Socrates has a unique position in the history of philosophy. On the
one hand he is one of the most influential of all philosophers, and on
the other one of the most elusive and least known. Further, his
historical influence is not itself independent of his elusiveness. First
we have the influence of the actual personality of Socrates on his
contemporaries, and in particular on Plato. It is no exaggeration to
say that had it not been for the impact on him of the life and above
all of the death of Socrates Plato would probably have become a
statesman rather than a philosopher, with the result that the whole
development of Western philosophy would have been unimaginably
different. Then we have the enduring influence of the figure of
Socrates as an exemplar of the philosophic life, of a total moral and
intellectual integrity permeating every detail of everyday life and
carried to the heroic extreme of steadfastness in the face of rejection
and ignominious death. But the figure of Socrates the protomartyr
and patron saint of philosophy, renewed in every age to speak to
that age's philosophical condition, is the creation, not of the man
himself, but of those who wrote about him, above all of Plato. It is
Plato's depiction of the ideal philosopher which has fascinated and
inspired from his day to ours, and if we attempt to penetrate that
depiction in the quest for the historical Socrates we find the latter as
elusive as the historical Jesus of nineteenth-century New Testament
scholarship.

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