The work is drawn partially as a response to Socrates assertion in Plato's "The Apology of Socrates" that the unexamined life is one not worth living[2][3] The book is an attempt to "tackle human nature, the personal, 'the holiness of everyday life' and its meaning.

[5][6] According to reviewers such as Thomas Kelly, Nozick used The Examined Life as well as another work to "explicitly [disown]" the earlier radical libertarian concepts he presented in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

[7] Denis Donoghue praised The Examined Life in The Wilson Quarterly, but stated that it had some passages that were less strong than others.

[4] In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2005), the philosopher Anthony Quinton described The Examined Life as "unkindly treated".

[8] Jim Holt, a columnist for The Literary Review leaves a few remarks about the "semantic slum", essentially deeming it "trickled down philosophy", saying that it is not worth following/reading.