The Book Of Dead Philosophers (critchley, Simon) / quote 2 of 18
To philosophize is to learn how to die
It is in stark contrast to our drunken desire for evasion and escape that the ideal of the philosophical death has such sobering power. As Cicero writes, and this sentiment was axiomatic for most ancient philosophy and echoes down the ages, ‘To philosophize is to learn how to die.’ The main task of philosophy, on this view, is to prepare us for death, to provide a kind of training for death, the cultivation of an attitude towards our finitude that faces – and faces down – the terror of annihilation without offering promises of an afterlife.