Moral Seriousness: Socratic Virtue as a Way of Life.

"Philosophy as a way of life" has its roots in ancient ethics and has attracted renewed interest in recent decades. The aim in this paper is to construct a contemporized image of Socrates, consistent with the textual evidence. The account defers concern over analytical/theoretical inquiry into virtue, in favor of a neo‐existentialist process of self‐examination informed by the virtue of what is called "moral seriousness." This process is modeled on Frankfurt's hierarchical account of self‐identification, and the paper suggests an expansion of Frankfurt's concept of a person to include "full" personhood, in which the apprehended "meaning" of one's "whole life" is taken as a necessary condition for eudaimonia (meaning of life) and is characterized by phenomenological transcendence. In addition, the importance of the informed scrutiny of a community of philosophers to the self‐examination process is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]