I Know Nothing

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, like Confucius, did not leave behind his works. But his students—Plato and Xenophon—passed down to us Socrates’s philosophical views in the form of dialogues and short stories. Thanks to that, we know what Socrates taught, what his main life values were, what problems of existence occupied him. For the first time, in a single collection, the sayings of a wise philosopher are gathered—one from whom the reader can still learn even today. True, sometimes in Plato’s texts Socrates says one thing, and in Xenophon’s texts, on the very same question, completely something else, as if contradicting himself. This is due to memory and to the interpretation of the teacher’s thoughts by his no less well-known students. But the more interesting it is to follow the chain of Socrates’s reasoning and make one’s own conclusions. The collection is logically complemented by biographical notes about the philosopher Diogenes Laertius, who briefly describes Socrates’s life and tells of his tragic death.