Socrates
(BC, 469-399)

Of Athens, Socrates left no books; what we know of him comes to us through the writings of Plato. Personally, the mentioning of Socrates brings to mind the "Socratic method"; a method employed, to my great frustration, I recall, by a number of my law school professors; a method which hardly brought about many answers, just more and more questions. "Feigning total ignorance before the opinionated, he would with celebrated Socratic irony pose a simple question such as 'What is courage?' From the replies given he would construct contradictory consequences and so start again. His aim was to act as a midwife to those in labour for knowledge." Socrates, unlike Plato, was always conscious of how much he did not know, and claimed superiority to unthinking people only in that he was aware of his own ignorance where they were not.