The irony in some of this discussion is that one of the upshots of Derrida's critique is that things cannot be reduced to context, and no fine-graining of 'context' would ever serve to explain or justify any phenomenon. This sets him irreducibly apart from any empirical discourse like anthropology, history, law, and so on. And this, insofar as he is committed to resisting the reduction to a skeptical empiricism that would not be able to hold fast to truth in the philosophical sense - or any notion of responsibility, for that matter. Différance disrupts all closure, including "context". — Streetlight

I agree! I think one of the things that drives me bananas is just how Derrida honestly reads like he's not just ethical, but rather it's one of his main impulses in writing -- but he writes about truth and meaning instead. Just reading on the relationship between Derrida and Levinas should convince anyone of that.

Sort of like the Tractatus, actually...

Indeed and I have read The Postmodern Condition which is probably responsible for most of my initial preconceptions, for good or ill. — Tom Storm

What? I mean, that's the one I'm thinking of. And if you've read it then those aren't pre-conceptions. Those are full on thoughts about a book! And that's what is important to me. The text is smarter than us, so it's worthwhile to keep some kind of text on hand or in mind when talking.

But I'd much rather talk about Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition over the vaguely understood "postmodern"

That’s a political analysis of the postmodern. There is a general consensus within continental philosophy concerning what postmodern philosophy stands for. That is , what thinkers like Heidegger, Lyotard, Nietzsche , Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida have in common that distinguishes them from modernist philosophers like Marx. — Joshs

"General consensus"? In philosophy? C'mon...

I think there are histories of philosophy which employ "modernism", and try to make a mark between it and where they are at. Like any philosophical movement there's a sense of unity between diverse thinkers -- and I'd say there was something of a particular zeitgeist in France and they were drawing from similar sources and attempting to do what philosophers do. So my motivation here is one of clarity and specificity more than one of denial -- but I'd say there are a few beliefs that will not remain after gaining clarity, such as Derrida is a relativist, or Lyotard created a post-modern philosophy. Neither of those two things are true, at least as I understand these words.

It's funny you say that - his Wikipedia page says he was a convinced atheist. Maybe the fact that it reads as 'religious' is because the kind of mathematical Platonism he seems to be suggesting goes against the grain of philosophical naturalism. There's a remark in another essay about philosophy of maths that I've read, saying 'Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” (i.e. like numbers) makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.' — Wayfarer

I'd say that the reason it reads religiously is that it reminds me of the God of the philosophers -- so he may think he was an atheist, but in the essay he admits that these are articles of faith. "Religious", after all, is much wider than a/theism.

Wigner wrote - "The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve" — RussellA

it would be more true to say that the language he uses is deeply metaphorical rather than religious. — RussellA

If you prefer metaphorical, then that's fine. My point remains -- the metaphor works for believers in ultimate truth.

I think, maybe, people mistake description for prescription -- postmodernism is a condition, not a philosophy. Most literally it is after modernism, and so requires one to have an understanding of modernism as something more concrete than just the usual understanding of "modern" as in, the now, popular, hip, and so forth.

I don't mean this to be obtuse -- I know generally who is meant, and generally what people say about the post-moderns. But if postmodernism is to inform our ethical thought, it really is very important to have an understanding of postmodernism, I think.

(part of me was tempted to pull up Walter Benjamin, but I nixed it for now... there's still conceptual work to be done)

Hrrmm... well, one thing, I don't think it's necessarily the job of philosophers to address particular concerns. So if one philosopher wishes to think about the history of thought and what it tells us about the nature of thinking, truth and meaning, and another wishes to apply ethical theories to real problems (like Peter Singer), then we'll get the most out of these philosophers by meeting them on their own terms. Insofar as abortion is concerned, and Derrida, I don't have the confidence or even would know where to begin.

So from that stance I'd say the usual suspects would disappoint -- they won't give you advice on the United States' abortion laws. And if we are to judge from their characters, Deleuze really was not a very good man.

They're kind of esoteric, honestly... I don't understand the cultural phenomena very well , the more I studied them -- "Post modern" seems so very disconnected from these thinkers.

But a stepping stone on postmodernism, at least -- if you are just wanting references -- would be Lyotard. He at least used the word "postmodern" :D

How might postmodernism be helpful in determining how we should/could live? — Tom Storm

Derrida is the man, as you've already picked up on, for this question. However, the reason for this is that "postmodern" is either a historical or a cultural category more than an actual philosophy -- and Derrida's work is unfairly judged by these cultural epithets. (Foucault and Delueze, I'd say, are similarly situated, tho Deleuze is flamboyant in his expression)

At least insofar as I understand his philosophy, he's basically the opposite of the post modern cartoon. -- to quote:

Cixous intends with the word “incorruptibles” that the generation of French philosophers who came of age in the Sixties, what they wrote and did, will never decay, will remain endlessly new and interesting. This generation will remain pure. But, the term is particularly appropriate for Derrida, since his thought concerns precisely the idea of purity and therefore contamination. Contamination, in Derrida, implies that an opposition consisting in two pure poles separated by an indivisible line never exists. In other words, traditionally (going back to Plato’s myths but also Christian theology), we think that there was an original pure state of being (direct contact with the forms or the Garden of Eden) which accidentally became corrupt. In contrast, Derrida tries to show that no term or idea or reality is ever pure in this way; one term always and necessarily “infects” the other.

Does an epistemology concerned with purity and corruption sound like an ethos-less epistemology? Does it sound like "Anything goes"?

I'm always impressed with the contrast between the pop culture phenomena railed against, and the reality of the books they attribute said epithets to -- Derrida's day job was the history of philosophy, and his work draws from that knowledge. So it requires technical knowledge as a background for understanding (at least in explication -- you can certainly understand Derrida without having his day job! :D )

Further, his work is concerned with meaning and truth, and his style of writing reflects that concern.

It's for these two reasons that Derrida takes some effort to understand, and I'd say that initial impressions of his work in the anglophonic philosophy world were unfair and simply wrong-headed.


But then I think this gets at the problem pretty well -- just *who are these postmodernists*? Wouldn't it be more useful to simply name them and discuss them, if indeed there was an idea to discuss?

I think it's a phantom-idea of some kind that people believe others are, but no one believes of themself really. It's a philosophical antagonist, like the radical skeptic that no one is but we can think about.

And that particular phantom can't help anyone with respect to ethical thought. However, particular thinkers, depending on what they say of course, may.

EDIT: Just me back on my historicist bullshit . . . ;)

I think all participants here know about the statement of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Shouldn't we, rather, speak of it's reasonable effectiveness? I can't see nothing unreasonable about it and can't even imagine how else it could be. — Landoma1

First time reading the essay, myself. A handful of quotes from it:

...Every empirical law has the disquieting quality that one does not know its limitations... We may lose interest in the "ultimate truth,"... Such a situation would put a heavy strain on our faith in our theories and on our belief in the reality of the concepts which we form. It would give us a deep sense of frustration in our search for what I called "the ultimate truth."

The language he uses is deeply religious throughout. These were moments where I thought the religious nature of his appeals were apparent -- it may not be a Christian religion, but the religion of the philosophers -- in the God that thinks itself and brings order to nature, or whatever formulation he may prefer.

Which isn't to say he is wrong, I think. What I would say is that religious appeals are only effective among believers. His is the wonder of a scientist with a passion for something I don't think even exists -- "ultimate truth" or "foundations" as he is also often reasoning within. He's sort of pulling a couple of transcendental moves along the way, really -- without the empirical law of epistemology, no physics is possible. Physics exists, therefore....

But for myself I prefer to focus on the multiplicity of science. And there I think I'd actually wend a path between yourself and Wigner. For where you say:

Let's not forget though where we apply it. To dead Nature. In the human realm it seems unreasonable if effective indeed

I wouldn't put any caveats on the usage of mathematics to understand human beings just because it is "alive" whereas matter is "dead" -- we have a theory of evolution, after all, and we use mathematics in biology, so there's no need to think math can't help in understanding life (not that you said this, but you are asserting that nature is dead, so "life" naturally springs to my mind as the antipode). Humans are just the animal that talks too much and thinks such talking is really special, so we could -- with effort -- come to understand the human animal in more precise terms than that.

And further, I think there is something curious about math. I just don't think it's religious, or tied to ultimate truth, or the scientists' quest for the One Pure Description.

I think "Why does mathematics help human beings?" a reasonable and interesting question that seems to me to be a pretty close approximation to what Wigner is mentally ogling in his essay -- I often wonder about the nature of math in relation to nature, I just don't think placing that question in the realm of the mystical or religious to really get me going. I'm not religious.

I think I want a simpler example, and I believe I'm tracking now.

The classic argument --

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal

really does seem to make sense, but technically it's not deductively valid. "Socrates" is not well defined in Aristotle's system of logic, because it is a unique thing rather than the member of a set -- and Aristotle's logic deals with the relationships between sets (at least, this is a certain way of parsing it. It deals with the deductive relationship between statements of the "all" or "some" kind)

So, I'd say, here we have an example of an argument that makes sense, but which you could argue into different formalization of logic -- so it's not like we know the "correct" relationships to choose, up front.

I'm not sure what you mean by "...do not have knowledge of the structure of"

Yeaaahh... I'll admit my interest in the thread was mostly Marx. I'll keep The Philosophy of Right in mind if I feel the wild urge to give Hegel a chance again.

M'kay, let's work with those terms then. I'm not finicky when it comes to terms.

Wage-laborers are proletarians, and proletarians are wage-laborers. The abolition of capitalism is the abolition of the wage system in any capacity, so co-ops count as a sort of abolition-in-miniature.

I would assert that the current international economic system, at the scope of nations, relies upon exploitation, and there is a bottom class on this scale. On the top, it seems, we are in agreement -- the bourgeoisie.

Do you disagree with my characterization of that class? Or are we in agreement there?



On the bottom, so I'd say, there's the global south and the whole history of colonialism to account for -- material resources have been plundered the world over using the mechanisms of the economic system we live with now.

So abolish capitalism in miniature -- or even lets say at a certain scale? -- and there's still this past and current history of nations exploiting, externalizing the bottom-labor to other national markets to protect their own. This exploitation will continue to exist, and that's the one I care about.

Sure, I agree with that.

Isn't it the nature of Hegel that it can be read whichever way?

I've read liberals, fascists and anti-colonial communists claim him in various capacities -- and I honest to goodness couldn't tell you which way it should be read -- it just seems like fair game, a creative grist mill which people read themselves into more often than not. And while I could come up with allusions to history and piece together bits, I'll admit I wasn't at all confident that this was somehow the way to read Hegel. And everything I've come across has always admitted that Hegel reads many ways too.

For me my interest in him derives from my interest in Marx, so this is my main interest in interpreting Hegel. Though I'll admit parts of it felt inspiring at times, at the end of the day I just decided I only had one life to live.

I like the problems that it solves -- giving a straightforward reason for why it is one can know things about the world but not necessarily some kind of ultimate reality dreamed up by philosophers. I prefer the denial of metaphysics as a knowledge, and Hegel at least seems like the sort of ur-philosopher on that front -- a giant system that explains it all, somehow, but leaves you kind of wondering what it really explained in the first place.

Fair enough. I haven't read The Philosophy of Right, only the phenomenology and the first third of the logic. The logic was too abstruse for me to make heads or tails of, but the phenomenology drew from history enough that I felt I could follow along for large portions (though, of course, not all of it. and not without the help of secondary literature, etc.)

There, however, I felt he wasn't a radical critique of Kant so much as attempting to deny Kant -- well, at least I don't find it convicing. I mean, that doesn't invalidate his project, I don't think, because he's not drawing from as much as criticizing Kant -- but I see a lot more value in Kant's epistemology than Hegel's (though that could just be a preference from understanding, of course) when addressing the questions about his three metaphysical questions on God, Freedom, and Immortality.

Though I think his idea about self and other co-constituting one another and becoming a lot more convincing when approaching the humanities. There's a lot of really interesting things in Hegel. But I ultimately feel like you just gaze at the process of ideas and let it all happen as it ascends to the absolute? There's something about it that just feels like you should obey the state.

His love of Napoleon Bonaparte :D

IDK, just a vibe really. He's a wiggly dude to interpret. It's only my love of Marx that has carried me through his texts lol :D

:) You got it!

Anyway, yeah the Master slave dialectic is a key passage, also in its own right. I was always struck with the fact that later continental philosophy such as phenomenology or existentialism had so little concern with 'togetherness'. I am sure I will incur the wrath of a host of Hedeggerians, but his 'Dasein' seems very lonely as does 'l'etre' in Sartre. Nietzsche's overman is a lonely figure too. What I like a lot in Hegel is the idea of 'being the same in difference', one remains a true individual but always within a conceptual network of indviduals, genus, society and history. Not 'thrown into it' as Heidegger would have it, but 'growing up' in it, with all the pain, conflict, scepticism and heartache that entails. For me that is something very modern in Hegel actually, so modern that current thinking completely seems to negate it and only focusses on difference. .

What struck me as well is how similar Hegel and Marx seemed to be appreciating the nature of 'work'. In Hegel working and working together are key as well in order to form a society that is wat once guided by law and held together by a certain moral substance — Tobias

I agree that this is a striking difference! In Marx work is central -- our species-being is almost defined by work, in my understanding of Marx. How we go about managing our material needs and wants is the mechanism by which history goes.

I think that Levinas begins to scratch the surface of togetherness, to give at least a 20th century example of a continental that begins to look at togetherness... but I agree that these philosophers were more interested in individuality and a picture of a lonely individual. Perhaps the influence of capital and liberalism on their views?


Naturally, I think being-with is important, but I do read Hegel as a conservative for the most part though I recognize his legacy is to influence both right and left political thinkers.

First off,, a noob question, how do you get this ↪ ? I have to use if I want to point to someone, but this is far more elegant... — Tobias

No worries. At the bottom of people's posts near where the timestamp is you just hover your mouse pointer to the right of the timestamp. A little arrow pointing towards the timestamp appears, and if you hover over that a box appears which labels it as "Reply" -- click on that, and you're good to go.

Oh, fair. I certainly don't mean to present myself as an expert I should say too -- and I'm sure you're being too modest :D -- you did reference the slave/master dialectic after all! And I'd say that's, like, the key passage from Hegel that is easy to see how he influenced Marx.

The way I've characterized the proletariat is the way they're characterized in capital -- the genesis of value is labor-power, labor-power is commodified when there's a class of owners over the workplace, and that class has power over that one special commodity which generates value (labor-power) and is able to pay them less than they generate. While there's a milieu of classes from proletariat up to bourgeoisie -- petty, lumpen, professional -- the proletariat specifically is this class of workers who are the targets of exploitation. It's this position within the economic flow that gives them revolutionary potential, whereas other classes have more to lose from overthrowing the owners of capital the proletariat is the class required for the whole dance to keep going.

All proletarians are wage-laborers, but not all wage-laborers are proletarians.

After all, the employees at Steam -- a sort of anarcho-capitalist company -- just aren't proletarians even if they don't own one stock in their business. Their business would collapse without the international system of trade which ensures metal is cheap.

I do not know whether Jackson and Janus are far off though. . . — Tobias

With respect to understanding Marx, I don't think anyone is far off. It's important to understand Marx's relationship to Hegel, and it's important to understand that Hegel is interpreted in a lot of ways (as is Marx, for that matter) -- these are fair and in depth readings of Hegel, and one could attempt a clarification of material dialectic with these readings. For myself I was satisfied with a sentence to bounce off of into the communist manifesto to show the pattern from Hegel to Marx.

I referred back to some books because I think dialectical materialism isn't the sort of idea one just defines, clarifies, and now, having read the words, knows. It's more like a calculus -- it makes sense when you read the basic rules, but you don't know it until you solve the problems. And it's the sort of idea that is only productive to talk about if one reads something and tries to work with the idea themselves a bit. (the way it's not like calculus, of course, is that it's not a deductive logic)

OK, a stronger statement:

I agree with what I said and with what everyone else said to me.

Personally, I don't see anything said here as in conflict with what I said.

I don't think those are distinct one from another. I just cite it because it's a demonstration of dialectical materialism: the dialectic is between the two classes, and by way of their material conflict history goes on. Further, it's very much defined in relation to Hegel's dialectic -- but whereas Hegel's dialectic is between contradictory ideas, Marx's is between contradictory classes. Part of the dialectic, in Hegel as well as in Marx, deals with demonstration -- one demonstrates the material dialectic, rather than derive it. So it is open to observation: are there such a thing as classes? Was history before capitalism driven by class conflict? Whereas with Hegel, at least in my understanding, it was the phenomenologist who could step out and see the dialectic of ideas -- but with Marx, given that it's a material dialectic, it's open to our senses to witness.

Such demonstrations require things like documents, interpretations of documents, stories, and so on -- hence why I said starting with a historiography text book is a good place just to start getting at dialectical materialism specifically. I learned on Ernt Briesach if that helps.

Cool.

Do you see how chapter 1 is basically a demonstration of dialectical materialism, or naw?

I think I pretty much agree with @Street, so I'm just chiming in to chime in.

I would say the class relation is the defining feature of capitalism, but that the classes are bourgeoisie/proletariat and specifically *not* employer/worker. Not everyone is a member of the proletariat that is an employee. The proletariat are thems who are paid just enough to live and make sure their kids live long enough to become workers themselves and start the process all over again. If you have more than that then even if you have nothing to sell but your labor you're a worker -- but not a proletarian.

This isn't to fetishize the proletariat either, like it's a noble place to be. It's a terrible place to be. It's the end-point for most everyone in capitalism. And, most importantly -- this is where I'd draw the distinction especially, and not just on definitional grounds -- it's global.

The problem with co-ops and worker owned places in the United States is that capitalism is a global phenomena, and no matter how well-meaning an individual firm may be the rules are harder than our intents. Even together, we are just a small group in a large international system. You can, as everyone tries to, make moderate improvements. But an undermining of capital it is not only because the global system of private ownership over the workplace, and the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat remains.

I reread capital recently, and I've nixed my original project, but something that really struck me on this reading was how the scope of political economy is often missed in these conversation. Like, especially because we're talking about classical economic theory, right? So "The Wealth of Nations" pretty much covers the topic de jure - it's right in the title! :D But it's not markets and firms that are the units of analysis -- it's the state, and how wealth is generated by state-level actors. (like classes, for instance ;) )

If you are interested in that topic then a good place to begin would be a historiography textbook which would explain one way of taking his works as a means for writing history, which would probably be more direct to your topic.

Or, if you're feeling brave, Karl Marx is the guy. The Legend. THE PROGENITOR! lol

The Communist Manifesto's Chapter 1 actually isn't that hard I don't think. And it gets at the notion. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

...As long as you accept that good can make up for the bad... — Down The Rabbit Hole

I do not.

A better life can't make up for all the hard work in getting there? — Down The Rabbit Hole

I am of the opinion that untreated leukemia in children, as an example, leading to excruciatingly painful deaths for what are clearly innocent people to all people of right mind simply does not make sense in a world where there is a God who can stop that from happening, even if there's a cookie at the end of the pain.

In short, if there's a God, he's one sick fuck.

You accept that good can make up for the bad? — Down The Rabbit Hole

That is the very thing I am disagreeing with.

The idea of an infinite reward after death simply does not make up for living a life of absurd and cruel suffering. Mortal life remains absurd, cruel, and incompatible with a God. Perhaps the afterlife is different, but who cares? I have a life to live now, and it's not related to an after life.

I'd much rather not classify it as analytic, I have to agree. I'm trying to look at it in a fairly plain way, at first -- I have lotsa sympathy with the idea that existence isn't a predicate, but to take the sentence more plainly I'd say that it is meaningful. Analytic? I'm not so sure about that because of the two ways you could take "nothing exists" --

"Nothing exists" could mean there is not a single thing which exists at all in the entirety of the universe. In this sense it seems kinda contradictory, again in a plain approach kind of way, since clearly the sentence exists, so the very statement becomes a performative contradiction since the statement itself exists. (A philosophers answer if there ever was one :D )

But we could also say "Nothing exists" in the sense that we mean when referring to atomic structure -- that the majority of atomic structure is composed of nothing, a space between entities in relation with one another. Or, even more plainly, we could say there is nothing in the cupboard, open the cupboard, and indeed see that there is nothing in the cupboard, so we could conclude -- on the basis of this -- that at least in one place in the world nothing exists.

In this second sense I'd say the sentence is not analytic at all, but synthetic.

This doesn't address the evils that are not caused by man that are simply cruel suffering with no benefit.

We don't have to delve into the pit of nastiness. It's not hard to find examples.

I'd say that good and evil do not work like there -- you do not have 5 units of good or 3 units of bad.

Suffering remains as suffering even if we find ourselves in a good place. And the existence of God is not compatible with the evils we live with. It's as simple as that. Even if there's a cookie at the end of the trial, the trial itself can still be cruel and unusual.

Nothing exists....


I have to admit that I have a hard time understanding what it might mean for nothing to exist. So in that way it's unintelligible. But clearly something exists, so "nothing exists" must be false.

In a very simple way, then, it makes sense to say "Nothing exists" is unintelligible, but clearly false too -- since we can picture what the negation of "nothing exists" means, and that negation is all that's needed to make it true (and, hence, would be able to easily infer falsity)


Or something like that. :D

A common line of reasoning against God's presumed omnibenevolence goes like this:

If God was omnibenevolent, there wouldn’t be ... any earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods, wars, children with genetic dysfunctions, ... and in general, there wouldn't be any suffering.

But why should the absence of these things be evidence of God's benevolence?

Based on what reasoning should we conclude that the presence of those things is evidence that God (if he exists) is not benevolent? — baker

If there be a perfect being which infinite power and infinite goodness, then we'd expect to see some effects from that -- that the being would use their power to do good things, for instance.

Perhaps we could take the claim down a notch from your beginning, and just leave it at that.

There is so much evil and suffering in the world that it becomes hard to believe in an all-powerful loving God. Not this or that specific evil, but the overwhelming amount of suffering which has nothing to do with moral worth or goodness.

I imagine Hitler, for example, spent quite a bit of time in self-examination.
Why shouldn't his count as an "examined life"?
What are the assumptions based on which it is assumed that someone like Hitler did not live an examined life? — baker

I think some of the confusion comes from zeroing in on "examined" -- and that said confusion is, if not resolved, at least addressed by the apology. The examined life is something pursued by Socrates, so the life of Socrates gives us the context within which we can infer what might be meant by the examined life.

Haha, yeah you're right. Had one word in my mind, and spit out the other.

I had or have a lot of sympathy for the idea that Socrates was simply too idealistic, but I think I have become more sympathetic to Socrates, over time. After all, if you are an old man who has no money and knows you will continue to aggravate the youth against the established order, no matter where you go -- and you know that silence, on your part at least, is not attainable (cuz the gods/goods told ya it's good to talk about what's good) -- then perhaps it is better to die, because you realize that no matter which city you go to you will end up the same. Might as well die now, as a martyr, than later, as a prisoner.

In another thread about the importance of psychology, I stated that the examined life is of importance to Socrates in that it may lead to various terms that lead to a better life. Such terms can be called, "enlightened", "rational", "virtuous".

Yet, without context these terms are ambiguous in terms of living an examined life. If we to take what Socrates said as important to ourselves, then what does it mean to live an examined life, as surely it is to our benefit to do so?

Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so? — Shawn

I'm taking a snippet from the Apology that you're referencing:

What should I fear? That I should suffer the penalty Meletus has assessed against me, of which I say I do not know whether it is good or bad? Am I then to choose in preference to this something that I know very well to bean evil and assess the penalty at that? Imprisonment? Why should I live in prison, always subjected to the ruling magistrates the Eleven? A fine, and imprisonment until I pay it? That would be the same thing for me, as I have no money. Exile? for perhaps you might accept that assessment.

I should have to be inordinately fond of life, gentlemen of the jury, to be so unreasonable as to suppose that other men will easily tolerate my company and conversation when you, my fellow citizens, have been unable to endure them, but found them a burden and resented them so that you are now seeking to get rid of them. Far from it, gentlemen. It would be a fine life at my age to be driven out of one city after another, for I know very well that wherever I go the young men will listen to my talk as they do here. If I drive them away, they will themselves persuade their elders to drive me out; if I do not drive them away, their fathers and relations will drive me out on their behalf.

Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you. If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical. On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for man, you will believe me even less.

What I say is true, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. At the same time, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve any penalty. If I had money. I would assess the penalty at the amount I could pay, for that would not hurt me, but I have none, unless you are willing to set the penalty at the amount I can pay, and perhaps I could pay you one mina of silver. So that is my assessment.

Plato here, gentlemen of the jury, and Crito and Critobulus and Apollodorus bid me put thepenalty at thirty minae, and they will stand surety for the money. Well then, that is my assessment,and they will be sufficient guarantee of payment.

What do you gather from that about the unexamined life?