The Good Life, The Examined Life, and the Embodied Life

The good life and the examined life have long been advocated as key philosophical goals, and they have often been closely linked together. My paper critically examines this linkage by considering arguments both for and against the value of self-examination for achieving the good life. Because somatic self-examination has been viewed as especially problematic for the philosophical project of achieving the good life, this form of self-examination will be given special attention in the paper, and its discussion will be situated within the larger issue of the extent to which the embodied life is central to the good life.