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ExerciseAttested · Plato

Practicing to die: caring for your soul

In the Phaedo, defines the philosopher as one who "practices dying": not out of morbid taste, but because he tends to what, in him, does not perish with the body. If you hope that something of you remains, this exercise turns the present life into a preparation: loosening the grip of what passes, and nourishing what you hold to be lasting. Today it is a way to put possessions and urgency back in their place, and to tend to what matters most in your eyes.

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Enacts

Source: Plato

Appears in
  • Taming the fearThe sages proposed exercises for living without being haunted by it, dwelling on it daily or not at all: can philosophy truly cure us of this fear, or does it cling to us too hard to yield?