This piece is adapted from Michael’s new course on How To Live Like Socrates. Listen to the rest in the Stoa app.
In one of history’s most famous scenes, after the conclusion of Plato’s dialogue the Apology, Socrates finds himself condemned to death.
Socrates famously said that his accusers cannot harm him. But whether or not they can harm him, it seems they may indeed succeed in killing his body. A few friends succeed in breaking into the jail with a plan to spring Socrates free.
Socrates refuses. He intends to stay, and follow through on the execution. His friends are heartbroken, and rather than cry with them, Socrates rebukes them.
Don’t you realize, Socrates says, that philosophy is a training for death. Now, in the face of his own demise, is the time for him to show how well he has internalized the ideas of philosophy.
The simplest way to read this scene is that death is another indifferent. Something we’d prefer not to happen, but can navigate well when we must. Don’t think of death as a terrible thing, but an indifferent one.
This is what Epictetus points to when he says:
Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible.
Handbook 5
But that is not the whole point. The other idea is that dying is actually the capstone of a life well lived, the concluding chapter. As Seneca says:
It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
On the Shortness of Life Chapter 7
Death is another challenge, a moment to rise to, an opportunity to demonstrate what we really believe.
So what does that mean in practice? First, we can remember that death is a part of life. We can practice Memento Mori. Then we can imagine how we would like to die. Bravely? Peacefully? Surrounded by our friends?
This is why philosophers so often talk about the deaths of philosophers - as inspiration. Epicurus died happy, although very sick, remembering the time he spent with friends. Socrates died carrying out the punishment given to him by the city of Athens, rather than fleeing. Seneca died Stoically following through on an order from Nero to commit suicide, rather than fleeing or fighting.
Third, we can imagine our life as a finite thing. As a project with an end date. This can help you live in the moment more purposefully. As Marcus said:
Consider yourself to be dead, and to have completed your life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed you.
Meditations, 7.56
If you want to live like Socrates, then you have to live preparing for death. Because that is what philosophy is about.