Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of
the Month, February 2009: For professor Simon Critchely, how we die is
possibly more important than how we lived.
In The Book of Dead
Philosophers, Critchley presents a lineup of nearly 200 famous (and not so
famous) philosophers and explores how, through their deaths, one might be
inspired to lead a richer life. From a few words to a few pages, each great
thinker's death is examined in an enlightening and entertaining manner as the
author waxes on the often brutal (and odd) ways they left this mortal coil. And
along with natural causes, murders, and suicides, you'll discover what dark
departures from suffocating in cow dung, indigestion, and lethal insect stings
have to do with how we live today. At times the "sobering power of the
philosophical death" might seem more like a morbidly ironic punchline to the
life each philosopher led, but Critchley writes, "My hope is that, if read from
beginning to end, a cumulative series of themes will emerge that will add up to
a specific argument about how philosophy might teach one how to die, and by
implication, how to live." --Brad Thomas Parsons
From Publishers Weekly
According to Cicero, to philosophize is to
learn how to die. Critchley (Infinitely Demanding) illustrates this claim
in his portraits of the deaths of more than 190 philosophers from the ancients
to the analytics of the mid–20th century. A primer on just about every notable
philosophical figure in history, this book challenges readers to learn from the
philosophers' conduct in life and the circumstances of their deaths. Confucius
believed that mourning underscored the value of life; accordingly, his followers
grieved his death for at least three years. Thoreau, Emerson and John Stuart
Mill died of ordinary ailments while relishing the natural world. Aquinas found
serenity contemplating the bough of a tree, fitting consolation for the
philosopher who preached the interconnectedness of nature and the soul.
Dionysius spent the second half of his life rejecting Stoicism and embracing
hedonism yet committed a protracted suicide by voluntary starvation. David Hume
proved that atheists could die happy. The book offers an interpretation of
death's potential as a final artistic and intellectual endeavor; it is a witty
and generous gift that will leave readers perhaps a little less afraid of death
and more appreciative of life. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Dismayed by the devolution
of philosophy into a dry academic specialty, Critchley reconnects his discipline
with the most universal of human concerns. For it is in pondering death that
serious thinkers have discovered the wellsprings of wisdom. Seneca is thus
voicing a persistent philosophical motif when he insists, “He will live badly
who does not know how to die well.” However, because death refuses to shrink
into a tidy intellectual construct, Critchley scrutinizes not only what
prominent philosophers have thought about the subject but also how they have
actually died. Readers thus contemplate the dying Augustine reading the Hebrew
psalms in tears; the doomed Nietzsche rushing into the street to embrace a
horse, so signaling a final descent into syphilitic madness; the heroic Bergson
contracting his fatal illness by voluntarily joining fellow Jews forced into the
bitter cold of midwinter to register with Nazi authorities. Scholars may
complain about the scrapbook style of (dis)organization, as the deaths and death
thoughts of almost 200 philosophers pass in quick review. But most readers will
recognize the aptness of the rapid-fire summary, each entry a piquant reminder
of the brevity of life and a forceful rejection of the illusions of intellectual
progress. A work that makes philosophy matter again. --Bryce Christensen
Review
“A provocative and engrossing invitation to
think about the human condition and what philosophy can and can't do to
illuminate it.”
—The Financial Times
“Rigorous, profound and frequently hilarious. . . . Critchley is an engaging, deadpan guide to the metaphysical necropolis. . . . At a time when much popular philosophy is either frivolous, dull or complacent, his is a bracingly serious and properly comic presence.”
—The Daily Telegraph (UK)
—The Financial Times
“Rigorous, profound and frequently hilarious. . . . Critchley is an engaging, deadpan guide to the metaphysical necropolis. . . . At a time when much popular philosophy is either frivolous, dull or complacent, his is a bracingly serious and properly comic presence.”
—The Daily Telegraph (UK)
About the Author
Simon Critchly is Professor and Chair of
Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author
of many books, most recently, On Heidegger's Being and Time and
Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance.
The Book of Dead Philosophers was written on a hill overlooking Los
Angeles, where he was a scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He lives in
Brooklyn.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Pre-Socratics, Physiologists, Sages and
Sophists
Philosophical thought emerged in the Greek-speaking world two and a half millennia ago. First we encounter the various sages and so- called “physiologists,” like Thales and Anaxagoras, who attempted to explain the origins of the universe and the causes of nature. We will then turn to the sometimes shadowy figures, like Pythagoras, Heracleitus and Empedocles, who define the world of thought prior to the birth of Socrates and the struggle between philosophy and sophistry in Athens during the Classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries bc.
Of course, one might with some justice claim that the Sphinx was the first philosopher and Oedipus the second. This would also have the merit of making philosophy begin with a woman and continuing with an incestuous parricide. The Sphinx asks her visitors a question, which is also a riddle, and perhaps even a joke: what goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening? If they get the answer wrong, she kills them. Furthermore, when Oedipus guesses the right answer to the riddle—man crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult and with a cane in old age—the Sphinx commits philosophical suicide by throwing herself to the ground from her high rock.
Thales
(flourished in the sixth century bc)
Thales came from the once mighty port of Miletus, close to the present Turkish coast, whose harbour long ago dried up thanks to the unending attention of silt.
Thales was the possible originator of the saying “know thyself,” who famously predicted the solar eclipse of May 585 bc. He believed that water was the universal substance and once fell into a ditch when he was taken outdoors by a Thracian girl to look at the stars. On hearing his cry, she said, “How can you expect to know about all the heavens, Thales, when you cannot even see what is just beneath your feet?” Some feel—perhaps rightly—that this is a charge that philosophy never entirely escaped in the following two and a half millennia.
Thales died at an advanced age of heat, thirst and weakness while watching an athletic contest. This inspired Diogenes Laertius to the following execrable verse:
As Thales watched the games one festal day The fierce sun smote him and he passed away.
Solon
(630–560 bc)
Solon was a famed Athenian legislator who repealed the bloody laws of Dracon (although it was Dracon whose name was turned into an adjective). Plutarch remarks that Solon suggested that brides should nibble a quince before getting into bed. The reason for this is unclear. When Solon was asked why he had not framed a law against parricide, he replied that he hoped it was unnecessary. He died in Cyprus at the age of eighty.
Chilon
(flourished in the sixth century bc)
A Spartan to whom the saying “know thyself” is also sometimes attributed. He died after congratulating his son on an Olympic victory in boxing.
Periander
(628–588 bc)
Like Thales, Solon and Chilon, Periander of Corinth was considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece. To others, like Aristotle, he was simply a tyrant. However, there is a bizarre story about the lengths to which Periander went in order to conceal his place of burial: he instructed two young men to meet a third man at a predetermined place and kill and bury him. Then he arranged for four men to pursue the first two and kill and bury them. Then he arranged for a larger group of men to hunt down the four. Having made all these preparations, he went out to meet the two young men for he, Periander, was the third man.
Epimenides
(possibly flourished in the sixth century,
possibly a mythical figure)
A native of Crete, the setting for Epimenides’ famous paradox. Epimenides’ original statement was “Cretans, always liars.” He appears to have intended this literally, as the great Cretan lie is the belief that Zeus is mortal, whereas every sensible person knows that he is really immortal. However, in logic, this paradox takes on a more acute form. Consider the sentence “This statement is not true.” Now, is this statement true? If it is, then it is not; if it is not, then it is. This is a perfect example of a paradox. That is, it is a proposition whose truth leads to a contradiction and the denial of its truth also leads to a contradiction.
Legend has it that Epimenides was sent into the countryside by his father to look after some sheep. But instead of tending to the sheep, he fell asleep in a cave for fifty-seven years. Upon waking, he went in search of the sheep, believing that he had only taken a short nap. When he returned home, everything (unsurprisingly) had changed and a new owner had taken possession of his father’s farm. Eventually, he found his younger brother, by now an elderly man, and learnt the truth.
Epimenides’ fame spread and it was believed thereafter that he possessed the gift of prophecy. Diogenes tells of how the Athenians sent for him when the city was suffering from the plague. He again took some sheep and went to the Areopagus, the high rock in the centre of Athens. He commanded that a sacrifice be made at each spot where a sheep decided to lie down. In this way, apparently, Athens was freed from the plague.
According to Phlegon in his work On Longevity, Epimenides lived to be 157 years old. This makes him a centurion, excluding his long nap in the cave. The Cretans claim that he lived to be 259 years old. But, as we all know, Cretans are always liars.
Anaximander
(610–546/545 bc)
Anaximander somewhat obscurely claimed that the Unlimited or that which is without boundaries (apeiron) is the original material of all existing things. He discovered his own limit at the age of sixty-four.
Pythagoras
(580–500 bc)
Sadly, it is now almost universally assumed by classical scholars that Pythagoras never existed. It seems that there was a group of people in southern Italy called Pythagoreans who invented a “Founder” for their beliefs who, accordingly, lived and died in a manner consistent with those beliefs. But let’s not allow Pythagoras’ mere non-existence to deter us, as the stories that surround him are so compelling. They are also illustrative of the wider point that disciples of a thinker will often simply invent stories and anecdotes that illustrate the life of the master in whom they want to believe. Perhaps we should be suspicious of this desire for a master.
Be that as it may, Pythagorean doctrines were bound by an oath of secrecy, so we know very little prior to the version of them that appears in Plato. These include a belief in the immortality and transmigration of the soul and the view that the ultimate reality of the universe consists in number. Pythagoreans regarded even numbers as female and odd numbers as male. The number 5 was called “marriage” because it was the product of the first even (2) and odd (3) numbers (the ancient Greeks considered the number 1 a unit and not a proper number, which had to express a multiplicity). Pythagoreans also believed that their master had established the ratios that underlie music. This had huge influence in the notion of musica universalis or music of the spheres, where the entire cosmos was the expression of a musical harmony whose key was given in mathematics.
However, the Pythagoreans also observed a number of other, more worldly doctrines, involving food in particular. They abstained from meat and fish. For some reason red mullet is singled out for especial prohibition, and Plutarch notes that they considered the egg taboo, too. Pythagoras and his followers also inherited from the Egyptians a strong revulsion to beans, because of their apparent resemblance to the genitalia. Apparently, “bean” may have been a slang term for “testicle.” But there are many other possible reasons for this dislike of beans.
There are some fascinating remarks in the Philosophumena [Philosophizings] or the Refutation of All Heresies by the Christian Bishop Hippolytus written around ad 220. According to him, if beans are chewed and left in the sun, they emit the smell of semen. Even worse, if one takes the bean in flower and buries it in the earth and in a few days digs it up, then, “We shall see it at first having the form of a woman’s pudenda and afterwards on close examination a child’s head growing with it.” Of course, as many of us know to our cost, beans should be avoided as they produce terrible flatulence. Oddly, it was because of beans that Pythagoras is alleged to have met his end. But I am getting ahead of myself.
So the legend goes, Pythagoras left his native Samos, an island off the Ionian coast, because of a dislike of the policies of the tyrant Polycrates. He fled with his followers to Croton in southern Italy and extended considerable influence and power in the region of present-day Calabria. Porphyry, in his Life of Pythagoras, relates how a certain Cylo, a rich and powerful local figure, felt slighted by the haughtiness with which Pythagoras treated him. As a consequence, Cylo and his retinue burnt down the house in which Pythagoras and his followers were gathered. The master only escaped because his followers bridged the fire with their own bodies. He got as far as a field of beans, where he stopped and declared that he would rather be killed than cross it. This enabled his pursuers to catch up with him and cut his throat.
Yet, there is another story, related by Hermippus, that when the cities of Agrigentum and Syracuse were at war, the Pythagoreans sided with the Agrigentines. Unbelievably, Pythagoras was killed by the Syracusans as he was trying to avoid a beanfield. Thirty-five of his followers were subsequently burnt at the stake for treachery.
Philosophical thought emerged in the Greek-speaking world two and a half millennia ago. First we encounter the various sages and so- called “physiologists,” like Thales and Anaxagoras, who attempted to explain the origins of the universe and the causes of nature. We will then turn to the sometimes shadowy figures, like Pythagoras, Heracleitus and Empedocles, who define the world of thought prior to the birth of Socrates and the struggle between philosophy and sophistry in Athens during the Classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries bc.
Of course, one might with some justice claim that the Sphinx was the first philosopher and Oedipus the second. This would also have the merit of making philosophy begin with a woman and continuing with an incestuous parricide. The Sphinx asks her visitors a question, which is also a riddle, and perhaps even a joke: what goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening? If they get the answer wrong, she kills them. Furthermore, when Oedipus guesses the right answer to the riddle—man crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult and with a cane in old age—the Sphinx commits philosophical suicide by throwing herself to the ground from her high rock.
Thales
(flourished in the sixth century bc)
Thales came from the once mighty port of Miletus, close to the present Turkish coast, whose harbour long ago dried up thanks to the unending attention of silt.
Thales was the possible originator of the saying “know thyself,” who famously predicted the solar eclipse of May 585 bc. He believed that water was the universal substance and once fell into a ditch when he was taken outdoors by a Thracian girl to look at the stars. On hearing his cry, she said, “How can you expect to know about all the heavens, Thales, when you cannot even see what is just beneath your feet?” Some feel—perhaps rightly—that this is a charge that philosophy never entirely escaped in the following two and a half millennia.
Thales died at an advanced age of heat, thirst and weakness while watching an athletic contest. This inspired Diogenes Laertius to the following execrable verse:
As Thales watched the games one festal day The fierce sun smote him and he passed away.
Solon
(630–560 bc)
Solon was a famed Athenian legislator who repealed the bloody laws of Dracon (although it was Dracon whose name was turned into an adjective). Plutarch remarks that Solon suggested that brides should nibble a quince before getting into bed. The reason for this is unclear. When Solon was asked why he had not framed a law against parricide, he replied that he hoped it was unnecessary. He died in Cyprus at the age of eighty.
Chilon
(flourished in the sixth century bc)
A Spartan to whom the saying “know thyself” is also sometimes attributed. He died after congratulating his son on an Olympic victory in boxing.
Periander
(628–588 bc)
Like Thales, Solon and Chilon, Periander of Corinth was considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece. To others, like Aristotle, he was simply a tyrant. However, there is a bizarre story about the lengths to which Periander went in order to conceal his place of burial: he instructed two young men to meet a third man at a predetermined place and kill and bury him. Then he arranged for four men to pursue the first two and kill and bury them. Then he arranged for a larger group of men to hunt down the four. Having made all these preparations, he went out to meet the two young men for he, Periander, was the third man.
Epimenides
(possibly flourished in the sixth century,
possibly a mythical figure)
A native of Crete, the setting for Epimenides’ famous paradox. Epimenides’ original statement was “Cretans, always liars.” He appears to have intended this literally, as the great Cretan lie is the belief that Zeus is mortal, whereas every sensible person knows that he is really immortal. However, in logic, this paradox takes on a more acute form. Consider the sentence “This statement is not true.” Now, is this statement true? If it is, then it is not; if it is not, then it is. This is a perfect example of a paradox. That is, it is a proposition whose truth leads to a contradiction and the denial of its truth also leads to a contradiction.
Legend has it that Epimenides was sent into the countryside by his father to look after some sheep. But instead of tending to the sheep, he fell asleep in a cave for fifty-seven years. Upon waking, he went in search of the sheep, believing that he had only taken a short nap. When he returned home, everything (unsurprisingly) had changed and a new owner had taken possession of his father’s farm. Eventually, he found his younger brother, by now an elderly man, and learnt the truth.
Epimenides’ fame spread and it was believed thereafter that he possessed the gift of prophecy. Diogenes tells of how the Athenians sent for him when the city was suffering from the plague. He again took some sheep and went to the Areopagus, the high rock in the centre of Athens. He commanded that a sacrifice be made at each spot where a sheep decided to lie down. In this way, apparently, Athens was freed from the plague.
According to Phlegon in his work On Longevity, Epimenides lived to be 157 years old. This makes him a centurion, excluding his long nap in the cave. The Cretans claim that he lived to be 259 years old. But, as we all know, Cretans are always liars.
Anaximander
(610–546/545 bc)
Anaximander somewhat obscurely claimed that the Unlimited or that which is without boundaries (apeiron) is the original material of all existing things. He discovered his own limit at the age of sixty-four.
Pythagoras
(580–500 bc)
Sadly, it is now almost universally assumed by classical scholars that Pythagoras never existed. It seems that there was a group of people in southern Italy called Pythagoreans who invented a “Founder” for their beliefs who, accordingly, lived and died in a manner consistent with those beliefs. But let’s not allow Pythagoras’ mere non-existence to deter us, as the stories that surround him are so compelling. They are also illustrative of the wider point that disciples of a thinker will often simply invent stories and anecdotes that illustrate the life of the master in whom they want to believe. Perhaps we should be suspicious of this desire for a master.
Be that as it may, Pythagorean doctrines were bound by an oath of secrecy, so we know very little prior to the version of them that appears in Plato. These include a belief in the immortality and transmigration of the soul and the view that the ultimate reality of the universe consists in number. Pythagoreans regarded even numbers as female and odd numbers as male. The number 5 was called “marriage” because it was the product of the first even (2) and odd (3) numbers (the ancient Greeks considered the number 1 a unit and not a proper number, which had to express a multiplicity). Pythagoreans also believed that their master had established the ratios that underlie music. This had huge influence in the notion of musica universalis or music of the spheres, where the entire cosmos was the expression of a musical harmony whose key was given in mathematics.
However, the Pythagoreans also observed a number of other, more worldly doctrines, involving food in particular. They abstained from meat and fish. For some reason red mullet is singled out for especial prohibition, and Plutarch notes that they considered the egg taboo, too. Pythagoras and his followers also inherited from the Egyptians a strong revulsion to beans, because of their apparent resemblance to the genitalia. Apparently, “bean” may have been a slang term for “testicle.” But there are many other possible reasons for this dislike of beans.
There are some fascinating remarks in the Philosophumena [Philosophizings] or the Refutation of All Heresies by the Christian Bishop Hippolytus written around ad 220. According to him, if beans are chewed and left in the sun, they emit the smell of semen. Even worse, if one takes the bean in flower and buries it in the earth and in a few days digs it up, then, “We shall see it at first having the form of a woman’s pudenda and afterwards on close examination a child’s head growing with it.” Of course, as many of us know to our cost, beans should be avoided as they produce terrible flatulence. Oddly, it was because of beans that Pythagoras is alleged to have met his end. But I am getting ahead of myself.
So the legend goes, Pythagoras left his native Samos, an island off the Ionian coast, because of a dislike of the policies of the tyrant Polycrates. He fled with his followers to Croton in southern Italy and extended considerable influence and power in the region of present-day Calabria. Porphyry, in his Life of Pythagoras, relates how a certain Cylo, a rich and powerful local figure, felt slighted by the haughtiness with which Pythagoras treated him. As a consequence, Cylo and his retinue burnt down the house in which Pythagoras and his followers were gathered. The master only escaped because his followers bridged the fire with their own bodies. He got as far as a field of beans, where he stopped and declared that he would rather be killed than cross it. This enabled his pursuers to catch up with him and cut his throat.
Yet, there is another story, related by Hermippus, that when the cities of Agrigentum and Syracuse were at war, the Pythagoreans sided with the Agrigentines. Unbelievably, Pythagoras was killed by the Syracusans as he was trying to avoid a beanfield. Thirty-five of his followers were subsequently burnt at the stake for treachery.
of formulae imply another formula 
, given a set of rules determined by the semantics of the formulae's 
(the negation of 
is inconsistent, and thus that the formulae of 
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