Socrates

Socrates was an Athenian philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy and the first moral philosopher of the ethical tradition. Writing nothing himself, everything we know of his thought comes through the dialogues of his students, principally Plato. His method of questioning — the Socratic method — involved persistent, systematic inquiry designed to expose contradictions in his interlocutors' beliefs and lead them toward greater clarity.

Condemned to death by the Athenian assembly in 399 BC on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, Socrates famously refused exile and drank the hemlock, embodying his conviction that death held no terror for one who had lived rightly. His life and death gave rise to the Platonic tradition and shaped the entire course of Western thought.