Socrates

Classical Athenian philosopher, the figure whose life and death gave Western philosophy its founding myth — the gadfly of Athens, condemned to death in 399 BCE for 'corrupting the youth' and 'impiety,' who chose to drink hemlock rather than abandon the philosophical life. Born around 470 BCE, son of a stonemason and a midwife, Socrates served as a hoplite in the Peloponnesian War and then turned to the questioning of his fellow citizens in the Athenian agora — a practice that produced no writings of his own but that his student Plato preserved in the great early dialogues (Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Meno, Theaetetus). Xenophon's Memorabilia and Aristophanes's Clouds offer alternative portraits. The Socratic method — relentless questioning that reveals the questioner does not know what he thought he knew — became the foundation of philosophical inquiry; the Socratic claim that 'the unexamined life is not worth living' became its motto. He died in 399 BCE in Athens, surrounded by his students.