SOCRATES
(c. 470-399 B.C.E.)

Jacques Louis David, The Death of Socrates (1787)

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
. . .  
13. HUMILITY.  Imitate Jesus and Socrates
                                                     Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography (1789)

He asked for definitions he himself was never able to attain and then easily refuted whatever definitions his interlocutors offered. . . . The negative dialectic of Socrates - if the city had taken it seriously - would have made equity and democracy impossible.  His identification of virtue with an unattainable knowledge stripped common men of hope and denied their capacity to govern themselves.
                                                     I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates (1988) 

Readings:

Euthyphro by Plato

Miscellanea:

Outline - Euthyphro                                          

Study Questions