Tags / 5 quotes from 3 sources
#fear-of-death
The Acid Diaries (Christopher Gray)
Fear of death is the cement of slave society
I saw that I had not been so wide of the mark in the woods. Ultimately, fear of death is the cement of slave society—that’s at the root of our fear of freedom, and we’ll never get out of this mess until we have integrated both life and death in a higher unity. Because it’s…
The Book Of Dead Philosophers (critchley, Simon)
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…
Death as a curative slumber
Having been condemned to death, Socrates concludes his speech with the following extraordinary words: Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live;but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God. These words encapsulate the classical…
Epicurus and the four-part cure
My own view of death is closer to that of Epicurus and what is known as the four-part cure: don’t fear God, don’t worry about death, what is good is easy to get and what is terrible is easy to endure. He writes in the final of the four extant letters attributed to him, Get used…
The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Celebrating the great awakening of death
This is no more saying that we ought not to fear death than I was saying that we ought to be unselfish. Suppressing the fear of death makes it all the stronger. The point is only to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that “I” and all other “things” now present will vanish, until…