ABSTRACT
The injunction to know thyself is the heartbeat that gives life to the scrutinizing forms of questioning that bear his name: Socratic maieutics and Socratic elenchus. In the Socratic dialogues the authors encounter Socrates engaging his interlocutors on a variety of issues. Socrates' philosophical way of life, guided by the injunctions to know thyself with nothing in excess, inspired a number of philosophical schools that sought by different ways to live examined lives worth living. Just as the self-examinations of the philosophical schools measured their practices against the virtues, duties, or canons of the good life, Christians employed forms of self-examination that measured their lives with respect to the life of Jesus Christ, the beatitudes, Decalogue, and later, against the divisions of the deadly sins. Theoretical questions seek systematic articulate answers; this distinguishes them from both existential and practical enquiries and stances.
