Great IdeasLiving well
Facing death
How the great writers thought about dying well and living in its light.
The question
How should we think about death? Should we fear it, and how does it change the way we live?
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
c. 750 BC (from older oral poetry)
Homer, The Iliad
Achilles knows he can have a long quiet life at home or a short life with lasting glory. He chooses glory. Homer shows the warriors facing death with courage but also with grief, and the poem ends with two enemies, Achilles and old King Priam, weeping together over their losses.
c. 380s BC
Plato, Phaedo
On the last day of his life, Socrates talks calmly with his friends about the soul. He argues that the soul lives on after death, and that philosophy, which turns the mind from the body to the truth, is a lifelong practice for dying. He dies peacefully, and Plato calls him the wisest and best man he knew.
“And the true philosophers, Simmias, are always occupied in the practice of dying, wherefore also to them least of all men is death terrible.”
c. 55 BC
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (in the set: The Way Things Are)
Lucretius gives the opposite reason not to fear death. Following Epicurus, he teaches that the soul is made of atoms that scatter when we die, so there is no one left to suffer. We did not mind the ages before we were born, he says, so we need not mind the ages after.
c. AD 170–180
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
Marcus Aurelius reminds himself that death is a natural change, like ripening or growing old. Everything passes, even the famous. So he tries to live each day well, as if it might be his last, without fear or complaint.
1580–1595
Michel de Montaigne, Essays
Montaigne first writes that to do philosophy is to learn how to die, and he tries to keep death in mind. Later, after a bad fall from his horse that nearly killed him, he relaxes: nature will teach us how to die when the time comes. What matters is to live well now.
c. 1600
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Hamlet thinks hard about death: about the skull of a jester he knew as a boy, and about what may come after. By the end he is calmer, saying that readiness is all. Shakespeare gives no single answer, but lets us watch a mind wrestle with the question.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question:”
1615
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part Two
At the end of the novel, the old knight comes home sick and wakes up clear in mind. He gives up his knightly dreams, makes his will and makes his peace. His squire Sancho, weeping, begs him to get up and go adventuring again.
“"Ah!" said Sancho weeping, "don't die, master, but take my advice and live many years; for the foolishest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die without rhyme or reason ..."”
For young readers
Every living thing has a beginning and an end: flowers, pets and people too. It is normal to feel sad or scared when we think about it, and it is good to talk about those feelings with someone you love.
The great writers believed different things about what happens after death, but many agreed on one thing: knowing life doesn't last forever helps us use it well. It helps us be kind today, say thank you and spend time with the people we love.
Talk about it
- Socrates and Lucretius both said not to fear death, for opposite reasons. What were their reasons?
- How might remembering that life is short change the way you spend a day?
- Why do you think Achilles chose glory over a long, quiet life? Would you?
- How do people in your family remember those who have died?
Where else on the site
Every rung tagged with this idea:
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.