Philosophy and Death

"I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid."
-- T.S. Eliot

Death haunts me, as it does most of us. Being dead is not a worry. I expect no afterlife, no metempsychosis; death is the obliteration of self. Once I have died, there will be no "me" to register the fact of my demise. Still, there is the final moment, the terminal point where one ceases to be a subject and becomes an object. This is the aspect that frightens me. I cannot- none of us can- imagine non-existence.

Simon Critchley begins his work, "The Book of Dead Philosophers" from this point. Accepting Cicero's dictum that "to philosophize is to learn how to die," Critchley writes of how 190 philosophers spoke about and faced death. His aim is to counter the facile attempts in this modern age to deny the fact of death through "the transitory consolation of momentary oblivion or a miraculous redemption in the afterlife."

It is important to note, especially in the face of a potentially incendiary quote like the one above, that his is not a flat-out denial of an afterlife. His point is that all we can know is that we are living and that, by denying death through consumption or religion, we truncate our lives. Accepting death is the only way to truly live.

So we learn how philosophers faced death. Socrates' argument that death, be it eternal sleep or the reunion with the honored dead, is not to be feared is the logical starting point. Then, following a rough chronology, we encounter the early materialists who preceded Socrates, the Platonists, Epicureans and Stoics who came after him, Romans, Chinese. The common thread is that death is something that cannot be overcome, so it is not to be feared.

There are even entries for members of an obscure group of Jews following a teacher from Galilee. These are perhaps the most interesting in some ways. Those who know only the flavors of Christianity available today forget that, at its base, the faith is all about death. Chritchley accuses most modern Christians of "actually leading quietly desperate atheist lives bounded by a desire for longevity and the terror of annihilation." The central preoccupation of Paul, for instance, is death. It is Paul who tells us how Adam brought death and how Jesus, through his own death, conquered death. St. Anthony pursued his faith by becoming dead to the world, founding Christian monasticism in the process.

I did not intend to dwell on Christianity, but since its presence is so strongly felt, it creates a gravity of its own. The point is that, excepting beliefs in an afterlife, the way someone like Paul faced death was not so different from the way someone like Hume did. The cheerfulness Hume is reported to have shown as he died is akin to the joy expressed in martyrdom accounts. Both show, for different reasons, an acceptance of the fact of death and an understanding that it cannot be avoided.

This is a wonderful book. Chritchley's prose is lively and humorous; there is something of the smart-aleck about him. His argument that we should embrace death as part of life and not dwell morosely on it is bolstered by his presentation. Critchley has me thinking about death differently. Perhaps, instead of pursuing my true love of History, I should have dallied longer with my mistress Philosophy. The consolations (see Boethius) to be found there are more than religion could ever offer me.