The Examined Life
Course Materials
About the Course
The Examined Life: from Socrates to Gurdjieff is an open access course devoted to the topic of philosophical and psychological self-inquiry.
It runs every third Saturday of the month from 10:30am to 2:30pm at St Mary’s Church Hall in Totnes, TQ9 5QQ. The hall is situated at the end of a small alleyway that turns off Church Close, beside St Mary’s Church. For more details see this map.
The course is run by the Totnes Association for the Exploration of Consciousness and is funded by a suggested donation of £10 per attendee for the full day. This is needed to cover the hall rental and advertising costs. The day itself is divided into two sessions with a 30 minute lunch break in between.
If you would like to enrol, please make contact at taec.inquiry@gmail.com
Topic One: The Apology of Socrates
Outline: This is our first session and so involves everyone introducing themselves and my giving an overview of the course. After that we take a more careful look at the readings, starting with Meno 80c-81de, where Socrates speaks of how we can inquire into what we do not know by gaining access to an otherwise concealed knowledge of recollection. Then we look at two of the more famous readings from the Apology. The first (21a-21d) is where Socrates reasons that the oracle at Delphi must have declared him the wisest man because he knows when he does not know. The second (37e-38a) is where Socrates declares the unexamined life is not worth living – and that he chooses death rather than relinquish his life of inquiry.
Topic Two: Introducing Heidegger
Outline: In this session we examine Heidegger’s Preliminary Considerations, the introductory section to his Essence of Truth lecture series, delivered in the winter semester of 1931-32. Here, Heidegger embarks on a philosophical inquiry by first showing how our handed-down understandings of truth and essence are unintelligible. In doing this he gives a fitting demonstration of how, with Socrates, we must start to inquire from a place of unknowing – i.e. by first recognising that we do not know what we think we already know.
This turning toward Heidegger continues our inquiry into Socrates and Plato and the ancient Greek world – for Heidegger’s longer-term aim is to uncover (recollect) the essence of truth by going back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Republic, Book VII, 514a-517a). As the allegory will become central for us in the forthcoming sessions, I also include Heidegger’s translation of it in this month’s readings.