Socrates is one of the few individuals whom one could say has so-shaped the cultural and intellectual development of
the world that, without him, history would be profoundly different. He is best known for his association with the
Socratic method of question and answer, his claim that he was ignorant (or aware of his own absence of knowledge),
and his claim that the unexamined life is not worth living, for human beings. He was the inspiration for Plato, the
thinker widely held to be the founder of the Western philosophical tradition. Plato in turn served as the teacher of
Aristotle, thus establishing the famous triad of ancient philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Unlike other
philosophers of his time and ours, Socrates never wrote anything down but was committed to living simply and to
interrogating the everyday views and popular opinions of those in his home city of Athens. At the age of 70, he was
put to death at the hands of his fellow citizens on charges of impiety and corruption of the youth. His trial, along
with the social and political context in which occurred, has warranted as much treatment from historians and
classicists as his arguments and methods have from philosophers.
苏格拉底是少数几位可以说深刻塑造了世界文化和智力发展的个人之一，如果没有他，历史将会截然不同。他最为人知的是与苏格拉底式问答法的关联，他声称自己无知（或意识到自己缺乏知识），以及他声称未经审视的生活不值得人类去过。他是柏拉图的灵感来源，柏拉图被广泛认为是西方哲学传统的创始人。柏拉图又是亚里士多德的老师，从而建立了古代哲学家的著名三位一体：苏格拉底、柏拉图和亚里士多德。与他同时代和我们时代的其他哲学家不同，苏格拉底从未写下任何东西，而是致力于简单生活，并质疑他家乡雅典人们的日常观点和流行看法。在 70 岁时，他因被指控不敬神明和腐化青年而被同胞处死。 他的审判，以及发生的社会和政治背景，受到了历史学家和古典学者的关注，正如他的论点和方法受到了哲学家的关注一样。
This article gives an overview of Socrates: who he was, what he thought, and his purported method. It is both
historical and philosophical. At the same time, it contains reflections on the difficult nature of knowing anything
about a person who never committed any of his ideas to the written word. Much of what is known about Socrates comes
to us from Plato, although Socrates appears in the works of other ancient writers as well as those who follow Plato
in the history of philosophy. This article recognizes that finding the original Socrates may be impossible, but it
attempts to achieve a close approximation.
本文概述了苏格拉底：他是谁，他的思想，以及他所谓的方法。它既是历史性的，也是哲学性的。同时，它还反思了了解一个从未将任何思想付诸书面的人的困难本质。关于苏格拉底的许多知识来自于柏拉图，尽管苏格拉底也出现在其他古代作家的作品中，以及在哲学史上追随柏拉图的人们的作品中。本文承认找到原始的苏格拉底可能是不可能的，但它试图实现一个接近的近似。