The quote: "The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates didn't mean that people have no value, or should be executed if they lived unexamined lives. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom; we have the ability to reason and reflect about everything. What he meant was: To live the unexamined life is to live less than a fully human life; not living life the way we were created to live.…
Socrates was the original philosopher. Socrates dies from headlock, he had the choice to live a lonely life with food and water or to take the poison and he picked the headlock, because He believed the search for truth would lead to proper conduct. “The unexamined life is not worth living”, that was the quote that Socrates believed by saying that the purpose of life was personal and spiritual growth. Considered the nature of beauty, knowledge and what is right. His method was to ask questions, to try to expose the flaws in his fellow Athenians' preconceived notions. Socrates went on to teach Plato, the next great Athenian philosopher.…
Freeing from the psychological prison we create by continuously depending on what we see and understand to be true realities can be achieved in learning and logical reasoning. “Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?” (Socrates 19). Demonstrated in this quote, is the beginning stage of acceptance and awareness; hesitation. This growing open-minded approach to unfamiliar situations is required in order to leave behind our old and ignorant ways. Socrates suggests to the reader that preparation for the real world and a need to pursue truths through the use of education will serve as guidance down more desirable life paths. He also introduces the idea of the immense responsibility those who have been fortunate enough to access higher education have to provide leadership and improvement in society. But, with the power of wisdom, comes ridicule and seclusion due to the ignorance prevalent in a population that prefers to live with their minds trapped inside the cave.…
Socrates lived a life of inquiry in order to achieve a fulfilled life of eudaimonia and success. I argue that the Socratic examined life is a process, which should be valued because it teaches one to be critical thinkers, and aids us in the understanding our true actions.…
From there, he begins to say if we already know what we are looking for, then the answer is simple and there wouldn’t be any necessity to go looking for the answer. But, if we don’t know what we are looking for, then how do we know what we found to be correct, if there isn’t a way to see if we’re right. Socrates, then brings up his concept of recollection.…
Socrates and Aristotle were both Greek philosophers who contributed philosophies. Socrates believed that all people contained real knowledge within them and that self critical examination was needed to bring this knowledge out. Socrates once stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In this philosophical idea, Socrates is suggesting that an individual, who chooses to not think about their own actions, does not truly care about their own life. Aristotle believed in the concept of examining individual objects and being able to perceive their form and establish universal principles. These principles did not exist as a separate higher world of reality beyond material things, but were apart of things themselves. Aristotle has stated, “Since human reason is the most godlike part of human nature, a life guided by human reason is superior to any other….For man, this is the life of reason, since the faculty of reason is the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.” Aristotle is suggesting that an individual who logically thinks about their actions before acting on them, are more superior than those who act without thinking because thinking before acting causes less harm and it shows a person who cares for both themselves and others. These philosophical ideas about self examination on thoughts and actions have come a long way. All individuals think in new and advanced ways and frequently think about both consequences and benefits before acting upon ideas.…
His idea is the mind is a dominant weapon in everyday life, one that decides the certainty of all things. In The Apology, Socrates believes that all knowledge comes thru questioning of what he thinks he knows to what he truly is willing to find out. Therefore his ideas of what he thinks he knows…
When he had been informed that he was the wisest man in all of Athens, Socrates had previously never cared to know if this was true, so he began to question the other prominent men of Athens to see if he was truly the wisest. After a discussion with one of the politicians of the city, Socrates deduced, “It seems that I’m wiser than he in just this one small way: that what I don’t know, I don’t think I know.” In this example, Socrates discovers that which holds men back from being truly wise is that they don’t set aside their humility for the exploration of truth. By claiming to know what is true when one actually does not know, one injures the mind. This then is expressed in such a way that hinders one’s ability to interact with others for he will attempt to prove what he does not know, making him unauthentic. When examining, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiæ he states that “Humility restrains desires from unreasonable heights.”…
Humanity’s most basic problem according to Socrates is ignorance. People have the tendency to think way too highly of themselves. They even become ignorant of their own ignorance. [The Apology 24b-26e]…
Socrates spent his life looking for the truth. He was looked at as being a crazy old man, but that was something he was far from. Socrates looked for a certain answer he would know to be true. Anyone can question everything but Socrates did it in such a way that you wanted to answer his questions in order to prove yourself right. When answering his questions however, people would end up changing their minds and from what they originally thought too not having any idea what they thought. Socrates didn't do this though to confuse the person he was having a conversation with, but he was just trying to find the truth about the world.…
Socrates believed that philosophy prepares the soul for the separation of the body when it is time for us to die. Also, he insisted that death is not necessarily a bad thing. Socrates had two views on death, that is to be nonexistent or something happens to the soul at death and gets transported to another world. I disagree with his opinions on death because he says that death is like a “dreamless sleep” and he does not consider what could happen to the soul after death.…
I have never been a big fan of reincarnation, but I think it’s really interesting that how Socrates looked at it. I think it’s true that we knew the stuff that we know now from before. The brain is the most complicated organs in the body and doesn’t matter how much science improved and now we know about brain way much more, but still there’s a lot of mystery that we don’t know about it and recollection could be one of them.…
One of the most fundamentally true statements ever uttered is “the unexamined life is not worth living”. This statement was professed by the one and only Socrates while he argued for his life during his final trial. This statement was recorded in his pupil, Plato’s, text entitled The Apology. In our modern lives we have endless distractions; in our modern lives we have constant stimulation, and in our modern lives we have a need to constantly seek cultural approval -over all else. These never ceasing qualities of our culture lead us far from fulfilling lives; ironically all that our own media show us are images of people living fulfilling lives and yet all we can dream of is fulfilling our lives. These societally imposed ideas of gaining cultural…
"If I do not know what something is, how could I know what qualities it possesses?" (Socrates) this idea presented to Meno creates the foundation for what is called Meno’s Paradox. This paradox evaluates the question of how are we to find things in the universe if we cannot know where to begin to look? And if we know where to look for the answer then why are we looking? Socrates, however, challenges Meno’s idea by saying that we may not know all things but we know some and by using deductive reasoning we are able to find such answers. This creates the idea that all knowledge is premeditated, “…a process men call learning- discovering…are as a whole recollection” (Socrates).…
Socrates believed that the purpose of human life was personal and spiritual growth. We can't develop toward more prominent comprehension of our actual nature unless we take an ideal opportunity to analyze and reflect upon our life. . The importance of the quote is good for nothing because the significance of the word unexamined is ambiguous. I most definitely agree with Socrates that unexamined life is not worth living for.…