Is the unexamined life not worth living, as Socrates claimed? Here's what Robert Noggle has said:“Philosophers who advocate requiring critical self-reflection for autonomy claim, then, that to be autonomous, a person must live an examined, self-critical life; she must not only know herself, but she must continually subject her own values, convictions, and commitments to critical appraisal. She must not only know what she wants and believes, but she must continually question whether she wants and believes the right things. Critical self-reflection is, in short, a kind of epistemic requirement to avoid taking any questions about knowledge and value as completely and permanently settled. But there are perfectly coherent conceptions of human existence in which critical self-reflection plays a comparatively small role. Many people constitute their selves by becoming embedded in a community or tradition, one which they may pay unquestioning allegiance to. Consider your own most important values, convictions, and connections with others--family, spouse, child, best friend. How much critical reflection is appropriate here? Are we prepared to require--as a condition for taking a person's choices seriously--that people subject these things to critical scrutiny? This is not to say whether such scrutiny is a good or bad thing. Clearly there are cases in which such self-critical scrutiny is warranted: one is surely well-advised to engage in critical reflection about one's devotion to an abusive spouse, for instance. But in other cases such a critical questioning of one's relationships seems out of place, even destructive. After all, how would you feel if you periodically came up for "post marriage review" and had to submit a file for the critical inspection of your spouse before she could autonomously continue the marriage? We may, of course, question the wisdom of such blind faith, but we cannot deny that a self so constituted either does not rule or is not really even a self, simply because we do not like the way it was constituted or the tradition in which it is embedded. Thus it is morally problematic and politically dangerous to require a complete rational overhaul of all of one's deeply held religious, philosophical, and moral commitments as a condition for us to take a person's desires, decisions, and choices seriously. These things, after all, are likely to be key components of the very identity of the person and the meaningfulness of her life. How much questioning should one do? How much time and energy should we devote to reflecting on our own beliefs and values? For some this may raise issues of mortality: how much of my limited existence should I devote to puzzling over mysteries I'll probably never solve anyway? For others it may hold a theological dimension: how much questioning is compatible with my faith in God? For some it raises questions about human existence and the meaning and purpose of life: are we essentially questioners for whom the highest pursuit is truth, or are we social beings whose primary purpose is to unite with others in a community defined by shared practices and values? Maybe the unexamined life really isn't worth living. But saying so invokes a certain view of the good that not all share. Even it if is the right view, we still should not refuse to take people's desires and choices seriously simply because they disagree about the content of the best life. We are free to point out how a lack of epistemic sophistication leaves one vulnerable to manipulation and ideology. We are free to try to convert them, and to do this, we might invoke a rich character ideal of autonomy. But we are not free to marginalize their decisions, choices, and desires simply because they do not subscribe to our character ideal, to our vision of the good.”