Welcome to the Examined Life website.

There is a demand for wisdom that only philosophy can provide. 

Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Nothing in the past two and a half thousand years has contradicted this insight. 

Living the examined life enables us to achieve and maintain intellectual, ethical, spiritual, emotional and physical awareness.  It generates personal insights, reflection and new internal perspectives, initiates and encourages conscious ethical living as everyday habit.

The Examined Life concept returns philosophy to its ancient roots by combining wisdom and practice to help you to live what practical philosophy calls the ‘good life’ which in turn is vitally connected to ‘good society’.  

You don’t have to go on a retreat, or become a hermit on a mountain top. The practice of the examined life creates the inner space and opportunity for observation, reflection and contemplation and thus the path to conscious ethical living as every day habit. 

The Examined Life Institute’s mission is to facilitate the practice of conscious ethical living as a means towards a meaningful and purposeful life.

Please note

The practice of the Examined Life does not require prior knowledge of philosophy. It does not involve psychological or psychiatric analysis, counselling, or coaching. It is not therapy and does not aim to treat clinical psychological problems or past or present traumas.  It also actively discourages self-involvement, selfishness, and egotism.

Happiness per se is not an aim of the examined life although it is very often a byproduct...

Copyright 2007-2008 Dr Vera Ranki