Katherine Shepherd
Intro. To Philosophy
Ms. Mary K. Leigh
March 10, 2013
A Life worth Living
Xenophon (444-357 B.C.E.), was one of Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.), students when he was a youth, and he was also Socrates Biographer. Xenophon had been gone and out of Socrates life for about 32 years before he came back into his life. Some say that Xenophon’s Socrates is “incredibly dull”. If this was the case why did he go on to write Socrates’ Biography and other writings? He did four works about Socrates as well; in one of them he noted that Socrates asks him “Where does one go to learn to become an honest man?” When Xenophon could not answer, Socrates said, “Come with me and I’ll show you.” If Socrates did not think highly of Xenophon, he would not have asked him to go to Athens with him and learn his answers to life’s questions? Xenophon followed Socrates to the Agora, an open market place in Athens. Where people would go to talk about politics and give political speeches and have discussions too, as well as shopping for anything you could imagine or needed. Socrates claimed that it was “the people in the city who teach me”. “The Agora was Socrates’ true home – intellectually, emotionally, spiritually—and he loved the crowds and human energy of this social core,” as Xenophon said. I think that Xenophon knew Socrates just about as much as Plato did. Even though I could not find where Socrates had told Xenophon personally about his famous statement, I think that because Xenophon followed Socrates everywhere and wrote about him that he had to know about it. It was not a kept secret; Socrates wanted everyone to know it.
I feel that whoever followed Socrates knew what the central concern for him was that is the “Soul”! Under that topic is where we find one of the main statements that Socrates asked and shared with people. That statement is “The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates thinks that we all should live an examined life, otherwise life is not...