January 16, 2010

The Death of Everything Pt. 2

Cornel West:
You know, Plato says philosophy's a meditation on and a preparation for death. By death what he means is not an event, but a death in life because there's no rebirth, there's no change, there's no transformation without death, and therefore the question becomes: How do you learn how to die? Of course Montaigne talks about that in his famous essay "To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die". You can't talk about truth without talking about learning how to die because it's precisely by learning how to die, examining yourself and transforming your old self into a better self, that you actually live more intensely and critically and abundantly.


From the collection Examined Life edited by Astra Taylor

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