The Examined Life is a collection of philosophical meditations written by Robert Nozick and published in 1989.
Having pursued philosophy in an argumentative mode in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and in an explanatory mode in Philosophical Explanations, his mode in The Examined Life is holistic. Instead of one rational mind coercing another (argumentative mode) or one rational mind explaining possibilities to another (explanatory mode), now a whole ...
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The Examined Life is a collection of philosophical meditations written by Robert Nozick and published in 1989.
Having pursued philosophy in an argumentative mode in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and in an explanatory mode in Philosophical Explanations, his mode in The Examined Life is holistic. Instead of one rational mind coercing another (argumentative mode) or one rational mind explaining possibilities to another (explanatory mode), now a whole person speaks to a whole person. "My concern in writing here is the whole of our being," he writes in the Introduction, "I would like to speak to your whole being, and to write from mine."
His meditations aim to take his life and ours off "automatic pilot". They aim furthermore at a portrait rather than a theory. Indeed to live an examined life is to make a self-portrait. He does not say that the unexamined life is not worth living, but he does agree with Socrates to the extent of holding that the unexamined life is not lived as fully. When we...
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