Should we philosophize as individuals, or as members of society-at-large?

Question:Philosophizing as best as you can as an individual is tantamount to serving your duty to society...philosophically speaking.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Philosophizing as best as you can as an individual is tantamount to serving your duty to society...philosophically speaking.

Wow, great question.

I believe that it works both ways and is intertwined. Take a philosophy class for example. Before I started that class, I knew little about what philosophy actually was. The teacher, as an individual, explained to members of society. In turn, we gave HIM new ideas. Then, we were able to go and venture on our own and think about what we had learned and then talk about it with others.

Philosophically speaking your are an individual social being. In other words, whatever you do you do not only as an individual you also do as a social being. That makes an individual an individual member of society and therefor whatever he does to be a social activity also.
What that individual does, how he is active, sometimes more active and sometimes less active, and that means not only must an individual think for himself he also must think for the social activity within which he has inserted himself or finds himself inserted in.
I think that at some point or other all of us mostly insert ourselves into the social reality or our culture some in more than cooperative ways. I find the modern society of today to be more than sufficient for me to find and obtain the energy I need to continue on. And finding original and good ways to work out the many contradictions in life and reality our so complicated society, to find the "win, win" place for everybody. So one would have to work these contradictions out in a determinately positive manner socially, naturally would have to philosophize heavily I imagine.

I have to commend you, this is a great question.

In my opinion, we should first and foremost philosophize for society-at-large. We have to know where we are and how to act, since being with other people is an inevitable fact since we live in this world full of beings. But we should not stop there, we should also find the uniqueness in us. We should not settle for what "they" say. We should find our own voice as well. Since we are all unique. We should not compromise, we should have our own values that we figured out ourselves.
We can have the same ideals with other people, but the important thing is that you figured it out yourself and did not blindly follow other people.

We should think for ourselves since the mind is an attribute of an individual. nobody can think for you and you can not think for anybody else.

just as 'one of us ' or 'we'