Socrates

# Socrates The founder of Western philosophy wrote nothing. Everything we know of him comes through the writings of his students, principally Plato, who reconstructed his conversations with such vivid precision that Socrates has never stopped being present in any room where serious thinking happens. He was a stonemason's son who walked the streets of Athens interrogating assumptions about justice, virtue, and the good life. Athens eventually charged him with impiety and corrupting the youth. He drank the hemlock without flinching, still arguing.