Jose Lorenzo B.

Angeles III

September 23, 2016

PH 101 E Tan
Arendt: The Answer of Socrates
Most philosophical answers rooted from professional philosophers are not exactly
the answers that must be sought when dealing with the question, What makes us think?
This is because these professional philosophers their answers do not arise from their own
experiences and as a result, its quality of being unsatisfactory, unclear and general makes
it doubtful. This question simply brings us to discover ways to reveal the thinking ego
and the best way to get a hold of the question is to look for a model of great thinking and
is at ease moving between experiences and reflection. The model chosen to further delve
into this topic would be no other than Socrates.
Although there is not much information on Socrates, not even from Plato,
selecting Socrates was not unjustified. Socrates was historically controversial in his
methods, but this choice was based on historical significance that will complement the
representative significance of his thinking philosophy.
None of Socrates arguments stay stagnant for they are always on the move as the
answers sets them in motion. It is Socrates who then moves on to talk about concepts
such as happiness, justice, piety and knowledge, but it is these concepts that are the most
difficult to comprehend and this proves that when arguments and answers are given, they
begin to move. These concepts are perceivable by the eyes of the mind as they are part of
everyday living and must be meditated upon if such concepts were to be further defined.
Socrates was unlike professional philosophers. Socrates, believing in the
teachability of virtue, illustrated this matter by the three key similes he applied to
himself; he is a gadfly, a midwife and an electric ray. He is a gadfly because he is
annoying in the sense that he would hound the people and excites them to thinking and
examination, which he thought was essential in a fully lived life. As a midwife, he guided
people towards a better and justified truth and criticized the opinions of people that had
pre-judgements. The electric ray, contrary to the gadfly, paralyzes instead of arouses the
people including himself. This paralysis basically makes people more confused, and this
confusion he shares with the people he believes to be the highest state of being active and
alive. Socrates methods were really different from that of those professional

philosophers. He puts people in check and criticizes them instead of teaching them to be
better.
Socrates firmly believes that Athens appearance of thinking and examining was
the greatest thing to have ever happened. This brings him to his main concern: What is
thinking good for? He was stuck with the draft of thinking wanted to maintain himself in
it that he did not write anything about it. He used the metaphor of the wind to explain
thinking activity and this basically explains that thinking is invisible yet we know it is
there and we can feel it coming.
Thinking may be a great way to inquire knowledge but it is problematic as it starts
to contradict previous knowledge, but that is simply the nature of thinking. In dealing
with the problems of inquisition of knowledge arose dangers in dealing with it. Socrates
so called worst pupils were inspired to license and cynicism. Failure to find results,
failure to search for meaning would be turned into something negative. To further
illustrate, the example used was the failure to define piety meant to become impious,
which is contrary to what Socrates hoped of achieving by talking about piety. The next
danger is nihilism, which is the wrong way to deal with the uprooting of old rules through
searching meaning. Nihilism is basically meaninglessness or the rejection of the so-called
positive values.
Difficulty should be confronted with thinking because it wakes the mind up and
gives everyday living a definitive experience. Non-thinking is a phenomenon in which
many people today experience in moral and political issues because it is easy and because
thinking just leads to more confusion. Hence, it is easy to change the old norms of people
because they are not fixated on the spirit and meaning of such norms because they remain
unexamined.
The quest for meaning must be in the name of love, to philosophize because of
love for wisdom and beauty. This quest of thinking for love may include only lovable
things, but it is also important to include in the thinking concern the negative concepts for
these concepts, like positive concepts whose original meaning is to be derived, must
follow the same process in order to derive its meaninglessness. That is the essence and
value of thinking.