The Unexamined Life

Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you. If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical. On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less (Plato, Apology, 38a).

Socrates was charged with the crime of corrupting the youth of Athens. This corruption was not the kind we talk about in the twenty-first century; it was about his devotion to a life of philosophy, asking questions where questions weren't welcomed, but most importantly, because he taught the young Athenian men to question their elders. He had corrupted their blind devotion to the state - obedience to the state was a sign of piousness, disobedience (asking questions) a sign of impiousness - and the penalty for impiousness was death.

Socrates drank the hemlock because of an activity that is considered a crime even today. Obedience is still considered virtuous, and the death penalty awaits those who ask questions the state doesn't want to answer. But as Socrates told Critos:

[I]s life worth living for us with that part of us that corrupted that unjust actions harms and just actions benefits? Or do we think that part of us, whatever it is, that is concerned with justice and injustice, is inferior to the body?

Socrates considered death preferable to a life that cannot be examined out of fear for punishment. Countless individuals across the centuries have chosen the same fate. Only last week, in Turkey, peaceful protestors were executed by the police; they preferred to die rather than live in a repressive society.

Justice is like beauty and goodness; they are always in conflict with their counter parts, and demand that we pick a side. Socrates chose justice. I think it was a wise choice, for we are still talking about it.