Socrates
As you probably already know, Socrates was a classical, Greek philosopher. He was born around 470 B.C. and,along with Plato (who you will learn about later,) he founded higher education. He is not a sophist and, to put simply, he disagrees with their practices. He is one of the three men who make up the Greek Trilogy. Socrates' epistemology differs greatly from the Sophists, as he mainly studied ethics. He believes in doing things for the greater good, in other words, he does what is right and just. Therefore, Socrates thinks what the Sophists did was un-ethical and that they misled and manipulated common folk to better themselves.Socrates also believed that the best way for people to live was to focus on the pursuit of virtue rather than the pursuit of material wealth. The Sophists were pursuing material wealth. He and Plato, (whom was Socrates' pupil) created the the Greek academy, which was the foundation for higher education today. Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting Greece's youth--he was forced to drink hemlock, which killed him.
Socratic School of Thought
In terms of Socrates's epistemology concerning truths, he believed that all knowledge is a matter of recollection. Therefore, Socrates thinks that all knowledge already exists and that we have to have a moment of clarity or an epiphany in order to gain knowledge that really already existed. In other words, Socratic thought is that all knowledge is given to us, but we have to remember it in order to have knowledge. He does not believe that humans have the ability to gain knowledge from the divine or other worlds.