A philosopher of Athens, generally regarded as one of the wisest people of all time. It is sometimes pointed out that what the character of Jesus is to Christendom, the character of Socrates is to Western philosophy. nietzsche REGARDED socrates, plato and jesus as his main enemies, because they started to focus on non-human values like 'truth', 'pure ideas' and life-denying vIrtues. It is not known who SOCRATES' teachers were, but he seems to have been acquainted with the doctrines of PARMENIDES, HERACLITUS, and ANAXAGORAS.

Socrates himself left no writings, and most of our knowledge of him and his teachings comes from the dialogues of his most famous pupil, PLATO, and from the memoirs of XENOPHON.he Worked at first as a sculptor, but afterwards devoted himself to gratuitous teaching. he also served as a soldier in the Peloponnesian War.

Cicero said that "Socrates brought down philosophy from the the heavens to the earth." The previous philosophies consisted of vast and vague speculations on nature as a whole, blending together Cosmogony, Astronomy, Geometry, Physics, Metaphysics, etc. Socrates had studied these systems, and they had left on his mind a feeling of emptiness and unsuitability for any human purpose. It seemed to him that men's endeavors after knowledge would be better directed to human relationships, as involving men's practical concerns.

Socrates is described as having neglected his own affairs, instead spending his time discussing virtue, justice, and piety wherever his fellow citizens congregated, seeking wisdom about right conduct so that he might guide the moral and intellectual improvement of Athens. Using a method now known as 'the Socratic dialogue', or 'dialectic', he drew forth knowledge from his students by pursuing a series of questions and examining the implications of their answers. Socrates equated virtue with the knowledge of one's true self, holding that no one knowingly does wrong. Socrates, unlike Plato, was always conscious of how much he did not know, and claimed superiority to unthinking people only in that he was aware of his own ignorance where they were not. He looked upon the soul as the seat of both waking consciousness and moral character, and held the universe to be purposively mind-ordered.

His criticism of the Sophists and of Athenian political and religious institutions made him many enemies, and his position was burlesqued by ARISTOPHANES. In 399 B.

C. Socrates was tried for corrupting the morals of Athenian youth and for religious heresies; it is now believed that his arrest stemmed in particular from his influence on Alcibiades and Critias, who had betrayed Athens. He was convicted and, resisting all efforts to save his life, willingly drank the cup of poison hemlock given him. The trial and death of Socrates are described by Plato in the 'Apology', 'Crito', and 'Phaedo'.