Socrates' Accepting View of Death
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In Plato's dialogue Phaedo, Socrates expresses a spiritual and accepting view of death in general and of his own imminent, personal death in particular. In contrast, Pablo, in Jean-Paul Sartre's story "The Wall," faces what he believes to be his own death with abject terror, although he tries to hide his fear behind a mask of toughness: "I wanted to stay hard" (Sartre 9). The differences between the two men in their attitudes toward death are the results of the ways they have lived their lives. Socrates is a man who has diligently sought the truth about life, death, virtue, wisdom, and himself, while Pablo seems to have lived his life with little self-examination or seeking after deeper truths. The results are two men facing their deaths, one with serenity, one with terror. Socrates would say that Pablo has not lived a life of philosophy, has not lived a pious, wise or virtuous life, and the inevitable outcome is a man filled with fear at the apparent approach of his death. Socrates summarizes his own life and fate and those of any person who determines to follow the path of philosophy: Those who are deemed to have lived an extremely pious life are freed and released from the regions of the earth as from a prison; they make their way up to a pure dwelling place. . . . Those who have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy live in the future altogether without a body. . . . One must make every effort to share in virtue and wisdom in one's life, for the reward is bea
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s upon death. This statement is an accurate representation of the perspective of Pablo, although he does not literally express such a view. Worse, to Pablo, there will be nothing left but fertilizer for the flowers; "After, you'll be pushing up daisies" (Sartre 8). Socrates, on the other hand, says that those things that change will be scattered and those that remain the same will remain after death, unchanged. The visible will scatter and the invisible will remain. The body is the visible, and clearly perishes. The soul is invisible and will remain. The soul is related to the divine, the body to the mortal. In life, the soul is confused by the body, struggling to keep a link with the divine, while on death the soul is free. Even in life, if the individual practices philosophy, pursues the divine, the soul can partly fulfill its divinity on earth. If the individual while alive practices the pleasures and bad habits of the body, it will, upon death, be bewildered, wander as a ghost, and essentially be reincarnated to repeat the same failures.
What Socrates is saying is that the major characteristic of the soul is to seek happiness, gentleness, philosophy, learning, truth, virtue, justice, and so on, while the body seeks pleasures
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Approximate Word count = 1742
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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