The examined life

Every causal explanation already presupposes a world that appears to someone: science itself operates on phenomena given to a consciousness it forgets. From this observation the phenomenologists draw an order of priority: one must first describe faithfully how things give themselves to lived experience, before seeking their cause. The method, against common sense, requires the epoché, the bracketing of our spontaneous theses about the existence of objects, so as to retain only their mode of appearing. This is why Heidegger questions being from the entity that we are, and Merleau-Ponty makes lived perception, not the physiological fact, the first ground of philosophy.

Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (1913) · Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (1931) · Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), preface

The Advaitic path is wholly turned toward interiority: liberation is decided in self-knowledge, through hearing the teaching (śravaṇa), reflection (manana) and deep meditation (nididhyāsana). It is not in action upon the world but in the reflexive turn upon the knowing subject that the absolute is disclosed. The examined life, down to the root of the "I," takes precedence over outward action.

Śaṅkara (attributed), Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, II, 4, 5

There are truths one cannot hold at arm's length as an object of knowledge: what death, love or faith are for me can be grasped only in the first person, by the one who undergoes them and stakes themselves on them. Kierkegaard draws from this his watchword against Hegel: « subjectivity is truth », for the objective system, in thinking humanity in general, forgets the singular existing individual who thinks. From this inwardness to the Sartrean for-itself, the movement makes the lived point of view the ground of philosophy; but since to exist is to commit oneself in the world, this inwardness is no contemplative withdrawal.

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript · Being and Nothingness

Self-cultivation (xiushen) lies at the heart of the Confucian Way: the daily examination of one's conduct precedes and grounds action upon the world, following the sequence of The Great Learning (Daxue), which runs from rectifying the heart to governing the realm. Master Zeng says he examines himself daily on three points: loyalty, faithfulness, study. Yet this inwardness remains turned toward relational practice, never toward pure contemplation.

Confucius, Analects (Lunyu), 1.4 · The Great Learning (Daxue)

At his trial, Socrates refuses to give up philosophy even to save his life: what matters is not living but living well, and one cannot live well without examining oneself. The examination, driven by the elenchus, tears the interlocutor away from inherited opinions and makes self-knowledge, the Delphic injunction, the condition of a free life; an unexamined existence is lived in borrowed views and illusion.

Plato, Apology, 38a (the unexamined life is not worth living) · Plato, Apology, 29d-30a (the philosopher will not stop questioning)

The path to the principle runs not through the outside but through a turning of the soul upon itself: "withdraw into yourself and look". Since the One is present at our innermost, closer to the soul than the soul is to itself, it is by gathering oneself, by sculpting one's own inner statue, that one rises to it. This absolute primacy of contemplative inwardness over outward action makes the examined life the whole of philosophy, and anticipates Augustinian interiority.

Enneads, I, 6 (On Beauty) · Enneads, VI, 9, 7

Where philosophy sought universal truths, Montaigne takes an unprecedented object: himself. Skeptical epochē, by suspending the great certainties, paradoxically clears the one ground left to explore, the inner experience of one particular man. To portray oneself, not out of vanity but to reach the human condition through a single case, becomes a method: "each man bears the whole form of the human condition". It is the examined life shifted from Socratic refutation toward patient self-observation.

Essays, "To the Reader" and III, 2, "Of Repentance"

The whole Cartesian procedure is a withdrawal inward: it is by turning away from the senses and the world, in the solitude of meditation, that the mind grasps itself as a thing that thinks. The cogito is won through methodic introspection, the reflective examination of one's own thoughts becoming the ground of all certainty.

Meditations on First Philosophy, I and II · Discourse on Method, IV

Against the ritualists (Mīmāṃsā), for whom the performance of prescribed acts is the way, Śaṅkara holds that action does not liberate: it stays within the field of ignorance and yields only transient fruits. Only the turn inward, the inquiry into "who am I?" and the knowledge of the self, leads to liberation. The discipline consists of hearing the teaching (śravaṇa), reflection (manana) and meditation (nididhyāsana): a patient examination turned toward the witness of all experience, the opposite of a primacy of outward action.

Commentary on the Brahma Sūtras, I.1 (knowledge vs action) · Upadeśasāhasrī

No one has pushed the exploration of the inner self further: the Confessions inaugurate the autobiography of the singular subject, and the Reveries make self-examination and inner feeling the place of truth. Against the primacy of public action, Rousseau prizes the return upon oneself, solitude and the listening to conscience.

Rousseau, The Confessions · Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker

What one is matters infinitely more than what one has or what one seems in others' eyes: the most constant source of happiness is inner wealth, the one good that fortune cannot take back. Hence the value of solitude and of one's own company, against worldly dispersion.

Parerga and Paralipomena, 'Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life', ch. II

Seneca practises and prescribes a daily examination of conscience: each evening, to summon one's soul before itself to judge the day's deeds. Philosophy is first a care of the self, a reflexive return upon the inner life, even if it does not exclude public action.

On Anger, III, 36 (the evening examination of conscience) · Letters to Lucilius, XVI and XXVIII (philosophy as care of the soul)

Since disturbance comes not from things but from the judgment we pass on them, the place where calm is always to be found is no place in the world but the ruling faculty, the part of oneself nothing external can reach. Marcus makes of it a citadel into which one may always withdraw, returning to one's impressions to set them back in order. Yet this retreat is no flight from action: the notebook of the Meditations is that very exercise, left at once to return to one's task as a man and an emperor.

Meditations, IV, 3 · Meditations, VII, 59 · Meditations, VIII, 48

"Without going out the door, one knows the world; without looking through the window, one sees the way of heaven": wisdom is not won in outward agitation but in a turn inward, through emptiness and stillness. This cultivation of recollection and inner quietude takes precedence over active engagement in affairs, without however disowning a right action, the kind that does not force.

Dao De Jing, ch. 47 and 16

The Confucian way is a demanding self-cultivation: the disciple Zengzi examines himself daily on three points, and the inner perfecting of ren 仁 (humaneness) conditions all right action. Yet this interiority is not contemplative: it is tested and completed in conduct, service and the li 禮 (rites), hence a moderate position on the examined-life side, balanced by the primacy of action.

Analects, I, 4 (Zengzi examines himself daily on three points) · Analects, IV, 17 (seeing a worthy man, think of equalling him; seeing an unworthy one, examine yourself)