Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living". A friend of mine thinks this was the most unethical statement a man has ever made. What do you think about it?
After sitting through all four horrible pages of this thread, I definitely must say that this was a bad way to start one. What's the point of asking people, "What do you think about that?" if you have provided almost zero exposition? As someone else pointed out, it would've been best if you had first explained
why your friend believes the statement in question to be "unethical." From there, we could anaylze whether or not his claims make any sense. But to just ask people, "Do you think this statement is unethical?" just leads to boring discussion about a seemingly ambiguous statement with literally no context. Hence, people can interpret the damn thing anyway they want, so that many people could believe the statement to be unethical for many different reasons. Or, they can believe it to be "satisfactory" based on various interpretations.
So it really would be best if you explained (a) how your friend interprets this statement and (b) why he holds it to be unethical.
From there a much more meaningful and thought-provoking discussion could take place.
And I know you, later in thread, tried to explain what your friend thinks, but it was rather limited.
My friend thinks such a statement begs unanswerable questions. Like a wild goosechase.
This
answer is incredibly too concise. Your explanation here begs questions itself, such as "Why does he think the statement begs unanswerable questions?" Or, "How is it like a wild goodchase?" Or, "Why does he think they are necessarily "unanswerable?" In short, if the audience has to ask these questions, you really didn't provide a satisfactory answer.
Lastly, I'm not entirely sure Socrates himself ever really said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Mostly, it's a statement from one of Plato's dialogues, so that there's a chance that this thought is essentially Plato's own, with Socrates merely serving as a
literary mouthpiece, so to speak. So perhaps it would be best to just go ahead and attribute this idea to Plato instead (as many people now do for these very reasons). Given the "Socratic problem," it's just much more prudent.
Good luck.