Topics Value

Question Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Would my life be less valuable if I chose not to examine it? If I simply did everything according to the conventions and mores of my society, would my life be less valuable than someone who questioned these things deeply?

Accepted:
December 26, 2007

Comments

A good question! In the most important sense, the answer is no. But theterritory is a bit complicated.

Start with the famous quote from Socrates. If we think about it, we'rebound to say that many unexamined lives are unquestionably worth living.Socrates' comment is hyperbole at best and perhaps something much worse. Somepeople just don't have the temperament for reflection. But that doesn't meanthey can't be kind, generous and decent, it doesn't mean that they can't leadsatisfying lives, it doesn't mean that the world would have been better withoutthem, and it certainly doesn't mean that they might as well not have lived atall.

Of course, we're all obliged -- insofar as we're able -- to do some localthinking. At the least, we're sometimes obliged to think about the consequencesof our actions for others. We're sometimes obliged to ask whether our motiveswould stand up to scrutiny. More generally, we're obliged to do what's right,and that sometimes calls for a certain amount of self-examination. If that'sall Socrates meant, then we might concede that he's right after all. But he'susually taken to mean much more: he's usually taken to mean that we need tosubject our lives to thorough philosophical scrutiny -- to ask the BigQuestions and to ponder how we fit into the grand scheme of things. For my ownpart, I don't see any defensible way to that conclusion. It's a fine thing thatsome people live this sort of life, but it's not for everyone and hardly couldbe, given the variety of human nature.

Perhaps there's a weaker, more plausible idea in the neighborhood. Perhapsthe claim is that our lives will be richer, more meaningful, more fullyactualized if we engage in this sort of reflection. However, unless we define"richer," "meaningful" and "actualized" byinsisting that they call for Socratic-style self-examination, this claim is nomore than a suspect conjecture about what makes for human flourishing.And my own conjecture is that there are many ways of leading a rich life, notall of them of the sort that Socrates had in mind.

Some weaker claims are more plausible. If we want to lead"balanced" or "rounded" lives, then it's hard to deny thata certain amount of reflection will be part of the package. Striving to lead abalanced life is a reasonable aspiration, but not all lives worth living arebalanced in this way.

Perhaps, since this is, after all, a philosophy board, we might try anothertack: self-examination is part of the life of a wise person. That maywell be true. But there's a danger: wisdom arguably isn't the fruit oftheoretical reflection. A wise person might just as well be one for whom thehard-won lessons of experience have become second nature.

A handful of brief concluding thoughts. It's interesting to note thatthe ideal type of ancient Chinese Taoism doesn't seem to be someone who spendstime navel-gazing. Taoism is contemptuous of learning and of Confucian-stylevirtue, and the life of the ideal Taoist type is characterized by "wu wei"-- effortless effort. For an interesting discussion of the balance between reflectionand simply living one's life, you look at Valerie Tiberius's essay "Wisdomand Perspective," in the Journal of Philosophy, April 2005. Andfinally, one prominent recent notion of the examined life is of a life seen byits subject as having a narrative wholeness -- something that presumably couldonly come with considerable self-examination. For a highly skeptical take onthat point of view, you might find it interesting to read Galen Stawson's"Against Narrativity," in Ratio, December 2004.