Getting Real

 

The closer you get to the grave, the more real things become – not only death but life, your life as a whole, the lives of beloved people, and the lives of strangers better and worse; the light, the colors, the beauty of the earth, the little things that are part of your world - how precious it all becomes when you are about to lose it! Which means we spend much of our lives not aware of reality in all its fullness. 

   In this connection, I can’t stop thinking about the dying scene of Plato’s Socrates, a character I have loved throughout the dialogs but who becomes alien to me precisely during this scene when it matters most, when in a sense the meaning of his life is revealed.

    During his trial and sentencing to death for heresy and corrupting the young as portrayed in the Apology, the Athenian majority (a slim one) thought to do him the worst evil by putting him to death. He – for me hilariously – deprived them of their satisfaction by presenting a dispassionate argument to the effect that death means either unconsciousness (likened to a deep, restful sleep) or an afterlife for the soul. If, moreover, there is an afterlife for the soul, then rewards and punishments as measured by the goodness of one’s life on earth. As Socrates does not doubt the goodness of his life, a life devoted to inquiry in the pursuit of goodness and truth, he anticipates a wonderful afterlife in which he can go on learning and deepening his understanding. In either case, death is not an evil. The ignorant Athenian majority imagine they are doing him harm but in fact, they are doing him good. I enjoy imagining their perplexity.

    Facing immediate death in the Phaedo, Socrates delves into arguments concerning the immortality of the soul, but without much sense of urgency and not overly invested in the outcome. It’s like he knows the answer – perhaps he has had a vision of the Good, as portrayed in the myth he concludes the chain of arguments with. It is like he is just curious to see how close human reasoning can get to it. And then the scene that disturbs me. Socrates indicates that he should take the poison. Crito objects, telling Socrates that there is still time and that many prisoners don't take the poison until well into the night. Socrates replies that men cling too desperately to life, whereas he has no reason to fear death. Socrates is brought the cup of hemlock, which he receives quite cheerfully. Socrates offers a prayer to the gods that his journey from this world to the next may be prosperous – a prayer that suggests that life is a disease and death its cure. Then he downs the cup in one gulp. At this point, Phaedo and all the others break down in tears of grief. Socrates chastises them, saying he sent the women away to avoid such a show of tears and urges his friends to be brave. Ashamed by his rebuke, Socrates' friends fall silent.

     This scene, as I respond to it, embodies the following view of the meaning of death:

·        It is a good thing because life is a misfortune, at least to the extent it is not lived in search of the wisdom of its own unimportance.

·        Grieving over the death of a beloved friend is like an irrational superstition, based on a mistake of sorts – the belief that life is good and death is bad.  

·        Facing death does not really involve courage, not in the sense most people understand courage – as the overcoming of the fear of death (or harm) to do the good thing. The fear itself is irrational. It is a matter of knowledge and acting on that knowledge. The knowledge that death is not an evil takes away the fear, a fear that arises only in our ignorance.

This is the key to Socrates. It tells us why as a soldier he retreated before the Spartans while perfectly calm, inspiring the wonder of his fellows. Death was a matter of indifference; life not something to cling to. It tells us why a good man can’t be harmed: because nothing done to him, not even killing him, touches the soul devoted to goodness. This life doesn’t matter once the philosopher has arrived at that insight. It tells us why it is better to suffer rather than do injustice: doing injustice damns your soul; suffering injustice doesn’t. This death scene ties all the fundamental Socratic thoughts together.

     I am sure that grief is not irrational, not a superstition. It is a response to the reality of loving another and losing that beloved person. To love another person is to affirm their life in this world. To lose that person leaves a void in this life. This life matters if you love. Thus death does mean a real loss. The Athenians did Socrates an evil by having his executed. Socrates did his friends an injustice by chastising them for grieving, violating in a way their love for him. If he had said “courage, friends, courage” – meaning overcome your fear, don’t lose hope even in the face of death – that would have been human. But he equates them with pre-rational women, who were considered by most Greeks as purely emotional creatures, not much advanced beyond childhood. He shames them for their grief, which is to say, their love for him. 

     To me, that reveals a nihilism as deep as the abyss, at least concerning this world. What can friendship mean in a world in which life is a disease and death the cure? I think the friendship between Socrates and anyone could only have been a form of pity, a willingness to go back into the cave of the world a lead a few promising souls out of it. No space for affirming life; thus no space for affirming worldly friendship. It’s cold. Almost fanatical. The only thing that distinguishes Socrates from, say, the 9/11 terrorists is his love for the Good, the transcendent Good in whose light he saw the world as nothing more than a dark cave of fantasy to escape from.

   In short, I don’t think Socrates could face the reality of death and love. I won’t do it here, but it is interesting to compare Socrates’ death with Jesus’. There was no “let this cup pass from me” or “my God, my God, why hath Thou forsaken me” with Socrates because he did not “so love the world.”

   When my time comes, I know it will take all my courage to die lucidly and with some dignity (if I am given that chance). Life is precious. I won’t “rage at the dying of the light” like a juvenile existentialist. I accept my mortality. I don’t think life at any cost is a worthy attitude. Life is not something to cling to at any cost. But in its mortal form, it is precious.

   And my grief, ironically, is precious because it is the form my relationship must take with people I have loved and lost. Not only grief. There is gratitude mixed with my grief. But I won’t treat it as an irrational superstition.