According to Socrates, is life worth living if it is not questioned?

The Political Critique of Unexamined Life: Socrates’ Philosophical Resistance

Socrates’ dictum, “The unexamined life is not worth living” (Ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ), is not only an individual ethical call; it is also a radical political challenge directed at the entirety of power, society, and normative structure. The philosophical-political implication latent in this proposition suggests that the value of life will gain meaning not only in its biological continuity but also in intellectual autonomy and ethical subjectivity. An unexamined life means that man becomes blind to both himself and the order in which he lives.

Socrates and Political Ontology

Socrates’ philosophical stance is a process of “political subjectification” in the classical sense. He argues that real freedom can only be gained through reason by opposing intellectual independence to the apparent freedom of the Athenian demos. This is not just an individual moral attitude, but a direct attack on the legitimacy of authority founded on collective consciousness – traditions, myths, the majority speaking in the name of divine law. The stance Socrates takes in his defense before the court is the political essence of philosophy: “You can silence me, but not the truth.”

Socrates’s sentence to death is not a coincidental or individual event, but the suppression of intellectual freedom by political power. Here, questioning life is not only an inner enlightenment in the individual sense, but also a call for the reestablishment of the public sphere – the polis – with truth. Philosophy is a form of resistance at this point; it is not only a search for knowledge, but also an exposure of the dominant discourse.

Questioning: A Field of Tension between the Individual and the State

Socrates’ act of questioning does not pit the individual against the state, but rather turns the individual into a witness of truth within the state. He is never an anarchist figure; his aim is not to destroy the state, but to re-establish it on a more just, more rational basis. But even this threatens the political status quo. Because where there is truth, power wavers; because truth is what power fears most: accountability.

In this context, Socrates’ placing questioning at the center of life is not a passive moral proposition, but an active political action. His stance in the Apologia, in which he says that “the state fulfills the divine command,” is an indication that he sees philosophy as a civic duty. In other words, questioning is the basis of both the individual’s ethical existence and public responsibility.

Critical Reason and the Public Sphere

Socrates’ thought is the archaic form of the principle that Habermas would later define as “public reason.” According to him, citizenship cannot be defined solely by voting or obeying the law; the true citizen is the one who can evaluate his own life and society with reason and ethical consciousness. Therefore, Socrates’ philosophy does not propose external control by authority, but internal reckoning. An unexamined life is the submission of the individual not only to his own ignorance, but also to tyranny.