Philosophy Don't Dream it, Be it:

the value of the "unexamined" life.

In the story of the Apology, Socrates is put on trial for corrupting the young, something which (according to his testimony) he does by convincing them to examine their life closely and learn to question all their assumptions. In the course of his defense, he makes the oft-repeated claim "...the unexamined life is not worth living..." (Apology) He supports this opinion with numerous theories regarding the value of truth and the relationship between morality and philosophy. Socrates and most intellectuals since his time, have been of the firm opinion that "higher" pursuits such as self-examination and philosophy make for a better life. However, the actual value of living the heavily-examined life could be open to debate. In fact, it is the opinion of this writer that the examined life may indeed be inferior to the unexamined life: examination may lead to an over-intellectualization of the world and a divorce from the sensualization of the actually mystic world, while over-thinking can cause one to lose pleasure and initiative.

To Socrates, the unexamined life is that life in which one is ignorant of one's ignorance. He describes how he went to wise men and...

So he questioned to himself "whether I would like to be as was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was." (Apology) He continues to describe how people go about their lives, condemned by their own ignorance to suffer without even knowing that they suffer. They so "go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong." (Apology) To truly understand Socrates' horror of the unexamined life, one must turn to his allegory of the cave. In this story he refers to the world as a cave in which men are prisoners. The sun beyond the cave mouth shines across objects and actors on the outside and cast shadows on the wall. These shadows are what the men in the cave, without examination, call reality. The man who has truly examined life is like one who has stepped outside the cave, and there is nothing that could convince him to go back: "if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows ...do you think that he would care for such honors…