Socratic questioning term paper

Introduction

Socrates was one of the supreme educators of philosophy in the ancient times. He is widely renowned for his skill of teaching using questions in class. As a result, he used to draw answers from his students. Socrates remarkably used six types of questions while teaching philosophy to his students. However, in this case we shall use three of his questions to show how the mission statement of Bella Vita addresses these questions. Based on the effectiveness of the mission statement in addressing the Socratic questions, the paper shall make recommendations to improve the mission statement. The mission statement of Bella Vita is to provide long term ongoing residential services to youths at risk designed to enhance intellectual growth; empowerment and skills that will help them become productive adults. The three Socratic questions that we shall be focusing on are; conceptual clarification questions, probe implications and consequences and questioning viewpoints and perspectives.

Conceptual clarification questions

Probe implications and Consequences
These types of questions are mainly determined to know if there are any logical implications and if they make sense (Phillips, 2004). They are further interested in knowing what would happen after something is done. Thus they also seek to know the consequences of an assumption made by people. In Bella Vita’s mission statement, the part that addresses this question is “ to enhance intellectual growth”. This is because the consequence of providing the ongoing residential services is to provide intellectual growth to the youths. Hence, this part shows the implications of the actions taken by the organization. It would however, be recommended that this mission statement be drafted well so as to provide answer as to the importance of these activities. It should also be in a position to give the best implication accrued.

Questioning viewpoints and perspectives

In this last type of questions, the main distinct feature is that queries are given from a particular point of view (Hintikka, 2007). In this type of Socratic questioning, we are interested in answering questions such as; who benefits from the actions taken? or why is it better? Thus, from Bella Vita’s mission statement the beneficiaries of the activities to be undertaken are the youths. Whereas it is better to undertake these activities since it offers empowerment and skills that will help them become productive as is specified in the mission statement. Thus the mission statement addresses the questioning on viewpoints and perspectives. However, it would be recommended that the mission statement be modified so as to give the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Furthermore, the mission statement should be in a position to give other alternative perspectives of dealing with the problem.

References

Phillips, C. (2004). Six questions of Socrates: A modern-day journey of discovery through world philosophy. New York: W. W. Norton.
Hintikka, J. (2007). Socratic epistemology: Explorations of knowledge-seeking by questioning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.