What is the Good of the “Examined Life”? Some Thoughts on the Apology and Liberal Education

Abstract

...five years ago (1874) a strange state of mind-torpor began at times to grow upon me. I had moments of perplexity, of a stoppage, as it were, of life, as if I did not know how I was to live, what I was to do. I began to wander, and was a victim to low spirits. This, however, passed, and I continued to live as before. Later, these periods of perplexity grew more and more frequent, and invariably took the same form. During their continuance the same questions always presented themselves to me: “Why?” and “What after?” ... I became aware that this was not a mere passing phase of mental ill-health, but that the symptoms were of the utmost importance, and that if these questions continued to recur I must find an answer to them. (Tolstoy 1901, 73)