Socrates Practices the Elenchus in the Athenian Agora
A man who wrote nothing invents a method of cross-examination that still bears his name
Quick facts
- Approximate birth year
- 469 BCE (some sources: 470 BCE)
- Wrote
- Nothing; no texts by Socrates survive
- Primary sources on him
- Plato's dialogues, Xenophon's memoirs
- Method
- Elenchus (cross-examination/refutation)
What happened
Socrates of Athens, born around 469 BCE, spent his adult life questioning fellow citizens in the Agora about virtue, justice, and knowledge, using a method now called the elenchus: cross-examining a stated position or definition until its holder's own commitments contradict it. Socrates wrote nothing himself. Everything known about his views comes secondhand, chiefly through the dialogues of his student Plato and the memoirs of Xenophon, and the two portraits do not always agree, a problem scholars call the Socratic problem. His method aimed less at teaching answers than at exposing unrecognized ignorance in people who assumed they already understood concepts like courage or piety.
Why it matters
Socrates is credited with turning Greek philosophy from questions about nature toward questions about how to live, and the elenchus became the model for the question-and-answer form of Plato's dialogues and, more broadly, for treating unexamined belief as a target for scrutiny rather than something to accept on authority.
How we know
Socrates left no writings, so his views are reconstructed entirely from later sources, Plato's dialogues and Xenophon's Socratic writings above all, with real disagreement among scholars about how much of Plato's Socrates reflects the historical man versus Plato's own philosophy voiced through him.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Socrates · Reputable sourceplato.stanford.edu · The domain "plato.stanford.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Socrates · Reputable sourceiep.utm.edu · The domain "iep.utm.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- Ancient Greece → · See the Ancient Greece timeline for classical Athens, the city where Socrates spent his entire life.