"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
