Socrates
Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE) left no writings of his own, yet he is the figure most of Western philosophy measures itself against.
Life in Athens
Socrates was born in Athens to Sophroniscus, a stonemason, and Phaenarete, a midwife. He served as a hoplite in the Peloponnesian War and was known for his toughness on campaign: walking barefoot on ice, standing lost in thought through a night. He married Xanthippe and had three sons. He held no office by choice and took no fees for teaching, which set him apart from the paid sophists of his day.
Most of his days were spent in the agora, the public square, talking with anyone willing: generals, poets, politicians, craftsmen and the young men of good families who followed him around.
The oracle and the mission
According to Plato's Apology, Socrates' friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the answer was no. Socrates was puzzled, because he believed he knew nothing of importance. He set out to find someone wiser, questioning people with reputations for wisdom. What he found was that they believed they knew things they did not. He concluded that his only advantage was that he did not claim knowledge he lacked.
“I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know, do not think I know.” — Apology 21d
How he philosophized
Socrates' tool was the question. He would ask a confident speaker to define a virtue, then test the definition against examples until it broke. The conversation usually ended in aporia, an honest puzzlement, which Socrates treated as progress: you cannot look for what you think you already have. See our article on the Socratic method.
He also held a handful of striking convictions: that virtue is a kind of knowledge, that no one does wrong willingly, and that it is worse to commit injustice than to suffer it.
Trial and death
In 399 BCE, Socrates was charged with impiety and with corrupting the youth. Athens had recently lived through defeat and a brutal oligarchy, and several of the oligarchs had been in his circle. At trial he refused to beg or bring his weeping children before the jury. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Friends arranged an escape, but in the Crito he refuses, arguing that he would not break the laws he had lived under. In the Phaedo, Plato describes his last day, spent discussing the immortality of the soul before he drank the hemlock.
The Socratic problem
Everything we know of Socrates comes from others: Plato, the soldier-historian Xenophon, and the comic playwright Aristophanes, who mocked him in The Clouds. Their portraits differ. Scholars often treat Plato's early dialogues as closest to the historical Socrates and the later ones as Plato speaking through him. Untangling the two is called the “Socratic problem.”
Where to start reading
Read the Apology, Crito and the death scene of the Phaedo together. They are short, moving and the best introduction to the man. Then try the Euthyphro to watch the method at work. Continue to Plato.