An Overview of Socrates’ Central Teachings

The most interesting and influential thinker of his time was Socrates; his commitment to careful reasoning affected all philosophy to certain degree. Socrates wanted genuine knowledge rather than simple victory over anyone he was speaking to. Socrates used logical thought processes to this purpose, in the pursuit of truth. Socrates’ willingness to call everything into question and his determination to accept nothing less than an adequate account of the nature of things made him many friends and enemies. (Biffle 41)
Although he was well known during his own time for his conversational skills and public teaching, Socrates did not write anything down, so we rely on his student Plato for any detailed knowledge of his methods and results. The trouble is that Plato was a philosopher who most likely added his own theories into the dialogues, which were discussions between Socrates and others. Even so, it is assumed that the Plato provided a fairly accurate representation of S...