Philosophy and Death

 Plato's dialog, "Phaedo," presents Socrates ideas about death, and the fact that instead of shying away and being fearful of the inevitable death, he welcomes it. Socrates sees death as the complete separation of the body and soul, and once this occurs you can obtain knowledge like you never knew you could because prior to this separation your body got in the way. Once you are no longer one with your body, you don't have any basic needs that your body is constantly reminding you to fulfill, and instead, according to Socrates, you can access a level of wisdom that was impossible prior to this. Socrates views the body as what blocks us from knowledge, from truth, and from wisdom. 

To me, death is something that is fear by many because there is no exact answer to what happens to us when we die; there are theories on theories on theories about this, but there is nothing that straightforward tells us this is what happens. Socrates has a thought that I have always somewhat believed in. I have always thought our bodies do die on us as we are not invincible and our bodies cannot stay young forever; our brain while on earth is what sends messages throughout our body and what retrieves and holds information, but even that gets olds and stops working as efficiently as it used to. Whenever you read stories about "near death experiences", people always talk about how they were in just an amazing place and experienced sensations you cannot explain through words, but, of course, this could also be hallucinations or imaginations. When you read religious views from thousands of years ago about experiences with God or a god that is worshipped, you may think, "hmm... this could be pretty legit," but then you also have to think that these individuals did not have adequate healthcare, could have been extremely sick, could have had deep psychological problems, and just hallucinating as well. As present day humans, we have quite literally no idea of where we are going when we die. Is there a Heaven? Is there an afterlife? Is there just something, anything at all, after we die? Is it just never-ending emptiness and darkness? Either way, I don't think it is something to be scared of, unless of course you're going to die in a tragic accident of some sort, I would be pretty scared of that since the pain of that would probably stink, but overall, death is something everyone has to experience. 

Sometimes I feel as though death and philosophy are extremely similar due to the vast amount of theories beneath the two; there are such strong opinions and arguments that come from them that after reading a really good one, you can be won over easily and believe it just like that. I sometimes feel that the vast amount of theories brings me to slight uneasiness. Believing strongly in a religious view, to me, is crazy because there's over 4000 active religions in the world. Believing strongly in just one view on death is the same as there are so many that genuinely cannot be proven until we die. 

When Plato says that the body is a prison and that truth is only going to be accessed in its access, I can say I have definitely thought of this, and this is high up there on my list of possibilities after death, so I agree. I have always thought that the soul just gets powerful with death, more powerful than the old and aging body, that it eventually just breaks free. Needs like hunger, thirst, sleeping, etc. are entirely gone after death, at least I hope. Same with the physical pleasures of the body or the materialistic wants of many people, after dying, I feel like these leave. I have always felt that after dying you gain a whole different view of wisdom and experience something your life was just leading up to, but this of course can only happen if death isn't just a never-ending black hole of emptiness.