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Hello Socrates, the Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC famously declared that the

unexamined life is not worth living. His drive towards rigorous self-enquiry

and his uncompromising questioning of assumptions laid firm foundations

for the history of Western philosophy. But these qualities didn't make him popular in ancient

Athens, Socrates was deemed to be a dangerous subversive for his crime as he described it of

asking questions and searching into myself and other men. In 399 BC Socrates was

sentenced to death on the charge of being an evil doer and a curious person.

2,000 years later, the novelist George Elliot was moved to reply to Socrates that

the unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined

may not be lived at all, for Elliot too much self-scrutiny could lead to paralysis rather than clarity.

So what did Socrates mean by his injunction?

How about preoccupations about how to live altered since the birth of ancient Greek philosophy and where does philosophy itself rank in our quest for self-knowledge alongside science, the arts, religion or lived experience?

To examine and perhaps to justify their existence

I have with me three philosophers, Dr. Adne Greeling, reader in philosophy at Birkbeck University of

London, Janet Radcliffe Richards, a philosopher and reader in bioethics at University College London,

and Julian Bhajini, editor of the Philosopher's magazine and co-editor of New British Philosophy,

the interviews.

Anthony Graling, Socrates was a controversial figure. How did his philosophical concerns differ

...