Questions Over Answers

Socrates left no written works. Everything we know comes from others, mainly Plato, who may have used Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. The uncertainty is fitting — the man who valued questions over answers left us unsure of his own answers.

The unexamined life is not worth living — his most famous line — is not an order to adopt specific beliefs. It is an invitation to question all of them, including that one. The Socratic method is unusual among philosophical tools because it works by undermining certainty rather than supplying it.