Socratic Questioning

Socratic Questioning derives from the ways of the Greek philosopher, Socrates. Because Socrates is credited with methods in teaching and thinking in our civilization, it is natural we would sponge off of his ideas when delving and thinking critically. Socratic Questioning is a way of thinking, particularly pertaining in the lectures by Cornel West to the black community and their maturity in accepting the forms of death. The terrorized black people of the time, and of today, and the entire country of America post-September 11th, began to question their relation to these forms of death, their relation to the earth, and also how one was perceived by his peers and how people were to define themselves. This is the method of Socrates - to think about where you were and what you meant relative to the things around you. When one tolerated the bad things happening, it was because they had the courage to question Socratically. Because black people at the time were willing to raise the questions revolving around what it "meant to be human", they tolerated the terrorism against them with civil rights movements and not flowery, romanticized speeches and angry idealism. Of course, this ties in with prophetic witness and utmost maturity among their community. America currently feels subjet to random violence because of who they are, and they have not yet questioned Socratically as a whole, so they do not have the maturity or the courage to face death in its various states. The black community from the time period before the Civil War and of today, however, mostly have that maturity because they have thought. They have long ago started the process of Socratic Questioning. Socratic Questioning is distinguishing the truth. Socratic questioning is the process of examining your life and deciding what role you play as an organism on Earth, as a person in your community, as a member of your family and as a citizen of your country. It is to look deeply at the history and the present and determine what part you take in it.
As an ethical democratic citizen one must stop living the unexamined life, because "the unexamined life is not worth living". The Socratic method requires you to really delve and examine your existence as a human and as a functioning part of a community and of a planet. For the first 79 years of democracy, the entire American populus, minus the black slaves not even considered citizens, lived a life of "comfort, convenience and contentment", referred to by West as the "Hotel civilization" - not coming to terms with and playing down the forms of death. The denial of the forms of death was even apparent in our constitution, which does not mention the slave trade. The slave trade, according to West, was denial and hypocrasy. For one to question Socratically, and be an ethical democratic citizen living in America, one has to question their existence and have the courage to think prophetically.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.