But why is the unexamined life not worth living...

But why is the unexamined life not worth living? If I can just come home and down a half bottle of pills that keep me in a happy state and never have to think about reality, why is that actually worse than devoting myself to study.

You might as well be a dog then.
Introspection and rationality are what makes a man a man.

>g-guys am I living a good life?
you might aswell be a sheep them

This is back when they believed a load of shit that essentially happiness more or less necessarily was a result of knowledge and correct perspective. Now it's more or less conventional wisdom that there is nothing but perspectives, some of which may lead to intense joy like buddhism and some which lead to shit like believing ernest becker or the far more trivial, pleb versions of becker like cioran and ligotti. I.e. life is bad and everyone secretly is awful because I'm ugly and sad

There isn't. Socrates and his disciples were dumbasses. Life is pretty much objectively meaningless. You're not even going to accomplish anything by trying to life with any methodology, because every rational thought will rely on complete unproven assumptions.

Do what feels good.

Wow reddit really is here in full force today

Life not having a set purpose does not make it meaningless and people do not now and never will operate as though life were meaningless it is an utter dead end to come to that conclusion as being something to justify being a lazy faggot. Just pathological lying to yourself and dissonance is where that mentality leads to. It's also just false. Rigid methodology in life motivated by neurosis leads nowhere. Planned out methodology with freedom, a much harder thing to make a reality is more or less a must if a you have any interest in improving being I.e. 'doing what feels good' in a measured and thoughtful way

Sorry to offend you ligotti. You're not that ugly my good man

>You might as well be a dog then.
Nothing wrong with Diogenes bro.

And OP it's another "Nihilism is shit" aspect of philosophy. If you don't think about and question what you're doing and what you see and even what you think or how your react etc etc then you are living a life that has no value.

>This is back when they believed a load of shit that essentially happiness more or less necessarily was a result of knowledge and correct perspective.
The socratic paradox is Socrates is wisest because he knows that he knows nothing. So no this is not "knowledge = happiness" since that goes against the claim of no knowledge at all.

>diogenes
beautiful man. need to being his meme back. WWDD what would diogenes do

Which is why said knowledge and correct perspective. There is obviously intetest in knowledge in socrates. That's the difference between someone who doesn't bother to think because he sees it as futile and someone who examines everything and checks with his beliefs to see if they stand. It requires knowledge to examine that correctly in the first place. The no knowledge thing is not true in an absolute sense otherwise he'd be lost in some sort of descartes like skepticism where he can't even trust his reasoning. It's more of a line to show his relation to knowledge

Rhetoric. Rhetoric. Rhetoric. No argument to be seen. Pretentious fuck.

>The no knowledge thing is not true in an absolute sense otherwise he'd be lost in some sort of descartes like skepticism where he can't even trust his reasoning.
The term you're looking for is aporia and yes very famously he was stuck there. It's something a lot of people don't like, they'd rather Plato's dialogues give them some statements of fact or opinion or something. In large they don't.

But he didn't because the only way to act if you truly believe that us to pit yourself into some kind of madness. If he believe it then he wouldn't have gone about pestering people about their presuppositions because it'd all be equally arbitrary, he wouldn't have had any trust in what he was doing so drinking or not drinking the hemlock would be equally meaningless, giving his point of view at the trial, completely pointless and impossible. Again, where one would be if you (ironically) take the belief that nothing at all is knowable to its logical conclusion is somewhere where nobody but those completely insane are

>Life is pretty much objectively meaningless

Ohhh, only pretty much?

Try thinking for yourself a little bit. His message is clear enough.

shut up Mustafa

>life is objectively meaningless
Well done friend, you've cracked the code, I guess those thousands of years of philosophy were a waste of time

>Life is pretty much objectively meaningless. You're not even going to accomplish anything by trying to life with any methodology, because every rational thought will rely on complete unproven assumptions.

So you took
>the unexamined life
to mean
>the life without objective meanings, or not structured according to rational methodology

maybe Socrates doesn't mean what you think he means. Is it possible that even the lowest and more servile person does, to some degree, examine? perhaps the point is that such examination is what gives purpose to living, and that if life could conceivably be without it, it would not be worth living

Why shouldn't I just live on instinct like the Homeric Greeks, rather than endlessly question and talk about everything like the rational Platonists?

>But he didn't because the only way to act if you truly believe that us to pit yourself into some kind of madness.
He had a daimonion that would turn him away from things. Whether you think that was madness that's you're ideology, but part of the reason the sophists had him drink hemlock was there was no point to his reasoning, he just undermined the social order for the hell of it.

There is a kind of Inuit style "the elk needs the wolf" kind of argument with Socrates as a gadfly that stops the horse of civilisation from becoming dull, but then the telos is purely to fuck shit up.

Shit answers. Being a "man" or a "sheep" or any other notions of pride are not only pointless in the sense that everything is pointless but also not worth assigning any point to.

I would say that thoughtless sensual pleasure is a small reward, that the pleasure and enjoyment one can receive from the processes of studying, learning, and thinking is far more rewarding if only you would put in the effort and patience to pursue them. There is no guarantee of truth but the pursuit of truth is not an all or nothing game.

>some of which may lead to intense joy like buddhism
>buddhism
>happiness...a result of ... correct perspective
dude

Ehhhh

I never said anything about pride. Rational thought is what separates men and animals. If you don't examine and think about your life you may as well be an animal. You are a wasted mind.

>But why is the unexamined life not worth living? If I can just come home and down a half bottle of pills that keep me in a happy state and never have to think about reality, why is that actually worse than devoting myself to study.

You're not defining "living," user

If you define living as breathing in and out, and you're happy with that, then you have a different definition of living than Socrates

Why are you even asking this? Just actually read Plato's Dialogues if you want to know. Don't read one epigram or quote and then come here to question Veeky Forums as if anyone here knows or that you've somehow found the fatal flaw in Socrates's logic that no one ever considered before