I’m no stranger to being irritated and instinctually obstinate when it comes to some of the more famous Greek philosophers. So, when the topic was broached about whether or not Socrates was right when he said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I internally jumped to swat the idea down. So, is the unexamined life worth living? The statement sounds great when you don’t think about it very much, but under scrutiny, it seems to be too abstract to really hold up to very much actual examination. First of all, we have no way to concretely determine when a life can truly qualify as “examined”. Secondly, we can’t really say for sure what counts as “examination”. And finally, we need to think about what even makes a life worth living. Is it really examination? Is that the only metric we have that determines the worth of life?
First of all, we need to establish a metric for which to measure what an examined life would be. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone that didn’t consider their life “examined”, and this would be an even bigger problem among people that you could say, with absolute certainty, had not had an introspective thought in their lives. I’d be more confident that the only people that would admit to an unexamined life are those that had done enough self-examination to understand how little they know, which is a little Socratic in and of itself. More to my point, measurement by self-report would be a flawed method to determine whether or not a life is an examined one, since one can’t truly know if they are being honest with themselves, or others, on this topic. Therefore, finding another way to empirically measure self-examination would need to be created. The only thing that comes to mind is collecting a large random sampling of the population and have them listen to two individuals discuss a given topic, and, at the end, have the random sample report who they thought was more persuasive. That sounds great, until you think about the nature of politics, where appearance and presentation are often preferred to a strong argument. And this is without considering that members of the random sample will probably have strongly held pre-existing beliefs, beliefs that will not change regardless of evidence to the contrary. Patrick Rothfuss has a quote that I quite enjoy “Nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.” While I’m certain I could have found a proper philosopher with a quote to the same affect, I’d rather take a chance to plug one of my favorite authors. Anyway, my problem here is that we have no satisfactory way to measure the examination of one’s life, which is a halfway decent lead into my next problem with this statement. What counts as examination?
I have trouble placing a threshold of examination, but it would seem there would have to be one to definitively say, “This life is not examined”. It could be that maybe one has to spend a certain amount of hours in their life examining to reach this level of enlightenment, where your life is finally worth living, and you can stop thinking, but I very much doubt this is what Socrates intended. It could be that examination is a state that you have to maintain, and one can fall in and out of examination. This seems a bit more likely, but now, a method for reaching this state has to be established. If I spend 30 minutes a day on quiet reflection, I believe this would be an adequate way to determine that I am living an examined life. But I don’t care much for adequacy, I’d much rather have a phenomenal way to live an examined life; so, I’ll do what Socrates did, short of standing somewhere and staring off at nothing and being, what I would consider, overly affectionate with my students. I would take concepts that seem simple at first glance, and try to break them down to their simplest parts, and try to show others that we really understand nothing of the things we speak of. And at that final extreme, I can truly and certainly consider my life examined. But this can’t be the only way to examine the world, examination takes place in every science; it even takes place at the level of basic trouble shooting. One doesn’t need to only examine their life in order to have an examined life, and they would still be worthwhile. A doctor who doesn’t have an introspective thought in his life may find a cure to some horrible disease, saving countless lives, however, given his lack of a sufficiently examined life, his existence is ultimately pointless by this standard. Obviously, this is an extreme example, but it shows the value of a life that hasn’t been examined.
I study when I need to. I read when I’m required. I question what the hell I’m doing with my life. I can usually dominate the room when a party reaches the point of drunkenness that everyone starts to question the meaning of all things. And when I’m curious, I pursue that curiosity to my satisfaction. In any general setting, those that know me would insist that I lead an examined life. Now, I’m inclined to think that my examination through comfort or necessity is not what Socrates had in mind. His life was devoted to examination, passive understanding would be a pale shadow of his ideal; on the other hand as evidenced by my lack of suicide attempts, I would still consider my life to be worth living. Part of this could be attributed to having goals and some level of ambition to accomplish greater things but, drudging through organic chemistry has shown me that I’d be entirely satisfied with my life provided I have food and a gym membership. That might be a hypothetical statement, but I know several people whose lives are as simple as that, plus a job they hate, yet, they’re some of the happiest people I know. So, I have to assume that the “worth” of life is something independent of happiness or satisfaction; it has to be one of two remaining ideas. The first would be concerning the intellectual profit that could be collected from a person. What advice can this person offer the rest of the world, what can be gained from their mind? If nothing can be gained from them, then their life must be unexamined, and therefore not worthwhile; this is an idea I am more comfortable with. It may have a whiff of Social Darwinism to it, but it assigns value to those who have something to add aside from wealth. The second would be like some kind of nobility, in the sense that, this man has examined, he is worthy to be part of society, this other has not, and he should not be allowed in. If the previous example had a whiff of Social Darwinism, this idea has a full on stench. This is mainly because it places a heavier emphasis on the exclusion of one group, while the “nobility” is simply at the level of satisfaction, and not the treasured exception.
Now, it’s also worth mentioning the value of ignorance. We commonly say that “ignorance is bliss”, which is ultimately untrue. There are a number of things that I’m happy to not be ignorant of, but the value of ignorance is that you won’t know what you’re supposed to be unhappy about. If a man never examines his life, he won’t have the slightest clue as to what he’s missing. To him, those sophist (although, it’s likely he won’t know that word), those fast-talkin’ fancy folk are always goin’ on about nonsense. He just wants to harvest his crops and hate anyone different from him. We, or I should say “the enlightened” as it seems a bit self-serving and presumptuous to lump myself in as part of the intellectual upper class, they can look down their noses all they want at this theoretical guy, but he’s doing the exact same thing for totally different reasons. To him, a life spent on something that isn’t tangible is not worth living, which is something I’m already inclined to at least partially agree with. After an especially rough term, or even having just spent too long working on a paper, I’ll occupy myself with work that’s very hands on. Working on my bike, fixing up my house, just last week I built a rifle to get over a particularly dull statistics course, and I wouldn’t consider a life completely devoid of mental stimulation to be all that fulfilling, but one that’s completely saturated with nothing but the turnings of the mind would be equally dull. I would value a balance between the two, and that balance is dependent on what each individual finds satisfying to them. A life of thought was valuable to Socrates, it’s what he loved, but to extend your personal experience to everyone is simply flawed. There can’t be a standard of what makes a life worth living, since values, experience, and preferences vary so wildly from person to person. To say that an unexamined life is not worth living is akin to saying that a life without bacon is not worth living. To some, yes, absolutely, but it simply cannot be universally true.
So, where does that all leave us. Well, we’ve seen that it’s at least very difficult to measure any degree of examination in an individual. I want to append this statement now. While we don’t have some way to put a number to an amount of examination, we can get a general feel for it through conversation with an individual. None of this would be scientifically valid, but, I think that’s more of a matter of translation. We know all kinds of things that we’re unable to properly explain. Music is one of those things, you can find an expert of music, and have him explain music to you all day, but without really using music, without hearing it yourself, you can’t really know it. It is possible, and likely, that an examined life is one of those things that you’ll know when you see it. It may very well be that looking for a way to measure examination and its threshold is a waste of time, as we already have a somewhat accurate intuitive sense of it.
While I’m flexible on the idea of examination, I’m a bit more hard headed when it comes to defining worth. I believe that how fulfilling one’s life is is very subjective, and that Socrates statement is trying to apply a very objective outlook. I am so convinced of this that it is exceedingly difficult for me to find a satisfactory counterpoint. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that one doesn’t exist, but I will admit that I am far too entrenched in my own belief, and that I would need someone else to supply my counterpoint. This can be done directly or I could come up with it through discussion of the topic, but at the time of this writing, I’m unable to offer a valid counterpoint.
Finally, I’ve discussed Socrates’ statement that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. I have explained that we have no way to measure examination or establish when one’s life becomes an examined one; however, it may not be necessary to do so. I have looked at worth, and I believe that Socrates had a less than perfect understanding of what makes life worthwhile, as it varies wildly from person to person. I believe that I have proven Socrates’ statement to be flawed, at the very least.