1) Explain Socrates’ quote “An unexamined life is not worth living”

Socrates a Greek philosopher and founder of western philosophy, expressed that the
unexamined life is not worth living. Examining one’s self is the most important task one
can undertake for it alone will give us knowledge to answer how we should live our
lives. I believe that Socrates meant for his quote “unexamined life is not worth living “ is
that as an individual I/we must put aside our common knowledge and understandings
about human existence. In order to understand what it means we must not think in a
humanistic way but we must think from the perspective of an individual who seeks
about his/her self, we must think from the perspective that every creation has its own
form and virtue. That every one of us has our own existence and we must exist in our
fullest potential.
Socrate’s statement was a challenge to all of us to lead a life guided by reason. So why
would we do that? How we should do that? And what are the consequences of not
doing that? Whether we realize it or not, every day we are required to make decisions
about how we go about living our lives, we make choice about the company we keep,
we make choices about how we interact with others, we make choices in how we spend
our time, choices in what we say, how we spend our money, how we raise our children,
what work we do. When you think about it the actions we take in regulating our lives as
human beings usually involve choices, the question to ask ourselves is will we make
those choices using our capacity to reason? Or will we whimsically be directed by
emotions without any real conscious thought invested in our decisions? This capacity to
reason, this ability to carefully consider our actions, it’s that is what truly special and
unique about our species it is seems to me, as it did to Socrates, that to function well as
a human being is to leverage this faculty to its utmost capability in doing, so we will
cultivate a life in which we can flourish and be happy , we can lead the examined life , in
not doing so we will have a life that is unexamined in which happiness and flourishing is
in jeopardy. Life is only worth living when we continually examine our progress toward
our purpose, making sure we are ever advancing toward becoming what we were
purposed to become, the embodiment of our highest self.
2) What is an unexamined life for you and why is it not worth living?
Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. If you want to examine other
people & examine their lives. You have to first examine your own life. As for me, I
believe that unexamined life is like unmusical life which means that if you’re entire life
has no music, you will miss something important. Unexamined life is that don’t think
about your values and your aims & goals and what sort of person you’ll be and how to
live your life then you’ve yielded up the direction of your life to chance and to others
and the decisions that other people make and you’re no better than animal driven about
by things that happened around you & you’ve lost autonomy, you simply not just the
governor of yourself which makes life not worth living. You are just like a robot living in
the rules & wants of the world. Your life is a blank space that only self-examination
could fulfill. Self examination for me is not a matter of getting in touch with your
feelings, delving into your unconscious mind, or finding your true self. Rather it’s more
about working to form an analytical, empirical and indefensible view about how to live
the best kind of life. If you’re into antique radios, ballroom dancing, or fighting for racial
justice, you should be able to say why such things are important to you rather than just
insisting that they are. If you think others are doing something inappropriate, you
should be able to explain to the neutral observer why they should not be doing what
they are doing . Seeking such explanations can force us to ask some hard questions
about our own deeply held principles and this can be a humbling experience. At first I
can feel that Socrates philosophy about life is really demanding but I realized that it is
not so implausible afterall. We need to strive to know why the things that are important
to you are important and encourages us to understand why other have different
attitude for our own. For me the examined life of Socrates inspires us to reconsider
some of our most firmly held beliefs while helping us to appreciate other’s viewpoints
that before we had rejected. I can’t examine my life very well without understanding
how and why other live as they do. Examining our life means we know our purpose and
we strive hard to achieve that purpose and that is to live our lives to the fullest.

3)
4) Socrates , Plato together with Aristotle consider the founders of Western Philosophy. Socrates
believed that philosophy of should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of society.
He attempted to establish an ethical system based on human reason rather than theological
 doctrine. He pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for happiness.
Ultimate wisdom comes from knowing oneself. The more a person knows, the greater his or her
ability to reason and make choices that will bring true happiness.

Plato, on the other hand, his view about self is that their mistakes, were due to their not engaging
properly with a class of entities he called forms

5) Socraets always said that ultimate wisdom comes from knowing oneself. For other philosophers,
when Socrates is talking about soul he meant to refer to a thinking and willing subject. It is safe
to assume that soul for Socrates is the intellectual and moral personality of humans. So when
Socrates said the the sould is the essence of a human person he meant that it is the essence of
humans to think and will. For this reason the soul or the self is the responsible agent for
knowing and acting rightly or wrongly. This is because for Socrates the soul who is the seat of
knowledge and ignorance & of goodness and badness. With this, the sould for Socrates is the
essence of human person, for him the soul is the person’s true self. In fact Socrates said that
when we turn inward in search for self –knowledge, we would eventually discover our true self.
Viewed from this vantage point, the self is our inner being. Since the soul is the essence of
human person and constitutes our personality, Socrates urges us to take care of our soul. For
him we need to take care of our soul to attain a good life. As w