Although Socrates took over from the sophists of irony, questioning the obvious, it would seem, the truth, but did not feel as if all the same, what to believe, what rules to follow, and that all views and propositions are equally true or equally false. Degree of validity and admissibility of opinions and statutes reveals a process of discussion and dialogue. His motto, he chose the phrase "Know thyself." Subsequently, early Greek philosophy is different from the influence of Socrates was called "dosokratovskoy." In ethics, Socrates took the position that is now called the "ethical rationalism ', ie reasonable justification of ethical norms. Happy can only be the man who cultivates his virtue, and for this you need to understand what it is. The views of Socrates' teachings were a counterweight to the Sophists, who argued that good and evil are indistinguishable, teaching, provoked outrage and lawlessness in the relations between citizens.

However, contemporaries hardly understand what the ironic Socrates is different from playing with the words of sophists. Democratic court, consisting of five hundred people, After a long discussion in which participated, and Socrates himself, decided to execute a philosopher. Socrates was accused of "introducing new gods and corrupting youth." Refusing to flee, Socrates took poison in prison. Plato – student Socrates. He founded his own school in Athens. Theory of ideas is the conceptual core of Platonic philosophy. Ideas (eidos) – it transforms, and the essence of the hypothesis of things, the limit to which things tend to its formation, but eidoses themselves are not things they can not perceive by the senses. All things in the world are changeable, fluid, are in perpetual becoming, not a single thing does not repeat itself, and even different from themselves is different at different times ("Everything flows" and "you can not enter twice in the same river," as Heraclitus).

Nevertheless, we are able to recognize things, to attribute them to specific species. Every thing was involved in some ideas, such as the idea man, the idea beautiful, the idea of good. Ideas are many, but they are all in unity, linked to each other but not fused. Ideas relate to each other hierarchically, ie, Some of them are logically subordinate to other, higher among ideas – the idea of good. Man is able to grasp ideas in their unity and separateness through dialectic. Plato called the dialectic ability to ask questions and give answers to discern and to generalize.