SOCRATES THE EXAMINER (469-399 BC) "Virtue is knowledge."

Socrates was a moral philosopher concerned with the conduct of a virtuous life. His focus was not on the way things are, but the way they could and should be. His emphasis was on the need for an "examined life", and on the possibility of a universal and absolute morality.

Socrates did not write down his thoughts and his philosophy comes to us largely through his greatest disciple, Plato, and his great admirer, Xenephon. A less flattering view is presented in the satirical comedy of a contemporary playwright, Aristophanes.