In addition to the books I mentioned yesterday, I am reading The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley.  I enjoy philosophy. It is thought provoking, and after all, what’s better than thinking?

Philosophizing

On the first page of the introduction to The Book of Dead Philosophers, Critchley gets right to the point, quoting Cicero: “To philosophize is to learn how to die.”  Learning how to die: what a morbid subject. Most people tend to keep themselves occupied so they don’t have to think about the terror of death, or cleave to “magical forms of salvation and promises of immortality offered by certain varieties of religion and many New Age (and some rather older age) sophistries.” (Critchley pg. xv)

I thought a lot about death as a kid, although I don’t think I was particularly afraid of it. I just thought, “since we’re all going to die some day, what’s the point of anything?” I remember wondering how anything could be funny in the face of death (even though death was probably far in the future).

Nowadays, I picture myself facing death with a zen transformation of my state of mind, in which I calmly accept the changes that occur as I die. I only wish I had the discipline to study Zen. I can just see myself furiously trying to learn to calm down when the dread takes hold at the last moment. I’m with Woody Allen, who said, “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there at the time.”

The Book of Dead Philosophers is a compendium of circumstances of the approaches to death of a host of philosophers (190 in all). In a way, it reminds me of the ‘Darwin Awards’, a prize awarded to people who died stupidly, thus ridding the gene pool of their defective DNA. However, unlike the recipients of the Darwin Awards, the philosophers whose deaths are portrayed, already contributed their genes (or should I say memes) to the pool.

Philosophy and relevance

Plato on the Googleplex, another book I just started, explains the relevance of philosophy in modern times and how it has progressed through the millennia.

Philosophy has a personal relevance to me. In addition to the existential problems faced by a developing adolescent, I had the additional philosophical difficulty of trying to make sense of my severely handicapped older brother and my relationship with him. Mike is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. This resulted in my gravitation to ethical issues such as the definition of a human being; questions about the limits of knowledge (i.e., What Is It Like to be a Bat? (Nagel)); understanding limits of scientific inquiry and other philosophical questions.

Resolution

Life has been very good to me. Even though my efforts to try reaching Mike failed, I am comfortable with the fact that I tried the best I could. Certain things cannot be satisfactorily resolved. Although the scale of coming to terms with death is magnitudes greater than coming to terms with inability to help or reach another person, perhaps the principles are the same.

Today’s experiment:

Today, I return to a representational sketch. Part of my reason is to let those of you who remember Arthur, my pet avocado sapling, know that he is doing very well. Below is my pen and ink sketch.

You might notice that there are three sets of leaf growths on the same plane as his second set of broad leaves. He is really growing up very well.

I started eating more avocados, so there might be more little Arthurs on the way. How life affirming is that?

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Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers,New York: Vintage Books 2008

Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like To Be A Bat? The Philosophical Review, October 1974