Socrates Portrait

A classical marble-style bust of Socrates – bald crown, heavy brow, broad nose and full curly beard – drawn in crisp white engraving lines on a dark ground, with SOCRATES set beneath in elegant serif capitals. No joke, no slogan; just the man who started Western philosophy's habit of asking awkward questions.

An Athenian philosopher (about 470–399 BCE), son of the stonemason Sophroniscus and the midwife Phaenarete. He served as a hoplite in the Peloponnesian War and spent his life questioning fellow citizens in the streets and the agora about justice, courage and virtue. He is regarded as a founder of Western moral philosophy.

In 399 BCE Meletus, supported by Anytus and Lycon, charged him with impiety – not acknowledging the city's gods and introducing new divinities – and with corrupting the youth. A jury of about 500 citizens found him guilty, by roughly 280 to 220 votes, and sentenced him to death by drinking hemlock. Resentment over his links to Critias and Alcibiades likely played a part.

No, not a single line. Everything we know comes from others – above all the dialogues of his student Plato, the memoirs of Xenophon and the satire of Aristophanes in The Clouds (423 BCE). Separating the historical Socrates from Plato's literary character is known as the Socratic problem.

Socrates says it in Plato's Apology (38a) at his trial, explaining why he will not stop philosophising even to save his life. A life lived on autopilot, without questioning one's beliefs and values, is not a fully human life. For Socrates, daily conversation about virtue was the greatest good a person could have.

According to Plato's Apology, Socrates' friend Chaerephon asked the oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the priestess answered that no one was. Puzzled, Socrates questioned politicians, poets and craftsmen and concluded that his only advantage was not believing he knew what he did not know.

His friend Crito arranged an escape, but in Plato's Crito Socrates refuses. Imagining the Laws of Athens speaking to him, he argues that one must never do wrong, even in return for wrong, and that having lived his whole life under those laws he had implicitly agreed to them. Fleeing would mean breaking that agreement.

Socrates' habit of professing ignorance and praising his partner's wisdom, only to lead them through questions into contradiction. It can look like mockery, but it also carries a serious claim – that recognising one's own ignorance is where real inquiry begins. The Greek eirōneia originally meant something like feigned ignorance.

Yes, for philosophy and classics students, teachers, lawyers, debaters and anyone who loves asking why one more time than is polite. It comes as a unisex T-shirt, sweatshirt, premium hoodie, mug and sticker.