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.

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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, Enchiridion (Stoic inquiry, what is and is not in our control, the discipline of assent) <!-- corpus: Enchiridion -->
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Self-examination, impermanence, duty, the view from above) <!-- corpus: Meditations -->
• Margaret Fell: Women's Speaking Justified (Dialectical scriptural interpretation; dismantling the theological grounds for gender-based silence)

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

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This collection is a living document. As source texts are imported into the knowledge corpus, entries above will become links to the full documents.