Socrates on Why the Belief that Death is a Bad Thing is so Ubiquitous and Intractable
- PDF / 620,153 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 27 Downloads / 207 Views
Socrates on Why the Belief that Death is a Bad Thing is so Ubiquitous and Intractable Irina Deretić1 · Nicholas D. Smith2 Received: 28 May 2020 / Accepted: 2 November 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract As a cognitivist about emotions, Socrates takes the fear of death to be a belief that death is a bad thing for the one who dies. Socrates, however, thinks there are reasons for thinking death is not a bad thing at all, and might even be a blessing. So the question considered in this paper is: how would Socrates explain the fact that so many people believe death is bad? Keywords Socrates · Cognitivism about emotions · Motivational intellectualism · Death · Fear of death · Cognitive error · Etiologies of belief-formation
1 Introduction There can be little doubt that part of Plato’s motivation for writing Socratic works was to provide to his readers a portrait of a man that Plato regarded as an exemplary human being. One feature of this portrait that both of Socrates’ best-known admirers make especially clear is the remarkable calm and grace with which he faced his own death. Xenophon remarks that Socrates was actually “cheerful not only in the expectation of death but in meeting it” (Apology 33; trans. Todd). In Phaedo, Plato recalls Socrates on the day of his death this way: “the man appeared happy both in manner and in words as he died nobly and without fear” (Phaedo 58e3-5). Plainly, Socrates’ admirers make such a point of Socrates’ fearlessness and equanimity in the face of death because such a lack of fear of death struck them as remarkable and distinctive—a clear indication of Socrates’ superiority over others. In this paper, we focus on the contrast that Socrates’ defenders make between
* Nicholas D. Smith [email protected] Irina Deretić [email protected] 1
University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Republic of Serbia
2
Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR 97219, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
I. Deretić, N. D. Smith
Socrates and everyone else, focusing our inquiry here on the portrait of Socrates in Plato. What we find there, we shall argue, sheds light on several distinctive Socratic points of view. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates explains why he does not fear death, as so many others do: To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a human being, yet fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know. It is perhaps on this point and in this respect, gentlemen, that I differ from the majority of human beings, and if I were to claim that I am wiser than anyone in anything, it would be in this, that, as I have no adequate knowledge of things in the underworld, so I do not think I have. (Apology 29a5-b61) Distinctive Socratic2 points of view are evident in this passage. First, Socrates gives an indication here that his view of the emotions—in this
Data Loading...
