Know Your Daimon: Reflection Prompts

These questions are for you. Not for a grade, not for a test. Just for thinking. Take one. Sit with it. There are no right answers.

1. Socrates says wisdom starts with knowing what you do not know. What is one thing you feel confident about that you have never really examined? Where did that confidence come from?

2. The Oracle said Socrates was the wisest man alive. He spent years trying to prove it wrong. What have you learned about yourself from trying to prove something wrong?

3. Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living. What part of your own life are you living right now without really thinking about it? What would you find if you looked honestly?

4. Crito begged Socrates to escape and save his life. Socrates refused because it would have been wrong. Has there ever been a time when you did the right thing even though it cost you something? What made you do it?

5. Alcibiades was brilliant but had never questioned his own certainty. Think of something you are very sure about. Have you ever genuinely tested it? What would you need to do to test it honestly?

6. Socrates says we need other people to truly know ourselves, like an eye needs a mirror. Who in your life reflects you back most honestly? Do you seek out that kind of conversation, or avoid it?

7. In his last hours, Socrates was calmer than everyone around him. What do you think made that possible? What would it take for you to face the hardest thing in your life without falling apart?

8. Socrates spent his life asking one basic question: are you living the life you actually want, or just the one you were handed? What is your honest answer to that question right now?

9. Socrates compared himself to a gadfly, the small biting insect that keeps a slow horse awake. Is there a person in your life who does that for you? Do you have the patience to listen to them, or do you swat them away?

10. When Meletus accused Socrates of corrupting the youth, Socrates pointed out that he lives among these young people and would not knowingly make his own neighbors worse. Who are your neighbors, in the broadest sense? Are you making their lives better or worse by how you live?

11. Socrates said that when you do wrong, you harm yourself more than you harm the other person. Have you ever believed that? Is there something you did that you thought you got away with, that you later realized you did not?

12. Socrates refused to beg for his life because begging would have asked the jury to feel instead of judge. Have you ever gotten something you wanted by manipulating how someone felt rather than by being honest? How did that turn out?

13. In the last hours of his life, Socrates kept arguing. He kept thinking. He did not stop being himself. What would you want to be doing in the last hour of your life? How close is that to what you are doing now?

14. Socrates said a person of bad character cannot truly harm a person of good character. That is a strong claim. Do you believe it? Can a cruel person really not reach the core of a good one?

15. Alcibiades was given advice that could have saved his life and changed history. He ignored it. Is there advice you have been given that you know is right, that you have not yet followed? Why not?

Write. Talk about these with someone you trust. Come back to them in a year.

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