Socrates

The Soul

The soul is the true self and is improved through knowledge and virtue. Moral wrongdoing results from ignorance.

The Socratic Method

Asking guided questions to expose contradictions in someone's thinking, leading them toward clearer, more rational beliefs.

His life and death

Lived a life of public questioning in Athens; put on trial for impiety and corrupting youth; sentenced to death by drinking hemlock; accepted his fate to uphold his principles.

Impiety

Accused of not believing in the city’s gods and introducing new divine ideas; charges used as a way to silence him.

Connection to Plato

Plato was his student and recorded Socrates’ ideas; most of what we know about Socrates comes from Plato’s dialogues.

Connection to other philosophers

Influenced Plato’s ethics, theory of Forms, and method of inquiry; foundation of Western moral philosophy and epistemology.