A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Claire Berlinski, Ed. ·
Aug 28, 2011 at 1:56am
Is the unexamined life worth living?
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Jan '11
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
A life left unexamined is a life the worth of which can and never will never be known.
Aug '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Is the trick in the examination , the lack of it, or refusing to constantly measure it against someone else's ?
Some of us are up at ungodly hours working this disaster stateside. I'll need an answer or multiple truckloads of bottled water I can ship into a storm before I return to Morpheus.
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Life is Worth Living.
- Bishop Fulton Sheen
Nov '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Yes. The unexamined life can be worth living. Any argument to the contrary is an unexamined argument not worth accepting.
Neither animals nor children can examine their own life. They do not thereby lead pointless existences. QED.
Better Socrates unsatisfied than a pig satisfied? Sure. But this is not a charter for ovine obliteration.
Even if one were, as a human adult, capable of examining one's own life, and either naturally tended or culpably chose not to do so, one's life might be still be very worth living. Think about it: Is self-examination a necessary condition for a worthwhile life (it's hardly sufficient)? I suspect that the claim that the unexamined life is not worth living is merely self-serving contention propounded by self-obsessed philosophers who, like everyone, tend to equate the ultimate good with their greatest virtue.
In general, run a mile from anyone who proposes to dictate---theoretically or practically--strong necessary conditions for living a worthwhile life. Next thing you know, they'll be wheeling granny off a cliff.
Edited on Aug 28, 2011 at 3:10amRe: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Might we to take the comment as a suggestion that it is a strong moral imperative to try to lead an examined life if one has the opportunity? (I'm not sure that point would stand up to scrutiny in context; one cannot say Socrates was careless with words.) But as a principle?
Mar '11
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
The unexamined life is worth living, but only for the person living it. It becomes the stuff of legacy & legend in ~5 generations, when no one is alive that directly remembers the person. The life is reduced to a biological cycle.
An examined life, I think, necessarily leads one to write their thoughts down, which allows you to "be alive" for future generations. The life transcends the biological cycle.
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
There are many ways to do that besides writing or having children.
Nov '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
I rather lean towards the opposite - a life under examination is not being lived. Somehow one tries to balance the two notions in one's own way.
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Life only transcends the biological cycle when it's written down?
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Examine your life if you wish, but leave the proctoscope in its case.
Jul '11
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Perhaps this question should be posed to enormously happy people who are living their lives, doing the things they love with the people they love, and ask them if they want to take the time to examine their life to determine if it is worth living. Or would they rather just go sailing?
We examine our lives daily in the choices we make, or fail to make. If the question boils down to whether or not we are the person we think we could be, and if our failure to ask that question means that life is not worth living (or worth less, inherently), then I think that completely walks by the concept of happiness. If you are happy, then I would argue that life, by dint of happiness, is worth living - examined or not.
A better question might be: Will you be happier if you examine your life to determine its worth?
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
I don't read it this way at all. Nor can I agree with your concluding line, since happiness is such an equivocal term.
I know people who are happy in the sense that they're going along enjoying their lives, not experiencing much in the way of hardship. They're materially satisfied, they're healthy, they have their hobbies.
Those lives seem to me objectively miserable. They only skirt the surface of their own humanity.
Jun '11
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
There is certainly a place for self examination (2 Corinthians 13:5) but I believe that it is our interactions with others that give life meaning. I am not a student of philosophy but I am told that there is the “brain-in-a-jar” scenario which asks: If there was a machine that could be hooked up to your brain that would perfectly mimic life and could be programmed to provide you with the experience of riches and fame, great sports prowess, political power, whatever your heart desires, would you want to be hooked up to that machine? Most thoughtful people answer in the negative. When asked why, they say that it “wouldn’t be real” because the other people in the simulation wouldn’t be real people. Thoughtful people intuit that a life that is 100% self-referencing is not meaningful; that it is the external reference, the “other” that gives life meaning. Being a Christian, I would be remiss if I did not add that the ultimate “other” is God.
Edited on Aug 28, 2011 at 6:31amMay '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Every other living being reaches its "end" through a natural unfolding process. Only persons have the dignity of being called to achieve our "end" through freedom. That means that we don't necessarily achieve it. We can fail. We can fall drastically short. We will fall short if we don't ever even become aware, don't ask ourselves what we're doing and why with our lives.
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
I'm sure plenty of unexamined lives were very worthwhile for other people.
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
I'm going the ad hominem route here. Of course Socrates said that. His entire life was centered around examination. Without examination, there would be a huge gaping chunk taken out of the ribcage of his life. By a quite well-satisfied but unexamining velociraptor (if I have the time period right). To not say that would be to admit that his life's work wasn't especially meaningful. A carpenter could say an uncarpentiated life is not worth living, but would've sounded silly, and nobody would have bothered recording it for posterity.
Have you ever read the Socratic dialogues? Rubbish. Yes, I know they were written by Plato, but if that's what he was teaching his best students, it's merciful he didn't examine his life too closely. There's no argument or debate. Socrates says "then surely you must agree that.." and the groveling student says "truly, it cannot be otherwise". It's like the media during the Cronkite era. No examination involved there, because nothing is ever challenged.
Practice what you preach, old man. Take a step back and check yourself fore you wreck yourself. By your definition, your life was not worth living.
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
200 words, on the button.
May '10
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
Kennedy Smith:
Have you ever read the Socratic dialogues? Rubbish.
I need a "don't like" button. Maybe a "hate and despise" button.
Edited on Aug 28, 2011 at 6:45amAug '11
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
The question is, do you believe that there's a dimension of depth to life beyond happiness or success as commonly understood? Beyond carpe diem and its many variants. And do you believe it to be a dimension of something like intelligence?
If you are a thinking person you have probably glimpsed some such state of being, but can't say if it is real or just an illusion brought on by too much study, or too much talk, or too much booze, too little sleep or whatever.
But then you would also realize that there's no empirical answer to the question of whether there's any reality there worth striving for. You can't get an assurance worth acting upon from psychologists.
You can only live towards it, and make it real in that. That's what's called an examined life, and if you are seized by that notion to your core then it goes without saying that no other life is worth living.
Mar '11
Re: A Sunday Morning Debate for Those of You With Electricity and Time on Your Hands
The goals of life are not necessarily achieved through self-examination; indeed, this path often leads to endless navel gazing, which in turn leads to indecision and underachievement.
The truth is otherwise: we are put on this earth to make good choices. And if we make good choices, and are fortunate, we can achieve things in our lives that make a lasting and positive impression on the world we leave behind. This the greatest and true purpose of our existences.
Decisiveness is often incompatible with introspection. As a decisive person, I limit my self-examination to only those things that help me make better choices. I have too many thoughtful friends who end up miserable and embittered by opportunities lost.
For better or worse, the people who are best at self examination tend to be the worst at actually making conscious and decisive choices. And those who do not make these choices are merely going through the motions; they are not living life at all.
Edited on Aug 28, 2011 at 7:42am