Socrates did not fear death. Although he suffered a gruesome death (he was executed by the state for the alleged crime of corruption of the Athenian youth), Socrates did not flee or plead with his executioner. If we take to heart his beliefs and teachings – that death is an inevitability that might actually be good – we can find greater acceptance in the unknown as well.
How did Socrates see death?
Socrates lived in a time of immeasurable barbarism, when death, war, and disease determined the experiences of the living. But his familiarity with death was strong, even by the brutal standards of the time. He was a soldier – and even something of a war hero; he saved the future Athenian leader Alcibiades during a siege of the city of Potidaea in 432 BC. Chr.– So he was much more used to the inevitability of mortality than most people in the 21st century.
Ancient Greek society thought of death as a spiritual transition into an underworld of spirits, crystallized by the spirit leaving the body in the form of a culminating exhalation. Socrates was less mystical in his interpretation of death and was clearly realistic if not skeptical about it. When the philosopher was 399 BC In court in Athens, Socrates spoke to a jury of 500 male citizens and delivered a speech that captured his thoughts on death on the most appropriate stage imaginable.
He said after the Cambridge University:
Also, remember in the following way that there is much hope that there is a good thing in being dead. Because being dead is one of two things: either it is like being nothing and the dead person has no perception of anything, or it is, as they say, a kind of change, namely the shifting of the soul from here to another place. And if it is indeed a complete absence of perception, like the sleep of someone who does not dream at all, death would be a remarkable gain.
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Socrates had a devoted follower in a young Plato who attended the trial that day. Regarding the behavior of his mentor prior to his execution, Plato noted that Socrates “appeared happy both in his manner and in his words when he died nobly and without fear”. It is an attitude that drove Socrates’ spirits as he drank from the hangman’s cup filled with poisonous hemlock.
How Socrates Can Teach You To Tame Your Fear Of Death
Socrates was in many ways a forerunner of the stoic school of ancient Greek philosophytrying to avoid negative emotions and replace them with an unwavering inner determination. Denying your feelings about death is not necessarily good, but accepting its eventuality can go a long way in taming your fear of the unknown.
It’s a scary concept to be sure but science hasn’t really figured out what it feels like to die beyond the experience of people pronounced dead and later resuscitated. As far as research has established, there are harrowing moments of mental and physical decline, but also hallucinatory reunions with loved ones who have passed away, cinematic moments of your life that flash before your eyes, a state of raptured contentment, and other blissful sensations.
The insight from Socrates’ meditations is that there is nothing to fear in the unknown. In addition, the opportunity to lead a virtuous life combined with the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom should open the doors to fulfillment while you are living. Before the jury, before his execution, Socrates made his most forward-looking and lasting statement: “Untested life is not worth living for man.” What one should do to combat any fear of death is to put oneself in the Investigate the present, suggested the philosopher.
Using the philosopher’s point of view as a guide – that people should seek beauty, strength, and health, tempered with the pursuit of knowledge – will help you ground in the present. Hopefully it fills you with a state of contentment so that death is not so much a morbid ghost haunting you as it is an insignificant aspect of your life.
