Antiquity History

Article · Ancient Greece

Who Was Socrates? Life, Teachings, and Death

Socrates of Athens (470–399 BCE) is the central figure of Western philosophy. He wrote nothing himself, but his conversations — recorded by his students Plato and Xenophon — set the terms for every major philosophical debate of the next two thousand years. He invented (or perfected) the method of questioning that still bears his name, the Socratic method. He spent most of his adult life in the streets and public buildings of Athens, asking awkward questions of politicians, poets, and craftsmen, and he was eventually tried and executed by the Athenian democracy on a charge of impiety. His death, as recorded in Plato’s dialogues, became the founding myth of Western philosophy: the martyrdom of the man who would not stop asking questions.

This page is a concise introduction to Socrates: his life, his method, his trial, and his death. It links back to the Greek Philosophy cluster, the Plato’s Theory of Forms page, and the Ancient Athens cluster.

The Life of Socrates

Socrates was born in 470 or 469 BCE in Athens, the son of Sophroniscus, a stonemason, and Phaenarete, a midwife. He was a citizen of Athens, married to Xanthippe, and the father of three sons. He was poor by Athenian standards, and he served as a hoplite in the Athenian army during the Peloponnesian War, fighting at the battles of Potidaea (432 BCE), Amphipolis (422 BCE), and Delium (424 BCE), where he distinguished himself by saving the life of the young general Alcibiades. He was famous for his physical endurance: in the retreat from Delium, he walked calmly while other soldiers fled, and he once stood still for an entire day and night, lost in thought, while his fellow soldiers searched for him.

Socrates was famously ugly — short, snub-nosed, pop-eyed, and pot-bellied. He neglected his personal appearance, went barefoot, and wore the same cloak year-round. He claimed to be in love with wisdom but ignorant of almost everything else, and he was famous for his daemonion — a kind of inner voice that warned him when he was about to do something wrong. He was also famous for his sharp tongue, his refusal to take money for teaching, and his habit of asking questions of anyone who would talk to him.

The Socratic Method

Socrates’ method of inquiry — the Socratic method — is one of the great inventions of Western thought. The method is simple: the interlocutor makes a claim (for example, “justice is doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies”), Socrates asks a question that exposes a contradiction, the interlocutor reformulates the claim, and the dialogue continues until either the interlocutor admits ignorance or the discussion reaches a more refined conclusion.

The goal of the method is not to win the argument, but to expose the interlocutor’s ignorance and to help him or her reach a clearer understanding of the matter under discussion. The method is closely related to the practice of elenchus (refutation), and it has been used in philosophy, in law, in education, and in modern dialogue-based therapies.

The most famous example of the Socratic method in action is Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates questions a young man who is prosecuting his own father for murder. By the end of the dialogue, neither Socrates nor Euthyphro has any idea what piety is, but the interlocutor has been led to recognize his own ignorance.

The Trial of Socrates (399 BCE)

In 399 BCE, Socrates was put on trial in Athens. The charges, as recorded by Plato, were asebeia (impiety) and corrupting the youth. The specific accusations were that Socrates did not believe in the gods of the city, that he introduced new gods, and that he taught his young followers to despise the democratic institutions of Athens.

The trial is the most famous in the history of philosophy. The prosecution was led by the orator Anytus and the poet Meletus. The defense was delivered by Socrates himself (he had asked for the right to defend himself, and the law allowed it). Socrates was given the opportunity to propose an alternative penalty, and he suggested that the city should give him a pension for life, in recognition of his service. The jury voted for death.

Socrates drank the hemlock in his prison cell, in the presence of his friends and his students. Plato’s dialogue Phaedo describes the death scene in detail: Socrates’ calm acceptance of the sentence, his conversation about the immortality of the soul, his farewell to his family and friends, his instruction to the jailer that a cock should be sacrificed to Asclepius (the god of healing), and his final drink. The death of Socrates is the most famous death in the history of philosophy, and it has been the subject of paintings, sculptures, plays, poems, and essays ever since.

The Legacy of Socrates

Socrates left no writings, and almost everything we know about him comes from Plato’s dialogues, the writings of his other student Xenophon, and the comedies of Aristophanes (who had caricatured him as a typical sophist in The Clouds). The question “Who was the real Socrates?” has been debated for two and a half thousand years. Some scholars have argued that the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues is mostly Plato’s own creation, used as a mouthpiece for Plato’s own philosophy. Others have argued that Plato was a faithful reporter of Socrates’ views, and that the historical Socrates can be reconstructed from the early dialogues.

Whatever the truth, Socrates has shaped the Western philosophical tradition more than any other figure. The Socratic method, the Socratic commitment to rational inquiry, the Socratic willingness to die for one’s beliefs, and the Socratic recognition of one’s own ignorance are all features of the modern philosophical temperament that can be traced directly back to the Athenian stonemason’s son.