Abstract

The great philosophers have generally held that there was some kind of interdependence between philosophy and practice. An unexamined life, they have maintained, is not worth living; and if there is to be anything to examine, life must first be lived, i.e. a practical experience is a propaedeutic to philosophy. But although Plato, for instance, thought that the task of government could be well performed only by the philosopher, he does not seem to have thought that fifteen years’ practical experience had any beneficial influence on the philosopher’s subsequent work of philosophic contemplation. Aristotle explicitly prefers the theoretical to the practical life, and the resultant divorce of theory and practice leads to quietism and so to ethical scepticism