PHILOSOPHY:TO PHILOSOPHISE IS to learn how to die,according to Cicero (106-43 BC). Not so, says Jacques Derrida (1930-2004): to philosophise is to learn how to live, with John S Doyle
Between these two channels of thought on the matter is where this entertaining book runs, from the sixth century BC to the present. Simon Critchley, a live philosopher, has combed through the biographies of some 190 dead ones (they include Chinese, Islamic and Jewish figures and Christian saints), telling us how they died and what we can learn from philosophy about a correct attitude to death and dying.
What defines human life here and now, says the author, is "not just a fear of death but an overwhelming terror of annihilation". In a world "where the only metaphysics in which people believe is either money or medical science and where longevity is prized as an unquestioned good", he wants to defend the ideal of the philosophical death: Seneca's (4 BC-AD 65) notion that the philosopher enjoys a long life because he doesn't worry over its shortness; or the statement by Montaigne (1533-92) that "I have formed the habit of having death continually present, not merely in my imagination but in my mouth". For Montaigne, "he who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave".
The strain of Catholicism that treats death merrily, not as something to be solemn about, finds parallels in such as Thoreau (1817-62), who died probably of the bronchitis contracted one rainy night when he was out counting rings on tree stumps. He calmly accepted death.
Asked if he had made his peace with God, he said, "I did not know we had ever quarrelled". Hannah Arendt (1906-75), for her part, although she had suffered a near-fatal heart attack in the year before her death, said, "I am certainly not going to live for my health". She "continued to be a committed smoker".
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) had no problem with the subject: "Death orders matters well, since the very fact of your absence makes the world distinctly less worthy of being lived in." It is surprisingly good fun to spend 300 pages contemplating the last things. You will die laughing, I promise, says Critchley, and he helps the story along with some ancient jokes. Some of these require a bit of context, and translation from the Latin.
John Scottus Eriugena (810-77), an Irishman ("Scottus" in Latin) and the greatest philosopher of his time, enjoyed the patronage of King Charles the Bald. Once when he and the king were seated at a table across from one another, the king said: "Quid distat inter sottum et Scottum?" (What separates a fool from an Irishman?) To which Eriugena replied: "Only a table." (He died, by the way, according to the author, from stylus wounds inflicted by English monks.)
Then there's the one about the engaging Diogenes (died 320 BC), who lived in a tub, choosing a life of poverty and happiness. When Plato (428-348 BC) called him a dog, he said, "Quite true, for I come back again and again to those who have sold me". Diogenes is said to have died after eating raw octopus.
Many of the brief summaries are indeed worthy of the prose writings of Woody Allen; for example, "Pythagoras [580-500 BC] allowed himself to be slaughtered rather than cross a field of beans" or "Zeno of Elea [495-430 BC] died heroically by biting a tyrant's ear until he was stabbed to death".
Not the least of the pleasures of this odd book, lighthearted and occasionally facetious as it is, is that in surveying a chronological history of philosophers it provides a sweep through the entire history of philosophy itself. In doing so it offers the general audience a way into a subject that might otherwise remain closed.
Some of the entries are extremely short, others are small essays. The book can be dipped into or read as one piece. Readers who want to find out more are treated to 13 pages of bibliography at the back.
Critchley himself settles for Epicurus's (341-271 BC) "four-part cure": don't fear God; don't worry about death; what is good is easy to get; and what is terrible is easy to endure.
The Book of Dead Philosophers By Simon Critchley Granta, 298pp. £15.99
John S Doyle is a freelance journalist