Arendt cites a quote from Plato multiple times throughout the work, and at the beginning of Chapter 15 she claims that this quote is the answer to the question, “What makes us think?” Plato identified wonder as the origin of philosophy. Arendt agrees with this idea, claiming the goal of thinking is not immortality. It is to wonder, to experience awe, to be puzzled, and to recognize one’s own ignorance.

When humans see something—an iris or a rainbow—they are struck first with an admiring wonder. Philosophy comes into play when humans begin to speculate about the non-visible harmony of the object. Arendt reminds readers that the focus of wonder is, therefore, on the whole—in both the apparent and non-apparent worlds.

As Arendt traces how philosophers have considered thinking, she moves to Rome, which lent a seriousness and legitimacy to the Greek philosophy that it inherited through science. In Greek philosophy, the focus is the actualization of the world. In Roman philosophy, Arendt says the focus is trying to escape the world. One of the ways Roman philosophy does this is by separating the apparent world from reason. By dividing out types of reasoning and giving thinking gravitas, the Romans reconfigured thinking as a type of craftsmanship. The Romans placed reason and logic on one side, and reality and the apparent world on the other. Arendt explains that this is a Stoic position.

The problem with the Roman approach is that it makes the observer entirely objective. When a person looks at an object and then focuses on the act of seeing the object rather than the object itself, the person loses their connection to it and the experience of it in the apparent world. The Roman configuration of science and reason calls for this separation, casting thinkers as entirely objective observers. Arendt argues that this is not the full picture, because the person is also there; they are also a part of the perceiving and the appearing world. The phenomenological experience is an important element of the interaction between object and observer.

In each chapter of this section, Arendt considers the question, “What makes us think?” In this chapter, she explains that professional thinkers have responded to that question with a need that is informed by their social and historical context. She calls this the “helplessness of the thinking ego to give an account of itself” (166-167). She explains that to truly answer this question, she needs a model—someone who was not a philosopher in a traditional sense and who lived both in appearance and the thinking ego. She chooses Socrates as this model.

Socrates did not want to be a ruler; he did not consider himself a majority or a minority. While there is difficulty in parsing out Socrates’s concepts from Plato’s concepts, Socratic dialogues offer insight into Socrates’s approach to thinking. Socratic dialogues operate in a circle, never answering the question. Arendt uses this as evidence that the goal of thinking is the thinking itself rather than the arrival at a fundamental truth. She closes by using metaphors to understand Socrates, including the metaphors of the gadfly, midwife, and an electric ray.

Socrates did not believe thinking would make people wise, but he suggested that it gives life meaning and creates a framework within which people can question whether things are right, good, or just. While thinking is dangerous, not thinking is just as dangerous.

Returning to her original question about the relationship between morality and thinking, Arendt suggests that there is a conclusion. Those who are inspired to think through love—the love of beauty, wisdom, and justice—are capable of morality. Arendt considers two Socratic positivist statements that Socrates offered during his life. Socrates was almost entirely centered on asking questions only, but his two positivist statements underpin Western culture.

The first is that it is better to suffer wrong than to do a wrong. Socrates’s reasoning is that people who think will inevitably reach this conclusion. The second regards remaining true to oneself: “It would be better for me that my lyre or a chorus I directed should be out of time and loud with discord…rather than that I, being one should be out of harmony with myself” (181). Arendt explains that if a person spends time in the thinking ego, then that person will not want to be out of harmony with the self. If a person commits a wrongful act, they will struggle to reconcile themselves in their thinking ego. Although Arendt agrees with Socrates’s statements, she challenges their lack of plurality and their focus on the primacy of the self.