Title

Examined Lives

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2013

Publisher

Acumen Publishing Ltd

Abstract

The examined life has been at the core of philosophical ethics since the fourth century BCE, when it emerged as a central teaching of both Socratic and Confucian thought. For these philosophers, the imperative of self-examination answered a practical rather than a theoretical question, namely: how can we best secure the good life for ourselves and others? Since then, thinkers from Seneca to Nietzche to Emerson have championed habits of self-examination as essential to living well.

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