A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition
, c. 469–399 BC. Mentor of PLATO and of several so-called ‘Socratic schools’ (Megarians, Cynics, Cyrenaics). Probably scarcely left Athens except on military service.
Executed for ‘corrupting the youth and introducing strange gods’. He apparently wrote nothing, and is known to us mainly through Plato and Xenophon (and a caricature in Aristophanes’ contemporary comedy, The Clouds). ARISTOTLE, who never met him, regards him as mainly interested in ethics, but as laying the basis for Plato’s theory of ‘Forms’. See DIALECTIC, INCONTINENCE, SOPHISTS.
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