The examined life may not be worth living either

A defense of a casual play-through of life

In Plato’s Apology, the character of Socrates famously suggests that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. As readers, we are meant to infer that Socrates was in fact making a claim about its inverse: that examining your life somehow makes it worth living. This, however, is a bold claim, and when put in such stark terms the shortcomings of the argument are more readily apparent. Even if we take the most generous interpretation of his words, Socrates’ statement ultimately reduces to the following:

1. All unexamined lives are not worth living.
2. Some, or all, examined lives are worth living.
3. The act of examining your life transforms it from not worth living to worth living; though sometimes it may not.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s read “examined life” in the broadest possible sense, and do the same for whatever it is that makes a life “worth living”. Still, the process by which examining your life changes its worth — whether this be its inherent worth or just its apparent one — is still not immediately clear.

Intuitively, Socrates’ words suggest that there is value in deep contemplation and self-education, in “knowing thyself”. This attitude likely resonates with those already predisposed to regular introspection. Through such acts of self-analysis, we can presume that a person creates some form of meaning or worth in their life; alternatively, they may uncover life’s inherent value where it had otherwise been overlooked. But before we analyze how it creates such value, we should first check and make sure the student actually achieves the purported goal. Is it true that after self-examination life subsequently gains new worth?

Experience shows that the value of being alive is more highly correlated with whether or not you are doing what you want to be doing, or with momentary perceived improvements in your conditions (getting married, making more money, achieving an ambition, etc). On the other hand, self-examination and its by-product, self-understanding, tend to grant you greater confidence in your position, control over your emotions, and a clearer vision of where you are going. Although these latter may be valuable in themselves, it would not be correct to say that examining your life is directly correlated with an estimation of its overall value. What if you inspect your life and confidently conclude that it’s worthless? Are there no depressed philosophers?

At its core, Socrates’ admonition is meant to highlight and promote a certain attitude or approach to living, a resolution to go into life with eyes open, having a clear view of what you’re getting into. It criticizes those who don’t bother to look more closely at the gift they have been given, who don’t treasure this precious opportunity to exist, at least enough to study it. Such a criticism is reminiscent of how expert video games players look down on “casual players”, those who don’t bother to commit themselves to fully learn a game’s many nuances, and who are therefore missing out on a large chunk of the experience. In other words, this is a judgment made from the outside; it may not reflect the experiences of the subject themselves. Socrates is saying “your life is not worth living”; the subject themselves is not the one complaining that “my life is not worth living”. There seems to be a mismatch between the two evaluations of worth.

On the other hand, life is not a video game, so the above analogy may not be appropriate. There are many good reasons to examine one’s life which spring from deeper spiritual wells and motives, deeper than a mere superficial appreciation of life’s intricacies. If this is so, we should also assume that to do it right, such an examination would take significant effort and time. It is no weekend retreat or afternoon study session. A person who engaged in self-examination out of passing curiosity, as a dispassionate academic exercise and lacking any sense of commitment, is unlikely to discover a value to life that he or she had hitherto neglected. The task of “examination” is not an easy one; otherwise few would neglect it given so worthwhile a prize.

And it is not without peril either. Poking around in one’s personal psychology can be a hornet’s nest of uncomfortable revelations that most people prefer to leave alone. Overcoming this natural barrier suggests a strong underlying motive compelling the individual to dive in, to brush off any painful truths they may encounter. There must be a reason why Socrates, and thinkers since, have chosen to strip-mine their soul, while foregoing other opportunities to engage in productive pursuits. Why, then, did he choose to pay such a cost, when most people eagerly rejected it, and even put him to death for pushing that same knowledge onto themselves? Why did he so uniquely value self-knowledge?

Here we stumble upon the obvious gap in Socrates’ original assertion. Socrates, like other Athenian philosophers, treated “value” as an objective metric that everyone can partake in equally. Experience shows, however, that the value of understanding something is relative to an individual’s needs. Self-knowledge may be worth a lot to a person who is interested in such knowledge — with an emphasis on the original meaning of “interested”, as in “has a stake in”. Yet some other citizen who did not care about the complexity of life’s experiences would not feel so elated by that knowledge even if it were freely given. They may not even grasp its import. Just as food tastes better when you are hungry, knowledge ultimately gets its meaning and value from a fountain of desire in the student themselves. The latter provides the preparatory groundwork for the student to experience its transformative effect.

Socrates’ own predispositions may have led him to over-value self-knowledge compared to life’s many other delights. It is not that Socrates was lucky enough to grasp some golden prize that others ignored, rather there was a hunger in him he was trying to alleviate that made it worth the effort¹. This gave him, and others like him, the dedication to keep going even when there was no guarantee of reaching his goal.

So what is this unnamed, demonic motivator that drives one to philosophy? Fortunately, it is easy to discover. It is the opposite of the benefits enumerated above (self-confidence, self-control, and clear vision): namely, a fear of life, a turbulent mind, and conflicts of personal identity. These provide ample reason for anyone to examine their life, and have ever since man first became a thinking being. The feeling that something is broken in your life confers a powerful motivation to self-examination, just as a leaky plumbing might spur you to disassemble your toilet. Your hope is to fix something that is askew.

We should therefore rewrite Socrates’ dictum: instead of saying that the unexamined life is not worth living, we can say that a failure to find meaning or worth in your life leads you into such a self-examination. Socrates had simply reversed the direction of cause and effect.

And what about those plebeian “casuals” who, due to chance or circumstance, simply don’t feel they have anything to gain from self-discovery? Would examining their lives actually lead them to find something of transcendent, irreplaceable value? Are they “missing out”? Such a thesis is hard to maintain. It is akin to claiming that “all unexamined toilets must be broken”; whereas the plumbing may be fine, and not need repairing. The claim that the unexamined life is not worth living seems to be based on very little except the preferences and inclinations of its author. He is projecting his own fascinations onto the whole world, and affirming personal value judgments as universal conditions.

¹ For our part, we have discounted the possibility that a cool, intellectual hero like Socrates was ever troubled by personal demons, and that these may have stoked the fire in which he forged his philosophy. We prefer to maintain an idealistic, Buddha-like image of a man who was above fear, desire, and death. This is our own hero-worship at play.