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Life Is Not Worth Living In Socrates 'Apology'

592 Words3 Pages

In the Apology, Socrates states that the “unexamined life is not worth living” which for him was his decision on whether he wanted to live therefore discontinuing his passion for philosophy or be sentenced to death. For him to choose death over life simply because he wouldn’t be able to live out the rest of his life doing the one thing he so clearly values more than life, is something I don’t think I could’ve done easily. Yet for Socrates, he had embraced uncertainty and found comfort in that uncertainty to fully rely on his already discovered wisdom and curiosity. Going back to the statement itself, he went to the most extreme situation to make his point. Instead of simply stating that life would be less meaningful or less valuable, he goes straight and clear to the fact that to …show more content…

It comes across to me as impossible that he could possibly find comfort in not knowing. I would not be able to simply tell myself that it’s okay that I don’t know. But since this whole mess was caused because he was trying to disprove the Oracle of Delphi who had said that he was the wisest Athenian, he probably figured that in his 70 years of life he had learned everything he most necessarily needed to know. That being said, death was a whole new unconquered experienced, filled with new philosophies, questions & answers, and new discoveries to be made. Death never scared Socrates, he never feared it in the least bit. Sextus Empiricus’ “suspension of judgement” highlighted the ways an individual could achieve tranquility. In this method, he outlines three schools: Seeking School, Suspending School and Doubting School. Each school had different priorities and specialties dealing with skepticism on various scales. For

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