Monday, December 7, 2015

The unexamined life is not worth living




"The unexamined life is not worth living.”
—Socrates, during his trial for heresy in Athens, 399 BC
 
Socrates was in trouble. He had been encouraging the youth to enquire and ask questions, thus challenging the political and religious status quo. He was not teaching people what to think, but for teaching them how to think. The price for his philosophical endeavours was the choice between exile or a fatal dose of hemlock. He defended himself at his trial but to no avail, in the end accepting the hemlock.
Socrates symbolises the great spirit of enquiry, a search for authenticity as well as a resolute defiance in the face of state-sanctioned bullying and forces that kept people shackled in unquestioned limiting beliefs. In Ancient Greece, as with most states and political milieus since that time, the agenda was the teaching of 'what to think' and ‘what to believe’, the tenets of which, if accepted, led to a form of collective sleep.
So what is the meaning of an examined life? If it is the examining of a life subject to intellectual enquiry and analysis, we would be reducing ourselves to just the thinking function of mind, and in doing this our examining would only be partial. As important as our ability to think is – and the knowing of how to think as Socrates championed – even more important is the knowing of who we are, and in this knowing, understanding how we are limited by the mind.

 ©  Andy Green 2015

1 comment:

  1. I guess I see what you mean. It is akin to the realizations of the zen monks of Japan, when they pursue za-zen (sitting zen, or just sitting). We need only observe ourselves to penetrate deeper into who we are, as in your examining life. Just as we are not our thoughts, but rather a faculty for thought. As a zen master once put it, about za-zen; he said - there is za-zen in concept, and then there is za-zen as in sitting. Sitting transforms us, because it is not something held in our concept alone, but is more fundamental to life. We are sitting, we are not thinking about sitting. Thus, the practice of martial arts and healing arts, it is in the doing where we are truly transformed, not as much the thinking about it. The application of things, are more important than the mere conceptualizing of them.

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