Once Socrates' philosophical method began to inspire potentially disruptive questions and changes in the young people of Athens, the people in power become alarmed. They put Socrates on trial for corrupting minds of the youth and destabilizing the social order in Athens.
As is so often the case, once a person such as Socrates starts making an actual difference, that person is shut down as quickly as possible, often through death. The irony of the statement that the unexamined life is not worth living is that it is not for examining his life that Socrates got into trouble: it was through being active in the community by inciting too many other people to do the same.
I agree that an unexamined life is not worth living, but I would emphasize what is implicit in Socrates' statement: that an examined life is primarily worthwhile if it leads to change. Other traditions have understood this: the early Protestants were often fixated on examination of conscience in order to make themselves more virtuous people.
That being said, most traditions also understand that different people have different temperaments or, as we might say, are wired differently. Not everyone wants to spend their life in self-examination, and we need both doers and thinkers to have a healthy and vibrant society, as well as both traditionalists who keep us from throwing the baby out with the bathwater and innovative thinkers who can lead us in new directions. I do believe everyone can benefit from examining their lives but not that everyone has to—or will—do it to the same degree.
When discussing a topic such as this, it is important to recognize that Socrates himself, at least as Plato portrayed him, was a classical virtue ethicist (a mindset which definitely shapes his understanding of what constitutes a good life).
That being said, you should remember that a different moral context would create a radically different answer to that question. A Utilitarian, for example, might associate quality of life with general happiness and lack of suffering. In any case, Socrates' particular phrasing here begs an additional question behind it: what defines a good life to begin with? That's not an easy question to answer, and it is one which defies an absolute response.
At the same time, taken within the context of Apology, Socrates does level a critique of society (as well as of the human condition). Ultimately, within the Apology, he holds that his inquiry provides an important and necessary service to Athens itself.
What is worth keeping in mind when discussing Socrates' thoughts concerning the unexamined life is that it contains the implicit criticism that it is common for people to not be actively self-critical in this fashion, examining their own beliefs, their biases as to why they hold their beliefs, and whether those beliefs actually hold together as well as they would assume. When discussing this question, it might be useful to reflect upon this criticism—on whether it is fair and whether it creates a realistic measure for judging the course of one's life.
This statement occurs in the context of Socrates' trial for asebeia. In this part of the dialogue, Socrates is describing how Chaerephon brought back a message from the Delphic oracle saying that no man was wiser than Socrates. Socrates interprets this as affirming that he has divine authorization for his quest to seek knowledge and question those people who claim to be wise even if he offends them. The specific claim that the unexamined life is not worth living is one he advances in response to the choice of whether he will cease his practice of elenchus in face of the death penalty. In response to that choice, he argues that his life, were he to stop his quest for truth, would not be worth living.
For specific examples, you will need to think about those people such as Socrates, Jesus, and Galileo who died or were persecuted for their beliefs. The statement should not be read in light of twenty-first century narcissism, which tends to be purely inward looking, but in terms of a quest for absolute truth. Emulating Socrates in this, therefore, would involve more in the way of careful reading of the Apology and related books as a form of intellectual inquiry than of pure self-reflection.
What did Socrates say about the unexamined life?
Socrates said that the unexamined life wasn't worth living.
What he meant by this was that a life not devoted to the pursuit of truth and philosophical wisdom was pretty much worthless.
In making such a bold claim, Socrates was asserting the superiority of the philosophical life, a life that he defended with great vigor in front of the citizen jurors during his trial for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens.
Some have criticized Socrates for putting forward an essentially elitist worldview. As only a relatively small number of people are capable of pursuing the examined life, the life of the philosopher, then it follows that truth is only really accessible to a privileged few. In contrast, such critics argue that truth, if it is to have any meaning, must be available to everyone.
Critics have also chided Socrates for what they see as an unnecessary rhetorical flourish. Even if one accepts that the unexamined life is inferior to that of the philosopher, it surely doesn't mean that it is entirely worthless or not worth living.
Engaging in philosophical discourse may well give us a superior pleasure to that found in supposedly lesser activities. But that still doesn't mean that such activities are entirely worthless for those who participate in them.
On the contrary, they can add considerably to our enjoyment of our lives, giving them richness and depth. But because Socrates was a philosopher, and so utterly devoted to the pursuit of truth arrived at through a process of reasoning, he was unable to recognize this.
Is the unexamined life worth living according to Socrates?
This famous line is attributed to Socrates by Plato, his pupil, in the Apology, which Plato claims is a recollection of the trial of Socrates. In context, Socrates means that he is incapable of refraining from his unique brand of philosophy, one which stemmed from challenging basic precepts and long-held conventional wisdoms. He is being asked to come up with a sentence for himself after he has been found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens. In a broader sense, the quote represents Socrates' commitment to philosophy in general and his dialectical method in particular. Through examining what we believe to be true, Socrates argues, we come to understand actual, universal truths. The quote has come to represent the importance of that quest for understanding, which Socrates saw as so important that he was willing to die rather than give up.
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