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Hello, of all the names in ancient philosophy, Socrates is the most intriguing.

Born in 469 BC, into the golden age of the city of Athens,

his impact is so profound that all the thinkers who went before are simply known as pre-Socratic.

In person, Socrates seems to be deliberately irritating, he was funny and he was rude.

He didn't like democracy and spent a lot of time in the marketplace

costing citizens with questions such as what is courage or virtue or knowledge. He claimed

he was on a mission from God to educate his fellow Athenians,

but he's left us nothing in his own hand because he refused to write anything down.

Plato, his pupil, wrote about and for him, and in doing so provided the pillar of Western philosophy. With me to discuss the elusive

and mercurial Socrates at David Sedley, Lawrence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University,

and Jee Hobbs, Associate Professor of Professor at Warwick University and Paul Miller, Senior Lecture in Classics

at the University of Cambridge.

Angie Hobbs, as I mentioned, Socrates didn't write anything down.

Why didn't he write anything down? Why didn't he write anything down?

Well, that's what we're here to discuss.

I think a clue comes from a dialogue written by Plato,

a later dialogue called The Feeder.. Plato of course new Socrates well.

And in the Fiedras they discuss the dangers of the art of writing because books can't

really discuss with a book it can't answer you

back it can't really deal with your questions so we know that Socrates thought that

...