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Philosophers' deaths showthe importance of learning to live

T'S not Simon Critchley's fault that I read hisI book with sheer, naked envy. This is the bookI was going to write. I had it all worked out

and it seemed such a good idea; it still does. Afterall, philosophers, who seek to learn how life is tobe lived, must ask how the project of life is shapedby the knowledge of its eventual termination.When the philosopher dies, the philosophy is putto the test. Does it still seem valid? Or does it fadeinto irrelevance in the face of eternity?

While I was dithering, Critchley's book mustalready have been with his publisher, if not theprinter, so it's unfair of me to regard him as arival. And I have to say (some gritting of the teethhere) he has made an excellent job of it. This isa death-haunted history of great thinkers, eachlooked at in terms of what they said about deathor how they died.

And how they died! Heraclitus covered in dogdung; Anaxarchus pounded to death by pestles ina huge mortar. William of Ockham died ofthe Black Death, Hegel of cholera (though hiswidow denied this, what with cholera beingsuch a downmarket kind of infection) andMichel Foucault of AIDS. Avicenna, the great11th-century Persian philosopher, died as a resultof self-medication administered to relieve theeffects of sexual over-indulgence. In 17th-centuryEngland, Francis Bacon is said to have died of achill after going out in the cold to find outwhether stuffing a chicken with snow wouldpreserve the flesh. In the following century,

French philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettriedied from eating dubious truffle pate.

Some died appropriate deaths. Henry DavidThoreau, philosopher of nature, died frombronchitis after counting the rings on tree stumpsin the rain. Edith Stein died a very inappropriatedeath, for there can never be anything approp-riate about death in the Holocaust.

More happily, perhaps, Hans-Georg Gadamerwas given a clean bill of health at age 102,celebrated with a bowl of soup and a glass of wine,and died the following day.

There is, though, no philosophical death moreexemplary than that of Socrates, condemned todeath by his fellow Athenians and forced to drinkdeadly hemlock for corrupting the youth andfailing to honour the gods of the city. Death,Socrates said at his trial, might be a dreamlesssleep, or it might be a passage to another place.

Either way, it is nothing to be feared. It is, inCritchley's words, "that in relation to which lifemust be lived".

Critchley gets his central idea from Socrates. It

Alan SaundersThe Book of Dead PhilosophersBy Simon CritchleyMelbourne University Press,$29.95, 336pp

was summed up in the 16th century by Michel deMontaigne who, sadly, lost the power of speechjust before he met his end: "To philosophise is tolearn how to die."

To learn how to die, not to speculate aboutwhat may lie beyond death, but to look as clearlyas you can at your own mortality.

This isn't easy, as Critchley remarks. In denialof death, we try to forget it with the help ofpleasures and possessions or abolish it with newage sophistries. Critchley will have none of this.He agrees with Montaigne that to seek to escapedeath is to seek to escape ourselves. Remainafraid of death and you are hating yourself.

So how are we to regard annihilation?Critchley seems impressed by an argument ofGreek philosopher Epicurus and his Romanfollower Lucretius. It works like this: death is non-existence; non-existence cannot, in the nature ofthings, be experienced; it is irrational to fear thatwhich one will not experience; therefore, it isirrational to fear death.

It's neat, but I'm not convinced. What onedreads is not experiencing what can't beexperienced (which would be silly) but losing thepossibility of any experience at all.

Perhaps, however, there is a sort of immortal-ity. Seneca (whose death at the command of theEmperor Nero is second only to that of Socratesin the canon of philosophical martyrdonns)believed the philosopher was immortal becausehe lived in the eternal present. "From Aristotle

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onwards, the most sublime happiness thatphilosophy promises is the life of con-templation," Critchley writes. "I know of noother immortality."

The problem here, I can't help thinking, is thatit seems to imply that you can't die well unlessyou're a philosopher. But many peopleperhaps most are not made for the contem-plative life; they discover themselves mostly inactivity, in making things or making money, orrearing a family or just getting on with the job athand. Can't they too know how to die?

Critchley has a philosopher who can help:Hannah Arendt, who died in 1975 after sufferinga heart attack while serving after-dinner coffee.Arendt thought the contemplative life a sort ofliving death. Contemplation matters to her butwhat really counts is action in the world."Philosophical meditations on death are all verywell," Critchley says, summarising her views,"but what justice do they bring to the phenom-enon of life if they leave no room for the questionof birth, the power of beginning."

Critchley thinks this may be a cue for a bookon philosophers' births. It will have to be verygood to be as fascinating as his book on death.

Alan Saunders presents The Philosopher's Zoneand By Design on ABC Radio National.

Simon Critchley will be a guest at the SydneyWriters Festival.

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