PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICE
www.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org
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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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Part 1: About the Examined Life
Practical Philosophy Spring 2002 Volume 5.1 Pages 6-6
Tim LeBon
Considering its implicit message, the fact that the slogan ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ is so little examined itself is rather embarrassing and something the writers in this section go some way towards addressing. As soon as the slogan is examined, it really does not bear much scrutiny if taken literally. At best, it’s an exaggeration, at worst, it’s distastefully elitist. Is Socrates really condemning the life of everyone who does not engage in philosophical enquiry as worthless?
Joseph Sen, along with several writers in this volume, interprets the slogan somewhat differently. He understands Socrates’ words not to be propaganda but as a personal statement of what is valuable in his own life. Having said that, Sen does think that philosophy has a universal value. Why? Because ‘Examination brings thought to our thinking.’ Why do we need that? Because ‘our minds are not invulnerable fortresses, immune to external influence - [These influences] get into our feet even when we walk along a beach with our shoes on.’ So philosophy is a way of checking out that our unexamined opinions have some validity. The quest for the examined life is then, for Sen, what philosophy is all about.
In contrast Eite Veening, makes an impassioned case against the continued use of the slogan by the practical philosophy movement. Whilst he readily admits that he himself benefits from examining his life - and he does it more than most of us - ‘3 times a week for about half an hour’, Veening is vehemently opposed to the slogan’s intellectualist and elitist overtones. ‘Consider my late grandmother’ writes Veening. ‘She was in her nineties when she died and she was an old-fashioned woman with all kinds of daily worries throughout her life and a lot of happiness too. Did she ever really examine her life? I don’t think she did; not more than considering day-to-day decisions and looking back at life-events. Was her life worth living? So, says Veening ‘Let us stop thinking this way...’. Perhaps readers who agree with Veening will be inspired to invent an alternative slogan.
Brian Domino outlines an argument
inspired by the Nietzsche of Ecce Homo not so much against the slogan,
but against the pursuit of the examined life. It might well, argue Domino
and Nietzsche, be a recipe for ruin. Domino would, I think, take Sen’s analogy
of influences getting in our feet like sand on a beach further, and say that
the sand doesn’t just get into our feet -it gets much deeper. The sands of history
permeate our whole worldview, and so make an objective re-examination impossible.
‘Taking a Socratic peek at our subconscious machinations exposes the self to
the deleterious contagions that western morality unwittingly carries with it’
writes Domino. Rather than introspect on the ‘big things’ such as the nature
of virtue, Domino advocates a ‘therapy of little things’. We should ‘experiment
with minor changes in four domains: nutrition, place and climate, recreation
and selfishness’ ‘Perhaps’ concludes Domino ‘it is time to begin with the little
things and work up to the big ones. We might discover that the so-called big
things are not really so important.’
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