Socrates was a Greek philosopher and orator, he did not write any book. Plato was his disciple and he write in his works about him. We find references to Socrates basically in the main books of Plato: The Republic, the banquet and In defense of Socrates. In these books Socrates is a figure that through his dialogues with his interlocutors seeks truth, happiness and self-knowledge, is what is known as Mayeutic.
In the work The banquet dialogues with Diotimia about love, concluding that the true love is the Agape or good love. In the Republic, Socrates dialogues with Trasimac and Glaucon about justice, and the good government of the Polis or city; and finally in Defense of Socrates, there is a dialogue between him and Critias about the nature of man and the gods.
While there is much discussion about the Socratic or Mayeutic method, what underlies the dialogues is the good discernment that seeks the truth, that is to say the dialogues, although they have a certain naturality, they have a precise progressivity towards a final instruction that is wisdom. , that is, the knowledge of the good living. Socrates was clearly a doctor of wisdom, that is, a person trained to teach the mother of all sciences.
His most famous quote, that comes to us through Plato is: Know Yourself.
Knowing yourself is to know how discern. Discern involves knowing accurately to separate good from evil. When we discern we know what is our dark side and our light side. But not all people discern.
There is an intermediate state between good and evil dominated by passions, by emotions, and the emotions generate blockades. Our emotional side generates repressed conflicts, that we can not assume.
That is why emotional people have difficulty to know themselves. For many people the self-knowledge is a difficult process, tortuous and painful.
Discern with intelligence whether in a destructive way or an uplifting sense is one of the greatest spiritual and philosophical goals of the individual, or in other words to learn how to "think coldly". This is the end to achieve in many sciences that study human behavior. This is the main purpose of the "coach", the talent of the "coach" is to help to discern with intelligence.
The most destructive human actions often arise from our unresolved emotional conflicts. Know ourselves with intelligence is in a sense have more rational and logical control, or to say domain, over our mind and this translates into the ability to know our limits to dominate our whims and unconscious impulses.
The domain is the prize the true self knowledge.