Socrates, the man who forever changed philosophy forever. In fact, he changed it so much that when trying to put ancient philosophy into a timeline, it is often broken up into “Pre-Socratic”, “Socratic”, and “Post-Socratic”. This is just one form of breaking it up of course, but it does highlight the importance of Socrates. Socrates was especially different in that he brought philosophy to the common man; his idea was that anyone could be a philosopher. He was able to think this because of both his mission that he lived out, and how he approached knowledge. The Socratic Method can be applied to our own lives in different ways, and this paper will show how important his line of thinking is important still to this day.
So, what made Socrates …show more content…
For example, why do we think that is “okay” to speed when someone is hurt or ill, but it is not okay when people speed because they are in a hurry to get to a party? I think this lies with where we place our values. We value the life of someone above the law of the speed limit; while in contrast, we value the law of the speed limit above someone getting on time for a party. We cannot stop there however, Socrates has taught us to question everything. So diving deeper, why do we have a speed limit? There are a few different reasons, used in different situations. For example, the speed limit is 20 mph is a school zone. This is for safety of the citizens, namely the children who may not know not to run out into the road. But there are other speed limits, such as the suggested ones we see on curves of the road. These are made less for the safety of the public (than in the case of a school zone) than it is for the safety of the individual, you. There are many reasons we have speed limits, but I will use the Socratic Method to find one final important one by asking the question, why are there often 55 mph speed limits (in Oregon) in even long flat areas where there is not much more safety issue for driving much faster? This is can be traced back to the Oil Crisis of 1973 where the Federal government put the 55 mph speed limit in place in order to conserve gasoline. While this may be an all well and good …show more content…
Using the power of asking questions, we can avoid the trappings of faulty premises for our logical arguments. For example, using ad hominem attacks may appear persuasive for some, but when you dig down and ask questions you can see that it does not hold water. We can ask the question, can a crazy person have true words? The answer (depending on your definition of truth) would be yes. A crazy person can say that 2 + 2 = 4, does the fact that a ‘crazy person’ said it mean that it’s not true? Of course not. Can we always trust what a ‘sane person’ says? Again, we cannot. So by asking questions, once again we can see that we can learn more. In this case, we can learn to judge an argument based upon its own grounds and not upon who the person themselves are. In fact, asking questions has been a large developing point for philosophy; anyone can ask questions, right? So this again leads to the point that anyone, regardless of race, sex, class, etc, can be a
So, what made Socrates …show more content…
For example, why do we think that is “okay” to speed when someone is hurt or ill, but it is not okay when people speed because they are in a hurry to get to a party? I think this lies with where we place our values. We value the life of someone above the law of the speed limit; while in contrast, we value the law of the speed limit above someone getting on time for a party. We cannot stop there however, Socrates has taught us to question everything. So diving deeper, why do we have a speed limit? There are a few different reasons, used in different situations. For example, the speed limit is 20 mph is a school zone. This is for safety of the citizens, namely the children who may not know not to run out into the road. But there are other speed limits, such as the suggested ones we see on curves of the road. These are made less for the safety of the public (than in the case of a school zone) than it is for the safety of the individual, you. There are many reasons we have speed limits, but I will use the Socratic Method to find one final important one by asking the question, why are there often 55 mph speed limits (in Oregon) in even long flat areas where there is not much more safety issue for driving much faster? This is can be traced back to the Oil Crisis of 1973 where the Federal government put the 55 mph speed limit in place in order to conserve gasoline. While this may be an all well and good …show more content…
Using the power of asking questions, we can avoid the trappings of faulty premises for our logical arguments. For example, using ad hominem attacks may appear persuasive for some, but when you dig down and ask questions you can see that it does not hold water. We can ask the question, can a crazy person have true words? The answer (depending on your definition of truth) would be yes. A crazy person can say that 2 + 2 = 4, does the fact that a ‘crazy person’ said it mean that it’s not true? Of course not. Can we always trust what a ‘sane person’ says? Again, we cannot. So by asking questions, once again we can see that we can learn more. In this case, we can learn to judge an argument based upon its own grounds and not upon who the person themselves are. In fact, asking questions has been a large developing point for philosophy; anyone can ask questions, right? So this again leads to the point that anyone, regardless of race, sex, class, etc, can be a