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Philosophie socratique

Socrates

Σωκράτης

v. 469 av. J.-C. – 399 av. J.-C.Personne historiquement documentée

Philosophe athénien (v. 469-399 av. J.-C.) qui n'écrivit rien et changea le cours de la philosophie en faisant de la question de savoir comment il faut vivre son objet central. Il conversait sur l'agora, examinant ceux qui croyaient savoir, sans se faire payer. Accusé d'impiété et de corrompre la jeunesse, il fut condamné à mort et but la ciguë. Nous le connaissons par Platon, Xénophon, Aristophane et Aristote, dont les portraits divergent : c'est le « problème socratique ».

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œuvres
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Busto de Sócrates (Louvre)

Busto de Sócrates (Louvre) · Public domain

Dans ses propres mots

«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.

Apology of Socrates — Socrates

Son idée centrale

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

Le voir en contexte

Biographie

6 min de lecture

Traduction assistée à partir de l'original espagnol, en attente de relecture par un traducteur natif.

L'homme qui n'écrivit rien

Socrate n'a pas laissé une seule ligne écrite. Tout ce que nous savons de lui nous vient d'autres que lui : des dialogues de son disciple Platon, des écrits socratiques de Xénophon, de la comédie d'Aristophane qui le tourna en ridicule de son vivant, des informations qu'Aristote — né quinze ans après sa mort — recueillit à l'Académie, et de la compilation tardive de Diogène Laërce, au IIIe siècle de notre ère. Ces témoignages ne concordent pas. Le Socrate d'Aristophane est un charlatan qui spécule sur les nuées et enseigne à gagner des procès injustes ; celui de Xénophon, un moraliste plein de bon sens qui prodigue de sages conseils à ses amis ; celui de Platon, un penseur d'une profondeur sans égale qui, dans les derniers dialogues, devient le porte-parole de doctrines qu'il n'a sans doute jamais soutenues.

Cet écart entre les sources porte un nom : le « problème socratique ». Friedrich Schleiermacher le formula en 1818 en se demandant ce que Socrate avait pu être pour que Platon et Xénophon le peignent comme ils l'ont peint. Depuis, les uns se sont fiés à Xénophon pour son apparente sobriété ; d'autres, comme Gregory Vlastos, ont reconstruit un Socrate historique à partir des premiers dialogues de Platon ; d'autres encore, comme Olof Gigon ou Charles Kahn, ont souligné que les « discours socratiques » formaient un genre littéraire pratiqué par plusieurs disciples, dont aucun ne prétendait dresser un procès-verbal. Ce qui suit distingue, autant que possible, ce que les sources ont en commun de ce que chacune apporte en propre.

Alopèce

Il naquit à Athènes vers 469 av. J.-C. — Diogène Laërce, suivant la chronologie d'Apollodore, place sa naissance la quatrième année de la 77e olympiade —, dans le dème d'Alopèce, de la tribu Antiochide. Son père, Sophronisque, était tailleur de pierre ou sculpteur ; sa mère, Phénarète, sage-femme, métier dont Socrate lui-même ferait, dans le Théétète, l'image de sa méthode. Il épousa sur le tard Xanthippe, dont il eut trois fils — Lamproclès, Sophronisque et Ménexène ; Aristote, cité par Diogène, lui prête aussi une seconde épouse, Myrto, information que la critique tient pour douteuse.

Il grandit dans l'Athènes de Périclès, au sein de la génération qui vit s'élever le Parthénon et s'épanouir la tragédie, la sophistique et l'enquête sur la nature. Platon le fait converser dans sa jeunesse avec Parménide et Zénon, rencontre sans doute littéraire, et le montre attiré, jeune homme, par la physique d'Anaxagore, à laquelle il aurait renoncé faute d'y trouver une réponse à la question du bien.

Le soldat et le citoyen

Il servit comme hoplite, ce qui suppose une certaine aisance dans sa jeunesse. Il combattit à Potidée (432-430 av. J.-C.), où, selon le récit que Platon place dans la bouche d'Alcibiade dans le Banquet, il lui sauva la vie et endura l'hiver pieds nus ; lors de la retraite de Délion (424 av. J.-C.), où son sang-froid impressionna les stratèges ; et à Amphipolis (422 av. J.-C.). L'Apologie rappelle ces trois campagnes comme la preuve qu'il n'abandonna jamais le poste qui lui avait été assigné.

Il n'exerça qu'une seule charge publique, et par tirage au sort. En 406 av. J.-C., membre du Conseil pendant la prytanie de sa tribu, il s'opposa à ce que l'on jugeât en bloc, contre la loi, les stratèges vainqueurs aux Arginuses, accusés de ne pas avoir recueilli les naufragés. Deux ans plus tard, sous l'oligarchie des Trente, il reçut avec quatre autres l'ordre d'arrêter Léon de Salamine pour qu'on l'exécute, et rentra chez lui. Platon et Xénophon s'accordent sur ces deux épisodes.

L'interrogation pour métier

Son métier fut de converser. Il le faisait sur l'agora, dans les gymnases et chez ses amis, sans se faire payer — à la différence des sophistes, avec qui beaucoup le confondaient — et dans une pauvreté que l'Apologie dit extrême. Sa laideur était célèbre : nez camus, yeux à fleur de tête, air de silène. Selon l'Apologie, son ami Chéréphon demanda à Delphes s'il existait un homme plus sage que lui, et la Pythie répondit que non ; Socrate, déconcerté, examina hommes politiques, poètes et artisans, et conclut que son seul avantage tenait à ne pas croire savoir ce qu'il ne savait pas. Dès lors, il comprit son examen d'autrui comme un service rendu au dieu.

Cet examen — l'elenchos — consistait à demander une définition du courage, de la piété ou de la justice, à obtenir l'assentiment de l'interlocuteur à d'autres propositions et à lui montrer que la définition initiale était incompatible avec elles. Aristote lui attribue deux apports : les raisonnements inductifs et la recherche de définitions universelles, appliqués aux questions morales, sans séparer ces universels des choses, comme le ferait Platon avec les Idées. Socrate parlait aussi d'un signe divin, son daimonion, une voix qui depuis l'enfance le détournait de certains actes et ne le poussait jamais à rien faire.

Les Nuées

En 423 av. J.-C., Aristophane fit jouer Les Nuées, où un Socrate suspendu dans un panier dirige un « pensoir » dans lequel on étudie les phénomènes célestes, on remplace Zeus par les tourbillons et l'on enseigne le raisonnement injuste. La comédie ne fut classée que troisième, mais la caricature survécut : dans l'Apologie, Socrate range parmi ses « premiers accusateurs » ceux qui ont répandu cette image et nomme expressément le poète comique. Ses liens avec Alcibiade, qui trahit Athènes, et avec Critias, le plus radical des Trente, pesèrent également contre lui.

Le procès

Au printemps de 399 av. J.-C., Mélétos, soutenu par Anytos et Lycon, l'accusa de ne pas reconnaître les dieux de la cité, d'introduire des divinités nouvelles et de corrompre la jeunesse ; il requit la peine de mort. Comme l'amnistie de 403 interdisait de poursuivre les délits politiques antérieurs, l'accusation fut formulée en termes religieux. Devant un jury d'environ cinq cents citoyens, Socrate se défendit sans supplications ni larmes. Il fut condamné à une soixantaine de voix près, comme on le déduit de l'Apologie de Platon ; invité à proposer une autre peine, il suggéra d'abord d'être nourri aux frais de l'État au Prytanée, puis une amende de trente mines garantie par Platon, Criton, Critobule et Apollodore. Le jury vota la mort.

L'exécution fut différée d'une trentaine de jours, car le navire sacré envoyé à Délos n'était pas revenu et la cité ne pouvait mettre personne à mort en son absence. Criton lui proposa de s'évader, et Socrate refusa : dans le dialogue qui porte le nom de son ami, les Lois d'Athènes lui rappellent qu'il a vécu soixante-dix ans sous leur protection et qu'il ne saurait répondre à une injustice par une autre.

La mort

Le Phédon raconte le dernier jour. Platon n'était pas présent — « Platon, je crois, était malade », dit le narrateur —, et le dialogue, centré sur les preuves de l'immortalité de l'âme, est une œuvre d'art et de doctrine plus qu'un procès-verbal. À la tombée du jour, Socrate se lava, fit ses adieux à sa femme et à ses enfants, but le poison — la ciguë, selon l'identification traditionnelle — et marcha jusqu'à sentir ses jambes s'alourdir. Comme le froid lui montait vers le cœur, il se découvrit le visage et dit à Criton qu'ils devaient un coq à Asclépios et qu'il ne fallait pas oublier de s'en acquitter. Ce furent, selon Phédon, ses dernières paroles.

Ce qui demeura

De son cercle naquirent des écoles rivales : l'Académie de Platon, les cyniques qui se réclamaient d'Antisthène, les cyrénaïques d'Aristippe, les mégariques d'Euclide. Les stoïciens le tinrent pour le modèle du sage, et Épictète le cite sans cesse. À l'époque moderne, Kierkegaard consacra sa thèse à l'ironie socratique (1841), Nietzsche fit de lui le symptôme d'une décadence (1889) et Jacques-Louis David fixa en 1787 l'image de sa mort sereine. Il demeure, pour la tradition occidentale, la figure du philosophe qui préféra mourir plutôt que de cesser d'examiner la vie.

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).

Chronologie

La vie, année après année

Chaque point est un événement documenté. Cliquez pour le lire, avec sa source et son degré de certitude.

  1. v. 469 av. J.-C. · 0 ans

    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

  2. v. 432 av. J.-C. · 37 ans

    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

  3. 424 av. J.-C. · 45 ans

    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

  4. 423 av. J.-C. · 46 ans

    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.

    Documenté

  5. 422 av. J.-C. · 47 ans

    Amphipolis

    Last military campaign attributed to him in the Apology (28e).

    Probable

  6. 406 av. J.-C. · 63 ans

    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).

    Documenté

  7. 404 av. J.-C. · 65 ans

    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).

    Documenté

  8. 403 av. J.-C. · 66 ans

    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.

    Documenté

  9. 399 av. J.-C. · 70 ans

    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.

    Documenté

  10. 399 av. J.-C. · 70 ans

    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).

    Documenté

  11. v. 395 av. J.-C.

    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.

    Documenté

  12. v. 387 av. J.-C.

    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

  13. 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.

    Documenté

  14. 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.

    Documenté

  15. 1841

    Kierkegaard on irony

    Søren Kierkegaard defends his dissertation On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.

    Documenté

Œuvres

Œuvres essentielles

Les œuvres sans lesquelles on ne comprend pas son héritage.

Apology of Socrates — Socrates

Enseignement oral recueilli · v. 395 av. J.-C.

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 éditions

Crito — Socrates

Enseignement oral recueilli · v. 395 av. J.-C.

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 éditions

Phaedo — Socrates

Enseignement oral recueilli · v. 385 av. J.-C.

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 éditions

Memorabilia (Memoirs of Socrates) — Socrates

Compilation postérieure · v. 371 av. J.-C.

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 éditions

Toute son œuvre (31)

Voir ses 31 œuvres dans la bibliothèque

Citations

Citations localisées dans une œuvre précise. Chacune porte sa provenance et son degré de fiabilité.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ

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

1 / 9
Citations apocryphes ou d'attribution contestée (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.

Dernières paroles

Récit postérieur de témoins

«"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).

Interroger

Ce que répond son œuvre

Douze grandes questions de l'humanité et ce que ses textes permettent d'y répondre, références à l'appui. Nous ne lui prêtons jamais de paroles.

  • Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

    A god who entrusts him with a mission and warns him by a sign

    Un Dieu personnelIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

    What we are is the soul, and caring for it matters above all

    Une âme créée et immortelleCela se déduit de sa 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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  • Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

    Nobody does wrong knowingly: evil is ignorance and harms the soul

    L'ignorance de ce que nous sommesCela se déduit de sa 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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  • Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

    Either a dreamless sleep or a journey: in either case, not an evil

    Silence ou réserveIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

    Examining oneself and others: an unexamined life is not worth living

    Par la connaissance directeIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Faut-il un maître ?

    He does not teach: like a midwife, he delivers what the other carries

    Le maître est à l'intérieurIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Le monde est-il réel ?

    A world arranged by provident gods, though physics does not occupy him

    Une création bonne et réelleCela se déduit de sa 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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  • Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

    He claims to know only love: the desire that improves the beloved

    Le désir ardent et l'unionCela se déduit de sa 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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  • Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

    The god assigned him a post, and he answers for how he holds it

    Le destin et la responsabilitéCela se déduit de sa 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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  • Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

    Asking the gods for the good, unspecified, and to be beautiful within

    Le rite et la culture de soiIl le dit expressément

    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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  • La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

    He knows he does not know: he tests the god's word by reason

    La foi et la raison s'entraidentIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

    True politics is making the citizens' souls better

    La révolution est intérieureIl le dit expressément

    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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Affinités et tensions

Affinités et tensions

Calculées question par question à partir de ses positions. La raison de chaque accord ou de chaque désaccord s'affiche d'un clic.

Anecdotes et récits

Anecdotes et récits

Témoignageantes 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.

Origine du récit: 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.

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).

Témoignage432–424 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.

Origine du récit: 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).

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).

Documenté406–404 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."

Origine du récit: 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).

Contesté423 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.

Origine du récit: 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.

Invérifiables. 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.

Origine du récit: 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).

Témoignage401 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.

Origine du récit: 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.

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).

Enseignements

Enseignements

Les notions qui structurent sa pensée, expliquées dans leur contexte.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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).

Vidéos

Vidéos

Enregistrements, entretiens et documentaires. Les vidéos sont lues depuis YouTube ; elles ne sont pas hébergées ici.

  • 2. Socratic Citizenship: Plato's Apology

    Conférence· EN· 2008· 46 min

    YaleCoursesChaîne officielle

  • 3. Socratic Citizenship: Plato's Crito

    Conférence· EN· 2008· 47 min

    YaleCoursesChaîne officielle

  • Ancient Philosophies as a Way of Life: Socrates

    Conférence· EN· 2012· 61 min

    StanfordChaîne officielle

  • Bettany Hughes | Socrates and his Athens

    Conférence· EN· 2021· 61 min

    The Ramsay Centre for Western CivilisationChaîne officielle

  • PBS Broadcast - The Trial of Socrates

    Documentaire· EN· 2025· 58 min

    National Hellenic MuseumChaîne officielle

  • Paul Woodruff, "In Socrates' Footsteps: A Better Model for Virtue Ethics."

    Conférence· EN· 2020· 85 min

    International Society for Socratic StudiesChaîne officielle

  • Socrates & Plato's Philosophy - Myles Burnyeat & Bryan Magee (1987)

    Entretien· EN· 1987· 44 min

    Philosophy Overdose

  • Conferencia de Francesc Casadesús: 'Sócrates y sus enemigos'

    Conférence· ES· 2022· 63 min

    Fundación BBVAChaîne officielle

  • Carlos Fernández Liria "Sócrates y el problema de la democracia"

    Conférence· ES· 2021· 55 min

    G.I. UCM: Metafísica, Crítica y PolíticaChaîne officielle

  • «Apología de Sócrates» | Notas a Platón (3/27)

    Analyse· ES· 2020· 107 min

    Ernesto CastroChaîne officielle

  • El juicio a Sócrates: ¿Por qué Atenas mató a su hombre más sabio? - H. Grecia #48

    Conférence· ES· 2024· 40 min

    Darío Sánchez VendraminiChaîne officielle

  • Portrait de Socrate | Cours méthodiques et populaires de philosophie

    Conférence· FR· 2014· 98 min

    Bibliothèque nationale de France BnFChaîne officielle

  • Geschichte der Philosophie (2): Von Sokrates zu Platon, Prof. Dr. Torsten Wilholt

    Conférence· DE· 2013· 88 min

    InstPhilChaîne officielle

Galerie

Galerie

Images dont la licence a été vérifiée. Chacune conserve son auteur et son attribution.

Manuscrits

Manuscrits

Témoins manuscrits et textes anciens, avec leur dépositaire et leurs conditions de consultation.

  • GRC · Minúscula griega · Diálogos compuestos c. 399–347 a. C.; copia de 895

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

    Témoin conservé
    Códice de pergamino de 418 folios, copiado por Juan el Calígrafo para Aretas de Patras
    Dépositaire
    Bodleian Library, Oxford · MS. E. D. Clarke 39
    Numérisation
    medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_40…
Manuscrits →

Relations

Relations

Influences, filiations et affinités. On distingue la relation documentée de la similitude identifiée par analyse.

  • Maître de

    Plato

    Plato frequented Socrates in his youth, attended the trial (Apology 34a, 38b) and made him the protagonist of almost all his dialogues.

    Relation documentée

  • Maître de

    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.

    Relation documentée

  • Maître de

    Antístenes

    A follower of Socrates present at his death (Phaedo 59b); founder of the tradition that would lead to Cynicism.

    Relation documentée

  • Contemporain de

    Aristófanes

    He caricatured him in the Clouds (423 BCE); Plato seats them together in the Symposium.

    Relation documentée

  • A influencé

    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.

    Relation documentée

  • A influencé

    Diogenes of Sinope

    A pupil of Antisthenes according to Diogenes Laertius (VI 21); Plato allegedly called him "a Socrates gone mad" (VI 54).

    Relation documentée

  • A influencé

    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.

    Relation documentée

  • A influencé

    Epictetus

    The Discourses recorded by Arrian hold up Socrates as the constant model of the philosophical life.

    Relation documentée

  • A rencontré

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Idées proches de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Idées proches de

    Confucius

    Oral teachers known through their disciples, centred on virtue and self-examination; Karl Jaspers grouped them among the "paradigmatic individuals".

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Idées proches de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

Lié depuis d'autres fiches

Sources

Sources

Bibliographie et catalogues consultés pour cette fiche.

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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).
  4. Platón. Obras completas, trad. Patricio de Azcárate, 11 vols. Medina y Navarro, Madrid, 1871–1872 (edición digital en Filosofía en español).
  5. 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).
  6. 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).
  7. 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.
  8. 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).
  9. 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).
  10. Vlastos, Gregory. Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cambridge University Press / Cornell University Press, Cambridge e Ithaca, 1991.
  11. 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.
  12. Kahn, Charles H. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
  13. Brickhouse, Thomas C. y Smith, Nicholas D. (eds.). The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies. Oxford University Press, Nueva York, 2002.
  14. Waterfield, Robin. Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths. Faber and Faber / W. W. Norton, Londres y Nueva York, 2009.
  15. «Socrates», Wikipedia en inglés, y «Sócrates», Wikipedia en español (consultadas para contrastar datos y bibliografía; texto propio).
  16. Giannantoni, Gabriele (ed.). Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae, 4 vols. Bibliopolis, Nápoles, 1990 (fragmentos de Esquines de Esfeto, Antístenes y demás socráticos).
  17. Eliano, Claudio. Historias curiosas (Varia historia) II 13, s. II–III d. C. Trad. esp. de Juan Manuel Cortés Copete, Gredos, Madrid, 2006.
  18. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jacques-Louis David, «The Death of Socrates» (1787), n.º de inventario 31.45.
  19. 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.
  20. Open Library (Internet Archive): ediciones de Platón, Jenofonte, Aristófanes y Diógenes Laercio verificadas por ISBN.
Ayant droit
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En attente de confirmation

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  • 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.

Recherche effectuée le 2026-10-25