In a world of uncertainty we can at least be certain of our own death. The question is whether, and in what manner, we should think of death – with calm, despair, or simple resignation? Should we fear it? Hamlet in his famous soliloquy reflects on that very question:

“But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of”

Death is never as close to our thoughts as when we fly. On a recent flight from LA to Hawaii I was asked by a flight attendant to attend to a sick passenger. I explained that I was not a medical doctor but a doctor of philosophy. After several minutes the flight attendant returned to inform me the passenger in question was feeling better and wished to talk to me about the “after-life”. Since at least the time of Plato, philosophers have been pondering over the after-life.

The Epicureans thought there was no reason to fear death. Believing that everything in the Universe comprised of atoms, our souls that were also made of atoms simply scattered across the Universe when we died. Epicurus laconically mused that “death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death comes, we are not.” Ludwig Wittgenstein echoing Epicurus’ words in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus also posited enigmatically that “death is not an event in life. We do not live to experience death”.

The Stoics as the spiritual gurus of the ancient world thought rather differently about death. They claimed that the Universe is only partly material. It is also imbued with divine spirit (πνεύμα) that permeates everything, including plants, animals and humans. As part of this divine and rational natural order, we too are partly divine. We are related to each other and to God. Since the Stoics identified God with Nature and Nature never ceases to exist neither do we. As part of the cosmic spiritual order we live on, in some form at least, even after we die.

Plato’s after-life lies in-between the Christian notion of personal salvation and the Oriental notion of reincarnation. In his dialogue the Phaedo, Plato relates how Socrates, far from being troubled, is upbeat and cheerful about his impending death. He looks forward to it with startling optimism and awe inspiring equanimity. In a strikingly sublime passage, Socrates compares his own powers of prophesy concerning death to that of the swans who “when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are. But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow…But because they are sacred to Apollo and have the gift of prophecy and anticipate the good things of another world, therefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before. And I, too, believing myself to be the consecrated servant of the same God, and the fellow servant of the swans, and thinking that I have received from my master gifts of prophecy which are not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life less merrily than the swans”.

Through the Myth of Er in the Republic Plato also talks of reincarnation and links thematically that notion to personal redemption. Describing how the souls travel to the “other-world” upon death and are reborn anew after choosing their next life, Plato tells how Odysseus chooses a simple life free of care and trouble. The cycles of life and death repeat themselves over millennia. Finally like Socrates we too can break free from the successive cycles of reincarnations that keep us bound like prisoners to this mortal life to join God in heaven. But only if we perfect our character through love of what is good and right – a theme repeated in both the Symposium and the Phaedrus. Then as Shakespeare declaims in a sonnet “and death once dead, there’s no more dying”. Socrates’ final words to his friend Crito were to remind him to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius, the god of healing, for his recovery to health.

For some death can be a healing. For others like Homer’s Achilles who confides to Odysseus on a chance meeting in the Underworld, that it is better to be a living slave than a King among the dead, death is a curse. The question still remains a personal one: how does each of us think of death – as a healing or a curse, something to be welcomed, feared or endured with resignation?

* Dr Edward Spence is a Senior Research Fellow at the ARC Special Research Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. He teaches applied philosophy and communication ethics in the School of Communication and Creative Industries at Charles Sturt University.