Examined life, explains philosophy, is the experiences and life lived in the streets. The film feature interviews with eight influential philosophers conducted in places that resonate with their ideas. As they walk down the streets of New York and other metropolises with Astra Taylor, their philosophical ideas and the practical application to modern culture. They revolve around politics and justice, ethics of consumption, culture and individualism and the truth. My argument examines Cornell West, who unlike the rest who walk down the streets, explains the concept of truth at the back seat of a car. Cornell explains truth the as the process of dying and the ability to challenge what others consider as truth.
In the film, Cornell West alludes to Plato’s saying that, “The unexamined life is not worth living”, and paradoxically says that the examined life is painful. He calls for self-examination through self-interrogation. We become different kinds of people when we start questioning our expectations and tacit presuppositions (Taylor, 2008). Philosophy therefore seeks to explain our finite situation by seeking to explain our journey towards death. As living organisms in time and space we have our desires and always seek to hold on to certainty. Cornell’s ideology of examined life centres on truth and explains the ultimate question of what truth is in self-examination.
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Truth is a condition of allowing suffering to speak because truth should be viewed as a way of life and not a collection of predetermined prepositions that agree with certain things in life. Cornell agrees with Plato’s perception of truth as strongly tied to a way of life and therefore the concept of truth should be understood in its existential mode (Taylor 2008). Truth is the process of forming attention, transforming the superficial to substantial and moving from frivolous to serious. Cornell further asserts that truth is a cultivation of self to challenge the history and the promotion to maturation of the soul that eventually prescribes the different kinds of people.
Cornell interprets “examining ourselves” by Socrates from the lenses of truth and contends that philosophy is about mediation and preparing for death. Death in this regard is not an event but death in life since there is no transformation without death. As such, truth is learning how to die, through self-examination, transformation from old self into a better person and living abundantly and critically. It is important to connect death to truth and understand how to think critically to challenge status quo, embrace change challenge how people perceive the world. One of the main elements of truth is love which is death of an old, desolate and withdrawn self into a new being socially entangled to another person.
Cornell agrees that philosophy is the experiences we have in life – life in the different contexts. Fundamentally, it is about how you organize your life by being critically wise and having the courage to forge forward by challenging yourself into a better person. He alludes to music and poetry as ways in which life experiences are expressed and particularly Jazz and classical music and poetry. He uses Beethoven’s Sonatas and quartets to express the romanticism of life which is an element of truth. Truth in its wholeness requires us to critically have intellectual interrogations and embrace failure and successes as opportunities and process of making ourselves better.
References
Taylor, A. (Director). (2008). Examined Life - Modern Social Philosophy Documentary [Motion Picture]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rEgcLMamZE
