I'm in love with your honor

Another Wednesday, another philosophical blog post. Hopefully this doesn't become exclusively what my posts are, but after having some decent ideas for posts slip away, this one has seemed to stick. Thus, I blog.

Socrates. Long story short, he went around asking everyone in Athens about essentially everything. Let's clump that into "justice." Finding out what is just and unjust in the world (not necessarily in the legal system, but morally). What Socrates came to realize was that no one really had any idea what they were talking about, and were as a result ignorant of everything in the world. (Think of The Little Prince.) He, for understanding this, had much more wisdom than everyone else. Fairly convoluted, but when you break it down, the man knew what he was talking about, ironically enough. But anyway, everyone in Athens starts getting on Socrates' case, saying that he's corrupting the youth and all this other stuff. Socrates makes his defense to no avail on trial, and gets sentenced to be executed. Instead of having someone else pay off the courts, or escaping into exile, Socrates accepts this fate, to be killed at the hand of society.

Well why, Socrates? Why opt for death? In his acceptance of the penalty, Socrates was standing in perfect accordance with everything that he lived his life for until that point - it would be cheating the system to bail and run away in exile. The just thing to do, the morally sound reasoning, would be to be put to death. Which is something that I can only fathom to be incredibly hard to do, let alone actually follow through with it. He's lived his life in a certain way all along, so why should death get in the way? Death doesn't change his logic and reasoning, just in the same way that life never did. Even in the face of death, Socrates is able to uphold his honor and to live, until the end, with a steadfast moral compass.

The most resonant part about all of this is how Socrates explains death. He begins by saying that being dead is to be non-existent, or that the soul undergoes something in dying. To the former, he says, "why, imagine that someone had to pick the night in which he slept so soundly that he did not even dream...on that assumption the whole of time would seem no longer than a single night." One night that lasts an eternity. That's what death could be. Why should we fear that? On the other hand, Socrates explains the transformation of the soul into a place where one can question great leaders of the time, and to truly gain an understanding of what is just.

Death could be the greatest thing, and so many of us fear it. Which makes it all the more impressive when anyone embraces it, greets it. To live one's life all the way through, even in the face of death. I can't say that this epiphany has made me unafraid of death, but it does make it a little bit easier to think about.