Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge
If no one is wiser than Socrates, that might simply be because everyone is equally unwise. (So too, it may be that no one in the room is taller than Yael, not because she is taller than everyone else, but rather because everyone in the room, including Yael, is exactly the same height.)
Mitchell S. Green • Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge
a life that is missing something of value should not be equated with living a life that is not to be lived.
Mitchell S. Green • Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge
Similarly, artisans certainly know better than Socrates how to cut and shape wood to be used in the bow of a trireme, or how to fashion an urn. However, all too often such people take their skills to qualify them to pronounce on great questions of justice, virtue, and the like; and here Socrates found that their views on these matters are not well
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Knowing oneself requires self-examination, but not in a sense that would come most naturally to contemporary readers. Instead, self-examination as understood by Socrates requires investigating, through debate and dialogue, the contours of concepts that seem necessary for living a good life: knowledge, justice, virtue, piety, and the like.
Mitchell S. Green • Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge
an unexamined life is one in which we do not engage in conversation with others or even ourselves about the nature of these fundamental concepts, but rather behave in accordance with our unreflective grasp of those concepts.
Mitchell S. Green • Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge
“Everything Happens for a Reason” I have heard this slogan countless times. In everyday contexts it is not said as an affirmation of universal causality, which would contradict accepted principles of quantum mechanics. Rather, it is normally said as a way of suggesting that when something befalls a person, such as life-threatening illness or failur
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What is more, this seems independently plausible: Pallavi does great things, but if she has never reflected on the reason why it is important to save animals from being euthanized, we may feel there is something hollow, perhaps even dogmatic, in her way of thinking. So too, while it may seem obvious that providing safe drinking water for people is
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It seems as though in this regard living the unexamined life is less about constantly thinking and possibly overthinking every aspect of life and instead involves reflecting in the why aspect of the things we do. Meaning that an unexamined life in itself is not worth living but that not examining a life even IF it is worth living can leave it feeling hollow or absent of a true purpose of existence. It becomes less about the individual and the life they live and instead becomes about following some social dogma or external pressure from family, friends, coworkers or society in general. Being a doctor that saves lives can be considered a life worth living but living this life unexamined can mean pursuing a career or identity that is not true to the one pursuing it.
So I withdrew and thought to myself: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.” (Five Dialogues,
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contemporary life presents us with so many possibilities of fulfillment that no one could pursue them all with enough consistency and commitment to achieve the value that all these sources have to offer.