A story is told about an institutional review at Oxford in the 1990s. “When … the visiting team of assessors met the philosophers, they asked them what innovations in teaching methods had been developed over the last two or three years. It is reported that the stunned silence that followed was broken by Christopher Peacocke, then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics, who observed that Socrates had discovered the right way to teach philosophy 2,500 years ago, and nobody had ever been able to make any significant improvements to it since.”¹

This is a book intended for beginners in the study of Socrates. It is not a book for scholars. It contains views, some of them controversial, on some issues of concern to scholars, but it generally avoids debate on those views. Nothing in this book presupposes familiarity with the scholarly literature on Socrates. The book does presuppose some familiarity with Plato's works, including the Apology, Crito, Republic, and some other dialogues. It should be read in conjunction with those. The first chapter should be read in connection with Plato's Apology, the fourth in connection with the Euthyphro, the seventh in connection with the Crito, and so on with the other chapters. There are many good translations of Plato's works available today. The book draws quotations from the Hackett edition of Plato's complete works, because it is the version most familiar to today's readers, but it refers to the passages in the way that is standard among scholars, using the Stephanus pagination in the margins of the pages of most translations. The reader can check the Hackett translations against any others that are available.

Most of this book concerns the character Socrates, as he is depicted in a certain set of Platonic works, which I refer to as the elenctic dialogues. The first chapter is concerned with the life of the person who stands behind that character, and attempts to place that life in the context of the major events of its time. Because Socrates left no written record of his philosophical views it is impossible to state definitively what the relation is between the historical Socrates and the character in Plato's works. This is the “Socratic problem” and it has no solution. Even when we read about the trial of Socrates, a public event witnessed by approximately five hundred jurors as well as by other Athenians, we rely on accounts of Plato and another associate of Socrates, Xenophon, for our understanding of that event.

Beginning with the second chapter, the book offers an account of the nature of the philosophy presented as Socratic in a set of dialogues in which Socrates practices a distinctive method of inquiry, the elenchus. The elenchus is a negative method, aimed at the refutation of the people Socrates has conversations with, his interlocutors, most of whom claim to have expert knowledge on a moral subject, usually the definition of a moral term. In certain dialogues, such as the Crito, this method is put to a positive use; in the Meno this positive use is justified by the introduction of a theory concerning the acquisition of knowledge, the doctrine of recollection. The doctrine of recollection changes our understanding of the elenchus.

Socrates typically professed ignorance concerning the answers to the questions he raised for others. He presented himself, not as a moral expert, but as an inquirer. In the Theaetetus he describes himself as “barren.” He says that he does not express his view concerning the issues he raises because he is aware that he lacks wisdom. At the same time, however, he suggests possible answers to those questions. He is, in terms of the contrast drawn in the Theaetetus, fertile. Yet he cannot be both. One way of reconciling these two portraits is through the claim that Socrates’ profession of ignorance is ironic, a claim made by Thrasymachus in the Republic and Alcibiades in the Symposium. Most interpreters do not accept this ironical interpretation; it is not clear, however, that the tension between the two portraits can be resolved in any other way.

Beginning with the fourth chapter of the book, we consider how these two portraits of Socrates characterize several of Plato's elenctic dialogues, beginning with the Euthyphro, a dialogue on the nature of piety. In Chapter 5 the book discusses a well-known view of the fertile Socrates, known as intellectualism. According to this view, virtue is a matter of knowledge, produced by an art of measurement. Socrates describes vice as ignorance and denies the possibility of moral weakness. This is the moral theory most often associated with the Socrates of the elenctic dialogues. This theory has a problem, however, with stating the end that virtue seeks. This end is happiness. In one dialogue, the Protagoras, it is suggested that happiness is pleasure, but this suggestion is rejected in another dialogue, the Gorgias. In the Gorgias and Crito a different conception of happiness is defended, based on psychological health. In the Gorgias this conception is associated with the idea of proper order among parts of the soul, including reason and appetite. Socrates defends this conception of happiness against the views of two of his interlocutors, Polus and Callicles. The happy life, according to this view, is the just life, which is identified as the life devoted to philosophy. This conception of happiness is discussed in Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 is devoted to a question generated by Socrates’ conception of the just life, namely the relation between Socrates and the state. This was a question that arose after Socrates’ trial: it has been claimed that Socrates was tried as an enemy of the democratic government of Athens. This chapter considers an argument put forward in the Crito by the laws of Athens in favor of civic obedience. Plato presents Socrates as a loyal citizen of Athens; he was also, however, a critic of democracy. Socrates wanted the Athenians to care about virtue rather than wealth or power. He thought that it was moral knowledge that qualified one to rule in the state, and he retains this view in the Republic. The eighth chapter discusses the relation between the Socrates of the elenctic dialogues and the Socrates of the “middle” dialogues, who is generally thought to be a spokesman for Plato's own views. The chapter compares the two sets of dialogues with respect to several issues: method, metaphysics (including the theory of Forms and the conception of the good), epistemology, psychology, moral theory, and political theory. I argue that the views of the “middle” dialogues in general grow out of the views expressed in the elenctic dialogues in a gradual manner.

The final chapter discusses the philosophical legacy of Socrates from his time to the twentieth century. It pays special attention to his influence in ancient philosophy and in the nineteenth century. Socrates, the virtuous man, the barren inquirer, the fertile theoretician, and the martyr, has been one of the most influential philosophers in the Western intellectual tradition. Not everything he said was true, but nearly everything he said was worth, and has received, philosophical discussion. This book attempts to portray Socrates’ views on a variety of topics, so that readers may judge them for themselves. It also tries to show why Socrates has been regarded throughout the history of Western philosophy as a model of the philosophical life.