While Plato was still a boy, his father, Ariston, died and his mother, Perictione, married a friend of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. Plato was thus familiar with Athenian politics from childhood and was expected to take up a political career himself. Horrified by actual political events, however, especially the execution of Socrates in 399 BCE, he turned instead to philosophy, thinking that only education in it could rescue mankind from civil war and political upheaval, and provide a sound foundation for ethics and politics (Seventh Letter, 324b-326b). It was with Socrates, then, that our Plato began.
As represented in the early dialogues, Socratic philosophy consists almost exclusively in questioning people about the conventionally recognized ethical virtues. "What is justice?" he asks, "Or piety? Or courage? Or wisdom?" Moreover, he takes for granted that there are correct answers to these questions, that each virtue is some definite characteristic or form (eidos, idea). And though he does not discuss the nature of these forms, or develop any explicit theory of them or our knowledge of them, he does claim that only they can serve as reliable standards for judging whether any given type of action is an instance of a virtue, and that they can be captured in explicit definitions (Euthyphro, 6d-e; Charmides, 158e-159a).
Socrates' interest in definitions of the virtues, Aristotle tells us, resulted from thinking of them as ethical first principles (Metaphysics, 1078bl2-32). That is why, if one does not know them, one cannot know anything else of any consequence about ethics (Hippias Major, 286c-d, 304-e; Laches, 190b-c; Lysis, 212a, 223b; Protagoras, 361c; Republic, 354c). Claiming not to know them himself, Socrates also claims to have little or no other ethical knowledge (Apology, 20c, 21b). These disclaimers of knowledge are often characterized as false or ironical, but Aristotle took them at face value (Sophistical Refutations, 183b6-8).
Socrates' characteristic way of questioning people is now called an elenchus (from the Greek verb elegchein, to examine or refute): Socrates asks what some virtue is; the interlocutor gives a definition he sincerely believes to be correct; Socrates then refutes this definition by showing that it conflicts with other beliefs the interlocutor sincerely holds and is unwilling to abandon (often a consideration of parallel or analogous cases plays an important role in eliciting these beliefs). In the ideal situation, which is never actually portrayed in the Socratic dialogues, this process continues until a satisfactory definition emerges, one that is not inconsistent with other sincerely held beliefs, and so can withstand elenctic scrutiny. Since consistency with false beliefs is no guarantee of truth, and untrue definitions are no basis for knowledge, Socrates' use of the elenchus seems to presuppose that some sincerely held beliefs are in fact true.
The definitions Socrates encounters in his elenctic examinations of others always prove unsatisfactory. But through these examinations, which are always at the same time self-examinations (Charmides, 166c-d; Hippias Major, 298b-c; Protagoras, 348cd), he comes to accept some positive theses which have resisted refutation. Among these are the following three famous Socratic "paradoxes": (1) The conventionally distinguished virtues are all identical to wisdom or knowledge (Charmides, 174b-c; Euthydemus, 281d-e; Protagoras, 329b-334c, 349a-361d); (2) this knowledge is necessary and sufficient for happiness or perhaps even identical to it (Crito, 48b; Gorgias, 471e); (3) no one ever acts contrary to what he knows or believes to be best, so that weakness of will is impossible (Protagoras, 352a-358d). Together these three doctrines constitute a very strict kind of ethical intellectualism: they imply that all we need in order to be virtuous and happy is knowledge.
The goal of an elenchus, however, is not just to reach adequate definitions of the virtues, or seemingly paradoxical doctrines about weakness of will and virtue, but moral reform. For Socrates believes that regular elenctic philosophizing - leading the examined life - makes people happier and more virtuous than anything else can by curing them of the hubris of thinking they know when they don't (Apology, 30a, 36c-e, 38a, 41b-c). Philosophizing is so important for human welfare, indeed, that he is willing to accept execution rather than give it up (Apology, 29b-d).
In the transitional dialogues, as well as in some earlier ones, Socrates, as the embodiment of true philosophy, is contrasted prejudicially with the sophists. They are unscrupulous moral relativists, who think that virtue is different for different people and societies and undertake to teach it for a fee; he is an honest moral absolutist, who thinks that virtue is the same for everyone everywhere, claims not to know or teach it, and so accepts no fees. The problem latent in this contrast is that if moral beliefs do vary from culture to culture, it is not clear how the elenchus, which seems to rely wholly on them, could reach knowledge of the objective or non-culture-relative moral truth Socrates seeks.
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