The chronic ills today’s philosophy has was taken already in the ancient times and the review of the philosophy of Socrates who has to be a model of this philosophy will be an assignment to be decided first in arguing the therapy and counseling through today’s philosophy. Because the review of the connection with life which the philosophy itself has as a new area of such therapy and counseling is inevitable. In order to diagnose the acceleration of pathological phenomena of the life which lasts still even after the philosophical agony and practice between a horrid modern philosophy and postmodern philosophy, we should give a question practically again ‘What is philosophy, indeed?’. Through such a practical question we shall be able to review the philosophy which has dominated us up to this time in the viewpoint of 'life'.
Such an attempt was spotlighted intensively by Foucault from the starting point of Nietzsche, and in the area of recent philosophical counseling it started from Achenbach, a German philosophical practitioner, who approached philosophy in the viewpoint of praxis besides theory. Such approaches reviews the subject, object, purpose and method of philosophy, and points out the limit of philosophy as a theory. Therefore, unlike the theoretical philosophy which has the independence of the subject restricting the subject of philosophy as the philosophy specialist group and the special bigotry restricting their activity place as an ivory tower, in this thesis we cast light on the reason for being of philosophy through the rediscovery of the philosophical Practice as philosophy by a common man in the daily living.
In order to figure out an ambiguous phase which philosophy contains in the relation between philosophy and life, we intend to study the dynamics between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy in the history of philosophy centered on the Pharmakon concept. For this work, first in Chapter 2, we are going to divide the philosophy into two categories, that is, ‘a small philosophy’ symbolizing Socrates’ philosophy which emphasized the philosophy as practice, in contrast ‘a big the philosophy’ of Plato’s philosophy which developed the theoretical philosophy, and survey the adverse effect of the latter philosophy as the poison of the former philosophy. Hereby we study 4 poisons of philosophy focused on the blind spot of the subject, object, purpose and method of the philosophy. In Chapter 3, we’ll review the motive of the event, the death of a small philosophy. And finally in Chapter 4, we plan to analyze the phenomenon of the short life and early death of this small philosophy through Plato’s 5 paradoxes on Socrates, that is, literation of speech, Socrates’ dual imitation, shift from a person making childbirth into a person giving childbirth, shift of letter and world and finally the birth of a big philosopher and the death of a small philosopher.
Through this practical approach, we are going to recall the role of philosophy as well as review of the concept of philosophy, and retrace the meaning of the existence of philosophy. This is the self-awareness and self-care of philosophy that philosophy acts on philosophy through philosophy, and ultimately it will be the self-checkup and self-vaccination so that philosophy may perform a healthful role in the life instead of a pathological role, further perform a practical role of self-therapy.