The unexamined life is not worth living

Woza477 · Newbie

The unexamined life is not worth living

js · Member

thank you for starting a topic requiring profound thinking and careful analysis without stepping on sensitive toes. I have to say l agree with socrates. I maybe off a little bit, but my understanding of this quote, is that we live by examining our lives, correcting the mistakes of yesterday, and improving on the success of today in order to perfect tomorrow. we can not live by unlinking yesterdays, todays and tomorrows. thus once in while we need to stop and analytically assess our lives and see if the current course is worth continuining or changes need to be made. on that note if we dwell on the mistakes of yesterday and worry about the problems of tomorrow today will pass us by.

Woza477 · Newbie

JS I commend you for taking your time to critically dissect and analyse the big mans quotation, i have to acknowledge you are dead on.
I totally agree with your analysis, life is indeed a journey and at some point we need to look in the rear back mirror .
Just to add on to what you said however from a different angle i also feel that the unexamined life is one in which people should question whatever they are told to be true and real . We need to reflect or reason beyond the mere words that's passed along to us. Many, if not most of the opinions we hold in our lives have been told to us by others. If we do not examine them we are then living our lives as extensions of the sources of the things that we've been told.

The examined life on the other hand is a journey. To journey along the path of the examined life one is always seeking more. One is not content with what may be true or with what appears to be true. If you are living an examined life you have questions; you take the time to reflect upon what is told to you and measure the relevance of each piece of information and the lesson from each life experience against one another. You seek to truly form your own opinions based upon reasoned thought.

So an individual who is living the examined life acknowledges that no matter how much wisdom they have there is always more that they don't know.
I've learned alot from this forum and i know for sure will continue to do so and many will learn from me as the journey in life continues.

Woza477

-- Edited by Woza477 at 07:20, 2005-03-30

Njiba · Veteran Member

Amuna woza477,

from what i know of philosphy the unexamined life is not only constant assessment of ones life but also seeking improvement to it. The process of life is therefore continuous as you have said its a journey and i would like to add without a destination. When you arrive at the point when you feel you do not have anymore to learn realise that the barrier you are facing is self imposed because there is more to learn.

now as contreversial as it would seem ( interesting yet though ) if any of you think you are completeley made and there is nothing anyone can tell you,thats fine. However if you have not heard from every one and analysed all those opinions ( which you obviously have not since you will not have heard from everyone ) your life is unexamined to all perspectives and therefore there is the possibility that your angle of pursuit is wrong which is not a proeblem unless you deny it. There after you just become plain IGNORANT!!

Njiba ( i hope this makes sense, i am very drunk and i miss my GF right now )

Paudah_Paf · Member

quote:
Originally posted by: Woza477
"THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING (SOCRATES)
Peoples what do you make of this socrates quotation. I thought the forum needs a topic thats different and prompts critical thinking
"

Another mindbender.

Look at it in the context of Descartes' " I think therefore am"

Do I think because I exist, or do I exist because I think?

So essentially, what Socrates implies is that if we do not examine (think about) our existence, we are little better than non-sentient beasts or inorganic matter.
A waste of life.

Seek not only to exist but try also to understand WHY you exist.
What is your purpose?
Are you fulfilling it?

I cannot know what life I lived if at the end of it I have no benchmark to measure it against.

That's my two cents...

skillzmanifest · Senior Member

I would agree with the quote, looking at it from that perspective. It undoubtedly was a plausible interpretation, but I think we must take into consideration the theme in his apology, which suggests that we spend our entire lives discoursing about virtue, justice, goodness and most importantly the possession of true knowledge. For those of you who don't know, Socrates was a peasant who was told that he is wisest above all men from the oracle at Delphi, through a third hand source. He refused to believe it because he knew that he in fact possessed little or no wisdom at all. This was what prompted him to search for true wisdom and where the idea of philosophy came from. Broken down in Greek, it means to love wisdom. But within the context, it would mean to seek wisdom. He went to each and every kind of authority in the Greek city state, Athens, searching for it and constantly questioning people about everything they knew. He not only came to the conclusion that no one really had any wisdom, but also that everybody was unaware of their ignorance. He was the only one that acknowledged his own ignorance and in that respect he really was the wisest. However, notice that he acknowledges this after the oracle at delphi .the question we remain asking ourselves now is; what is true wisdom? is it attainable? If so how? Although these questions stimulate all kinds of philosophical ideas, it’s quite obvious that it doesn’t exist. Socrates himself never found it and died while still in pursuit of it. On the flipside, what’s the point of seeking something you can know you can’t get? Some things in life just don’t need examining, let alone have a rational explanation.