|
HOW TO DIE
Seneca
ISBN 978-0-691-17557-7
A morbid title, perhaps, but Seneca often returned to the
idea of preparation for death. His sense that acknowledgment of our
mortality enhances our lives is at odds with the contemporary
obsession with resistance of ageing, especially in the
“Those who have learned how to die have unlearned how to be
slaves,” he writes. Why fear prison, tyranny or any of life’s
tortures if you know you have a way out? There is a speciousness to
this because it suggests that denying life is the way to deal with
its difficulties. Seneca saw life a rite of passage. The soul would
be set free. For our more atheistic age, death is simply the end. To
see it as the means to avoid a painful life may be rational if you
expect some existence beyond death, if not to escape through death
is simply failure. “…the one who will return to the world should
leave it with equanimity..”. But what of the one who knows return is
impossible?
“You will see that nothing in this cosmos is extinguished but
everything falls and rises by turns.” Once again, Seneca has a
comforting faith in the eternal nature of life. Today we know from
the laws of thermodynamics that heat death is inevitable. Though the
time-span is unconscionable, some thousand trillion years, the
energy of the universe will exhaust itself. In our scientific age,
we are deprived of Seneca’s comforts.
“If death holds any torment, then that torment must also have
existed before we came forth into the light, but, back then we felt
nothing troubling.” We have experienced non-existence, Seneca
suggests, so why should we fear it? Of course we haven’t experienced
non-existence which is why we shouldn’t fear not existing any
longer. It’s mere nothingness. Fear of the process of dying is, of
course, another matter and fear or regret of loss of life, have a
rational core.
“…we must first and foremost…count our breath among the
things we think cheap..” Shakespeare, who was influenced by Seneca’s
tragedies, thought differently when he put into Claudio’s mouth his
plea for life in Measure for
Measure: “The weariest and most loathed wordly life/ That age,
ache penury and imprisonment/Can lay on nature- is a paradise/To
what we fear of death.” Seneca’s line of argument seems a little
strained when set against Shakespeare’s healthy love of life.
Seneca recounts a visit to his friend Bassus, an old man
whose body is giving out but who remains sharp-minded and cheerful.
Sensible, as we should make the best of life till the last moment.
“Life is granted with death as its limitation” is Bassus’s view.
It’s a certainty and
should be awaited not feared. Surely too, certainties should be put
off as long as possible if they are negative. “When that inescapable
hour arrives, go out with a calm mind.” There’s no point in panic
over what can’t avoided and leaving life with dignity is part of
living well.
The case of the philosopher Metronax who died young, gives
Seneca the chance to compare a short life lived well and a long one
merely endured. “His lifetime was cut short, but his life was
completed.” Milan Kundera has echoed this in his comment that “a
man’s destiny can end before his life”. Is anyone lucky enough to
find that their life-span and their destiny match exactly? What
makes death truly tragic, however, is when it comes at the end of a
life that never began. Not only do we find the death of children
distressing for this reason, but knowing someone has merely eked out
their years without having fulfilled their nature is disturbing. The
man or woman who dies after a long life lived in fulfilment we can
celebrate, even though we regret losing them.
“…the one thing in life we can’t complain of: it detains no
one”. Laughter Rabelais says, following Aristotle, is natural to
humankind. We must learn to laugh at what we can’t change. Death has
been a source of laughter in literature, song and theatre for
centuries. Life would impossible without it. To be able to accept
the fact of death without morbidity is to love life.
“The human condition is a good one, in that no one is unhappy
except by his own fault.” What Seneca means is that death provides
the exit from an unhappy life. Yet his assertion is too glib. Most
of the world’s unhappiness is the result of how people are treated
by others. The notion that if you are bullied or exploited or abused
it’s your own fault because you could always dispatch yourself with
a bare bodkin, is poor thinking for a philosopher. Hamlet is right:
when we are driven by
the evil of others to act in ways which clash with our natures, the
question of whether life is worth living arises. Yet his conclusion
is also more truthful than Seneca’s: the pale cast of thought robs
us of the will to do away with ourselves. Hamlet is unhappy because
of the corruption in the court of Denmark. Seneca should have
admitted that the struggle for right as a remedy for unhappiness is
more valid than self slaughter.
“It’s the mark of a great soul to turn back to life for the
sake of others.” In a way, this goes widdershins. Seneca’s essential
idea is that we have the capacity to rid ourselves of life if it is
too burdensome, that death is an escape, that we have no reason to
tolerate an unhappy life; but at this point he admits what has been
lacking – that life is matter of relationship. We don’t live for
ourselves. Even hermits, in their withdrawal from community
recognise it. We are willing to put up with a difficult, even
painful or heartbroken life, for the sake of others, especially our
offspring. Much of Seneca’s discussion is essentially egocentric. It
is in recognising that we live for others and that our death will
have consequences for them that he begins to see the question in the
round.
Our narcissistic culture is sunk in the delusion that we live
for ourselves. No one ever does. No one is indifferent to how they
are seen by others, indeed, narcissists are obsessed by it. Our
selfhood begins in relationship, which is why Seneca is right: it is
a sign of a great soul to stay true to life for the sake of others.
That is the greatest wisdom of this little book.
|
