Death
Philosophy Book Notes
Books used
Aquinas - Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford)
Marcus Aurelius - Meditation (Oxford)
Yukio Mishima - The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
3 Notes selected
3 Notes selected
Osamu Dazai - No longer Human
3 Notes selected
Seneca - Dialogues and Essays (Oxford)
2 Notes selected
(Aristotle: The art of Rhetoric (Oxford)
Saint Augustine - Confessions (Oxford)
2 Notes selected
2 Notes selected
Plato - Laws (Penguin)
Aristotle On Generation and Corruption
The Sophists by W. K. C. Guthrie p.171 “Protagoras"
Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford)
(Diogenes - Saying and Anecdotes (Oxford)
1 Notes selected
1 Notes selected
1 Notes selected
1 Notes selected
1 Notes selected
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
1 Notes selected
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Os Irmaos Karamazov (Editora 34)
1 Notes selected
Herman Hesse - Kurgast
1 Notes selected
5 Notes selected
Optimistic
The Formula
It was no minor point that was in dispute, whether a man (Cordus) on the trail should forfeit his right to die, while the debate continued, while his accusers made a second appeal, that a man had gained his own acquittal. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays p.79)
Death separates us from bad things and not from good, and it was this thought the Hegasias developed with such eloquence that kind Ptolemy had to forbid him from speaking about the matter in his lectures because many of his pupils resolved to commit suicide after having heard of him. (Diogenes - Oxford p.151)
Hegasias - diest pessimism; concluding that a predominance of pleasure cannot generally be assured, he came to believe that suicide can often be the best option in life, and so came to be known as “death persuader”. (Diogenes Oxford p.xxiv)
Death is rest
Death is the best option
Death can be a choice
It makes life precious
A selection of notes to have an optimistic view on death.
It is no hardship to be a slave, if, when a man can no longer bear his master’s yoke, he may with a single step pass to freedom. Life is thanks to death that you are precious in my eyes. (Death brings freedom from pain, death also enlightens the value of life)m (Seneca dialogues and Essays Oxford p.75)
Death frees a man from slavery through his masks is unwilling: it makes light the choice of a prisoner; it leads out of prison those forbidden to leave by a tyrant’s power: it shows exile; whose eyes and minds turn away to their homeland, that it does not matter beneath whose soil a man may lie. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.74)
Finally, he has come to rest in a place where nothing can drive him away, where nothing can make him afraid. (The afterlife) (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.74)
Death is a realize from all pains and a boundary beyond which our suffering cannot go: it returns us to the state of peacefulness in which we lay before we were born. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford. p.74)
The fortune of death
The length of life is perfect
- It is not that we have a brief length of time to live, but that we squander a greater deal of that time. Life is sufficiently long. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.140)
- Life is long if only you knew how to use it. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.140)
Neutral
A selection of notes to have a neutral view on death
Among the other indications of her fairness Nature has this as a cardinal point; when we arrive at death, we are all on an equal footing. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.220)
- The longest-lived and the earliest to die suffer an equal loss; for it is solely of the present moment that each will be deprived. (Marcus Aurelius - Meditation p.14)
- All are equal in the eyes of death. Everything that you see shall pass away. (Marcus Aurelius p.89)
- Death makes all things equal: after its coming, no man ever does anything again at another's bidding. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.74)
- Death is neither a good nor evil; for only that which is something can be good or evil. (Death is nothing) (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.74)
Equality of Death
The neutrality of death
Pessimistic
A selection of notes to have a pessimistic view on death
All is ephemeral. both that which remembers and that which is. (Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (Penguin) p.30)
This fleeting existence is the common lot of all things, and yet you pursue and flee each thing as though it will last forever. A little while and you will close your eyes: and he who carried you to your grave will soon be lamented by another (Marcus Aurelius - Meditation (Penguin) p.102)
Life is
The forgetfulness of death
What difference do you think it makes whether it is you that quit her by dying or she that quits you by desertion. (Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy (Penguin) p.28) [LIFE]
Death always wins. (Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad)
We’ll turn to dust. (Shakespeare - Hamlet)
Death is what you were born for, and a funeral without words is less irksome. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.114)
It’s Natural
What has become of all that (Fame, achievements, etc..)? Smoke and ashes and merely a tale, or not even so much as a tale. (Marcus Aurelius - Meditation (Penguin) p.119)
There is no pain in stone, but in fear of stone, there is pain. (Marcus Aurelius - Meditation (Penguin) p.81)
Man fears death because he loves life, and so nature ordered. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Memorias de um subsolo 9Editora 34) p.120)
Fear of death
No need to fear death If there is a lost consciousness there is no acknowledgment of fear if there is a new consciousness there will not be a living creature anymore. (Marcus Aurelius - Meditation (Penguin) p.81)
Mistake! Life is pain. life is fear and the man is unhappy. The man will still arrive for whom it is indifferent to live or not, that same will be good. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Memorias de um subsolo 9Editora 34) p.120)