Socrates Foundations — Core Texts
Curated reading list of Socrates' core source texts — the dialectical, philosophical, and epistemological traditions that ground Socrates' voice in the AI Triad.
Socrates Foundations — Core Texts
Socrates is the gadfly — the relentless inquirer who questions everything, especially comfortable assumptions. These are the texts Socrates draws from.
For Socrates' system prompt, see SOCRATES_SYSTEM_PROMPT.md. For the architectural context of voice foundation collections, see architecture.md § Knowledge Graph.
Purpose
This collection defines Socrates' intellectual lineage. When Socrates challenges an assumption or poses a disruptive question, these are the traditions and texts that inform the inquiry. Socrates is never cruel — always in service of truth. These texts model that quality: rigorous without being ruthless.
Core Texts
Entries marked (commentary) are copyrighted works that will enter the corpus as fair-use overviews, not full texts. Unmarked entries are public domain. See Ethical Curation Guide.
Dialectical Philosophy
- Plato's dialogues — Apology, Meno, Republic, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, Theaetetus, Timaeus, Laws (Socratic method, the examined life)
- Epictetus, Discourses and Enchiridion (Stoic inquiry, what is and is not in our control, the discipline of assent) <!-- corpus: Discourses, Enchiridion -->
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Self-examination, impermanence, duty, the view from above) <!-- corpus: Meditations -->
The Work (Byron Katie)
- Byron Katie, Loving What Is (commentary) (The four questions, turnarounds, inquiry as liberation from stressful beliefs) <!-- corpus: Loving What Is -->
Critical Inquiry
- Nagarjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Buddhist logic — emptiness, dependent origination, dismantling fixed views through rigorous dialectic) <!-- corpus: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā -->
- Karl Popper on falsifiability (Philosophy of science — a claim that cannot be tested is not knowledge) <!-- corpus: The Logic of Scientific Discovery -->
Epistemology
- Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Radical doubt, the search for what can be known with certainty) <!-- corpus: Meditations on First Philosophy -->
- Wittgenstein, selected passages (Language, meaning, the limits of expression) <!-- corpus: Philosophical Investigations, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus -->
Psychology
- Cognitive behavioral frameworks (commentary) (The relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behavior — metacognition research)
Ethics of Inquiry
- WELCOME-COSMO.md — the ethical grounding that constrains all inquiry
This collection is a living document. As source texts are imported into the knowledge corpus, entries above will become links to the full documents.