The advent of Socrates of Athens marked a pivotal moment in the history of Western philosophy. It has been our task to begin to understand the innovation for which Socrates is responsible. Dissatisfied with the efforts of the pre- Socratics to discover the elemental causes of all things and so to disprove the claim that gods are responsible for the world, Socrates turned to a new conversational or dialectical examination of moral and political opinion—his characteristic activity. Plato and Xenophon vividly portrayed this characteristic, which so irked his fellow citizens that it brought about his execution. Plato is obviously an inheritor of the Socratic legacy, for he took great pains to portray his teacher. But Aristotle too owed a debt to Socrates inasmuch as he combined a comprehensive interest in nature with the painstaking analysis of moral and political opinion, in a manner reminiscent of his teacher’s teacher. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle together constitute one of the highes