Socrates and Heidegger on Philosophy as Preparation for Death

Antonio Canova (1757-1822), "Crito Closing the Eyes of Socrates"

‘I am afraid that other people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to prepare for dying and death.’ Plato, Phaedo 64a (tr. Grube)

I wanted to consider Heidegger’s concept of Being-towards-death in light of Socrates’ contention before his own death that philosophy is a preparation for death. Socrates’ argument for this claim relies on a definition of death as the separation of the body and soul and the further contention that the soul persists after death. Yet Socrates shows that since this separation merely deprives us of certain bodily pleasures that the philosopher shouldn’t value anyways and moreover that the separate soul has clearer and better understanding, so death is a positive good for the philosopher. Thus in his life the philosopher tries as much as he can to live as if his soul were separated from the body, and so when this happens it is merely the goal he had prepared himself for.

Now Heidegger in Being and Time he sets aside this sort of ‘speculation’ as irrelevant to his inquiry into the meaning of being and particularly Dasein. Yet it is interesting that Heidegger agrees about the importance of death to philosophy and agrees with Socrates in characterizing the present life as something that goes or points towards death.

If “death” is defined as the ‘end’ of Dasein—that is to say, of Being-in-the-world—this does not imply any ontical decision whether ‘after death’ still another Being is possible, either higher or lower, or whether Dasein ‘lives on’ or even ‘outlasts’ itself and is ‘immortal’. Nor is anything decided ontically about the ‘other-worldly’ and its possibility, any more than about the ‘this-worldly’; it is not as if norms and rules for comporting oneself towards death were to be proposed for ‘edification’. But our analysis of death remains purely ‘this-worldly’ in so far as it Interprets that phenomenon merely in the way in which it enters into any particular Dasein as a possibility of its Being. Only when death is conceived in its full ontological essence can we have any methodological assurance in even asking what may be after death; only then can we do so with meaning and justification…The this-worldly ontological Interpretation of death takes precedence over any ontical other-worldly speculation. (Being and Time, p. 292 in tr. Macquarrie and Robinson)

Heidegger distinguishes his understanding of death (or at least the preliminaries to such an understanding) from Socrates’ in several ways. He does not outright reject the argument that Socrates puts forward, but he considers it secondary (at least in the order of knowing) to the inquiry into what being means for such as us. Until Socrates provides an account of what life and death are for creatures like us, he cannot say what it is for us to have another life after death. Similarly, while Socrates’ account of death is clearly meant to be edifying and show how we are to orient ourselves towards it, Heidegger’s is ontological and not yet (as he would call it) existentiell. He is not taking a stand on what an authentic orientation towards death would look like, while Socrates certainly is.

There is a more fundamental critique that Heidegger has of the sort of argument that Socrates endorses. This is that to consider man to be his soul is to presuppose an adequate characterization of the sort of being that a man has. As Heidegger notes, ‘All these terms [the subject, the soul, the consciousness, the spirit, the person] refer to definite phenomenal domains which can be ‘given form’: but they are never used without a notable failure to see the need for inquiring about the Being of the entities thus designated.’ (p. 72).

I don’t wish to go into how Socrates (or Plato) would respond to Heidegger, although given Plato’s concern for being and the prime place it takes in his philosophy he would be well-situated to engage with Heidegger. What is the harmony between these two accounts, though? Is it merely that both consider death an important philosophical consideration? In a way, that’s the only real similarity. Both consider death because it clarifies what our life means. There are perhaps other beings that can have insight into their own lives, but it is unique to us among all beings that we can die and have insight into death.