

Rights holder: Textos antiguos en dominio público; cada traducción y edición crítica pertenece a su traductor o editorial

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

Fecha de nacimiento: se adopta 469 a. C. (Apolodoro en Diógenes Laercio II 44; Nails y Monoson); Wikidata da 470. Las fechas de muerte de Wikidata (15 de febrero o 1 de mayo de 399) no tienen base antigua: solo se sabe que fue en primavera, unos treinta días después del juicio.
Ediciones españolas con ISBN verificado de Gorgias, Menón, Eutidemo, Teeteto, Parménides y Alcibíades I (Gredos, Diálogos II y V; Alianza): no localizadas en Open Library en esta sesión.
«Las nubes» en español: solo se ha verificado la edición de Ediciones Clásicas (1999) sin traductor identificado; falta la de Gredos (Comedias I) con ISBN y contenido comprobados.
Traducción española de dominio público de las Memorables y el Banquete de Jenofonte (p. ej., Diego Gracián, s. XVI): no localizada en línea con URL estable.
Programas de afiliación: ninguno verificado (Gredos, Alianza, Penguin, Hackett). Lista vacía.
Año de los vídeos: es el de la grabación cuando la descripción lo indica y, si no, el de publicación en YouTube.

Researched on 2026-10-25

Biography

The man who wrote nothing

Alopece

Soldier and citizen

Questioning as a calling

The Clouds

The trial

The death

What remained

A life, year by year

Birth

Essential works

Apology of Socrates

Crito

Phaedo

Memorabilia (Memoirs of Socrates)

Complete works (31)

What their work answers

Affinities and tensions

Thinks most like

Thinks most unlike

Anecdotes and stories

The Delphic oracle

Potidaea and Delium

The Arginusae generals and Leon of Salamis

Socrates stands up in the theatre

Xanthippe and the water

Xenophon asks for advice

Teachings

Videos

Gallery

Manuscripts

Codex Oxoniensis Clarkianus 39 («Clarke Plato», B)

Connections

Sources