Socrates' Words in Plato's "Apology"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, describing in Plato's " Apology", Socrates went to wise men, politicians, poets and artisans and, in each case, he found that they had no answers to his questions and that their wisdom was false; thereby, Socrates concluded that the unexamined life is a life in which one is ignorant of one's ignorance. The author argues that the over-examination of life may lead to an over-intellectualization of the world, a divorce from the sensualization of the actually mystic world and a loss of pleasure and initiative. The paper concludes that, if Plato tries to argue that the unexamined life in the sensual world is not worth living, maybe that is because he has forgotten his own body's language because the unthinking life is the most in tune with the body and the sensual nature of the real physical world.

From the Paper:

"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 and glories, or envy the possessors of them?""

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