Abstract
The present paper will be based on answering the three questions related to the issue of death, based on the Plato’s work ‘Phaedo’ and the Phillipe Aries’ book about the changing western attitudes towards death.
Explain Aries’ argument concerning the phenomena related to ‘one’s own death’ bring into being new concern for individuality.
One’s own dying has been one of the major concerns following our ancestors throughout the history. At least from the Western perspective, it is possible to state that the problem of one’s own death was always an issue of anxiety and the problem for contemplation for the western philosophers. The will which has become a tradition and a norm in the western society is one of the external signs of the fact that people feared and fear their own death and think of the possibility for this death being painful or long.
The outlooks at death were changing dramatically through the human history, starting with ‘tamed’ death, the death which was anticipated openly and for which people were preparing, the way it is described in the Phillipe Aries book, and up until it has turned into forbidden notion as it is seen in the modern society. In his book Aries writes that one’s own death in the traditional society was ‘fore warned.’ (Aries 1974, p.3), and this warning was coming ‘through an inner conviction rather than through a supernatural, magical premonition’. (Aries 1974, p. 7) This was a sign of a wise and psychologically stable individuality, as a person could not deny the fact that she (he) would not die, and consciously preparing towards one’s own death was a sign of the individuality which was not rejecting infinite life, but was accepting the event of death as the transitive period into another world where earth life would be continued. Individuality in the traditional society, thus, was characterized by absolute absence of fear towards death, accepting it as a daily event towards which everyone had to be prepared.
Starting with the eleventh century the attitudes towards one’s own death started to change towards less concern of a man about his own death, but was more interested in the death of other people, creating ‘the cult of tombs and cemeteries, and the romantic, rhetorical treatment of death’. (Aries 1974, p. 67) The interest towards someone else’s death rather towards one’s own is the sign of the concealed sign of fear towards death, as well as the wish of the person to see and try to imagine how it will happen with the one when he (she) dies, seeing someone else on the cemetery.
According to Socrates, how is philosophy to be understood as the practice of, or devotion to, dying?
Plato in his Phaedo makes one important conclusion in relation to the issue of death and the connection of death and philosophy. He speaks about the possible analogy between philosophy and dying, or rather, to be correct, about philosophy as practice of dying and being dead. (Phaedo, 60). Is it possible to relate the notion of philosophy to death? Reading Phaedo, it becomes possible – dying is analogized to philosophy through making it similar to the separation of body and soul which happens when a person dies. The same process takes place when a person goes deep into philosophy.
‘Do we suppose that death is a reality?’
‘Certainly’, rejoined Simmias.
‘And that it is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body? And that being dead is this: the body’s having come to be apart, separated from the soul, alone by itself, separated from the body’. (Phaedo, 63)
Philosophy here is seen not as analogy of dying, but contemplating on what happens
through the process of death, as no one really knows what death means and may only suggest it, is also a pathway for the practicing dying. The mere fact that a person is able to openly discuss the issue of death, as well as the fear of death but without concealing the understanding that death will find everyone, is one of the means to prepare oneself to dying. This is why philosophy in Phaedo is compared with practicing of dying. Socrates states that being engaged into philosophy is the practice of dying and being dead, and he is absolutely right in his statement, because while pretending that the notion of death does not exist in reality, discussing it openly and creating philosophical conclusions and suggestions in terms of death is not only the way for practicing death, as Plato puts it, but it is the instrument of fighting one’s own fears towards death, which is the best means of making the person prepared to this event.
Explain the role of memory and recollection in the time of dying as presented by Aries and Plato.
The theory of memory and recollection is also close to the topic of death, and it is seen in the clearest way through reading Plato’s Phaedo. The plot of the story goes to Socrates’ laying on his death bed, and contemplating and discussing the issues of reality, coming to the points of recollection and memory. The argument goes back to the idea that knowledge which a person acquires through the lifetime is not really acquired during this period, but is rather embedded in the memory of the human being; thus recollection and memory are closely connected with the notion of death, because death here is seen as the meaning of carrying the knowledge to the next stage of the human being’s existence, as Socrates relates it to the issue of immortality of the human soul.
While memory and recollection according to Plato are closely connected with the notions of death, it is also interesting to note that while Socrates is also able to define the notion of death together with the notion of philosophy, making them synonymous, as well as recollection which goes together with the human soul and does not depend on the person’s body, he thus assumes that soul and body exist separately; he makes the definition of death the basic, on which every other notion rests. Aries, in his turn, makes death the defining feature of the person’s individuality, because though he does not state it openly, but he implies in his book that in the way the person treats the notion of death is crucial in defining the basic features of this person’s individuality.
Recollection according to Socrates is also equaled to knowledge. While Socrates is sure that real knowledge is based in the human memories and recollections, and is possessed by person since the moment if his (her) birth, there can be created two important criticisms of the recollection theory created by Socrates. While it is possible to suggest that the soul exists before the person is born, it is not always possible to assume that this soul will exist after the person dies – there is no such implication in the Socrates’ statements, this is why it is difficult to speak about any immortality here. At the same time, there is also no guarantee and there is no proof provided by Socrates to the assumption that knowledge is the pre-existence, and that it cannot come as a kind of illumination during the human life. Aries pays special attention to the issue of the soul being separate from the body, which is also related to the question of memory and recollection, as soul often appears the instrument of transiting the knowledge acquired by person through the life. He shows the shifts in the human beliefs towards the fact that body may decay, but the soul is immortal, which can be close to the Socrates’ theory of memory and recollection, though it is also argumentative whether humanity implies knowledge into the belief of the soul being separate from body, or whether it carries much simpler meaning in itself.
References
Aries, Phillipe. (1974). Western attitudes towards death: From the middle ages to the
present. John Hopkins University.
