How did Socrates use questioning to examine ideas about justice and virtue?

Socrates employed a rigorous form of logical argumentation known as the Socratic method, or elenchos, to examine concepts like justice and virtue. Rather than acting as a teacher who provides answers, he presented himself as an ignorant inquirer, asking interlocutors to define key terms such as piety, temperance, or justice.12

Through a series of follow-up questions, Socrates would lead his conversational partners to realize that their initial definitions were inconsistent or inadequate when tested against other premises they had accepted. This process often reduced participants to aporia, or a state of intellectual puzzlement, which Socrates viewed as a necessary step to clear away false beliefs and recognize one's own ignorance—a prerequisite for true wisdom.132

Socrates held firm ethical convictions, most notably that virtue is a form of knowledge and that the unexamined life is not worth living. He believed that anyone who truly understands the nature of virtue will necessarily act virtuously, suggesting that moral wrongdoing stems from ignorance rather than malice. By challenging conventional beliefs, he sought to reorient philosophy toward the "care of the soul," insisting that the cultivation of virtue is the most important obligation of every human being.1432