Ever wonder what Socrates meant when he said “the unexamined life is not worth living?”

I’ll take a crack at explaining.

Basically, when we talk about “purpose” we can talk about two types: first-order purpose (or quasi-purpose) and second-order purpose (self-reflective purpose).

First order purpose is basically what distinguishes living things from matter. It is the drive that all living things have to do things like find a mate, reproduce, find food and not become food. That is to say, the first order purpose of life, which humans share with all living things, is to live.

Second order purpose. This is the type of purpose that distinguishes humans from other forms of life. Second-order purpose originates from our agency, our free will. It is our ability to be self-reflective and perceive of and peruse higher values. Steve McIntosh puts it well:

Humans not only have purposes, we have purposes for our purposes; we have relative freedom of choice regarding the urges or impetuses we want to act on and the appetites we want to resist. Moreover, humans can have purposes that require a lifetime or more to fulfill, we can have highly creative purposes, compassionate, loving purposes, and world-changing purposes that improve conditions for everyone (p. 13-14).

So, in summation, when Socrates says “the unexamined life is not worth living,” he’s basically saying that you’re not fulfilling your second-order purpose! I would completely agree that if one does not constantly examining their life and pursuing higher forms of value, life would tend to get pretty meaningless, pretty quick.

Tags:biologyevolutionphilosophypurposesocratesSteve McIntosh