Passage Five

      Socrates is often referred to as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and yet he wrote nothing, established no school, and held no particular theories of his own, What he did do, however, was, frequently ask the questions that interested him, and in doing so developed a new way of thinking. This method proceeds(展开)as a dialogue between opposing views, and it earned him many enemies in Athens, where he lived.

      As a young man, Socrates is believed to have studied natural philosophy, looking at the various explanations of the nature of the universe, but then became involved in the politics of the city-state and concerned with more down-to-earth moral issues, such as the nature of justice.

       However, he was not interested in winning arguments, or arguing for the sake of making money. Nor was he seeking answers or explanations. He was simply examining the basis of the concepts we apply to ourselves (such as “good”, “bad”, and “just”), for he believed that understanding what we are is the first task of philosophy.

       He was sentenced to death on charges of corrupting the young with bad ideas. But he also had many followers, and among them was Plato, who recorded Socrates sets about examining various ideas.

       Socrates’ central concern, then, was the examination of life, and it was his cruel questioning of people’s most valued beliefs (largely about themselves) that earned him his enemies-but he remained committed to his task until the very end. According to the account of his defense at his trial, Socrates chose death rather than face a life of ignorance: “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”