[citation needed] For Socrates (469–399 BC), intellectualism is the view that "one will do what is right or best just as soon as one truly understands what is right or best"; that virtue is a purely intellectual matter, since virtue and knowledge are cerebral relatives, which a person accrues and improves with dedication to reason.
[3][4] So defined, Socratic intellectualism became a key philosophic doctrine of Stoicism.
The following are among the so-called Socratic paradoxes:[6] However, it is clear in Meno that virtue is not knowledge, rather True Belief.
Typically, Stoic accounts of care for the self required specific ascetic exercises meant to ensure that not only was knowledge of truth memorized, but learned, and then integrated to the self, in the course of transforming oneself into a good person.
Achieving that difficult task required continual care of the self, but also meant being someone who embodies truth, and so can readily practice the Classical-era rhetorical device of parrhesia: "to speak candidly, and to ask forgiveness for so speaking"; and, by extension, practice the moral obligation to speak the truth, even at personal risk.