by Scott Soames
The final requirement is humility. Don’t predicate your faith in the future on its living up to your image of it. No people, no projects, no institutions that outlast you will conform to all your most important ideas and values. Nor should they. No matter who you are, your perspective is limited. Your ability to anticipate events that will shape the future is no greater than the corresponding abilities of those who weren’t alive to experience the events that shaped you and your era. So don’t think of what you offer those who follow as a package deal. Don’t worry about what parts of the package the future may discard. Be content that some of what you have offered will be taken up and valued, and trust that those who follow may know better than you how to sort it all out. This advice is particularly important in an era in which political ideology is all too often pursued with quasi-religious fervor. If you expect to find meaning in your commitment to the welfare of others, both now and after you are gone, you need to respect them and their perspectives, while anticipating that those perspectives will differ in some important respects from your own.
The good news is that all of this is achievable. The bad news is that it doesn’t always come easily. If you are one for whom it doesn’t, it may take years of effort to develop the character traits needed to give your life the meaning you now seek and will eventually need when it comes to an end. Best to start now.
APPENDIX
THE NOBLE DEATHS OF SOCRATES AND DAVID HUME
Two of the most famous and inspirational deaths in all of philosophy illustrate how a philosophical perspective on life can contribute to a noble death. The first occurred in 399 BCE, when Socrates, then in his early seventies, was tried, found guilty, and executed for impiety and corrupting the young, which he is alleged to have done by questioning religious doctrine and pretending to wisdom he didn’t have. His ingenious defense, described in Plato’s Apology, was built around the story of a friend returning from the oracle of Delphi (a sacred place at which the god Apollo was reputed to speak through his oracle) with the message that no human being is wiser than he, Socrates.1 Hearing this, he protests that he is isn’t wise; on the contrary, he is searching for wisdom because he knows he isn’t wise. Might it be, Socrates wonders, that the god is suggesting otherwise? Perhaps it is his divinely inspired duty to determine the truth or the falsity of the god’s puzzling remark. Taking it to be so (ironically giving the lie to the charge of impiety), Socrates resolves to engage the wisest men he can find in order to discover what they know.
When he does so, he discovers that those reputed to be wise in fact aren’t, even though they take themselves to be. Since it is better to know one’s own ignorance than to confidently believe falsehoods, it turns out that Socrates may, after all, be the wisest. Unfortunately, however, his persistent questioning sometimes provokes hostility, which leads his enemies to bring charges against him. Taking the search for the truth to be the highest good, Socrates refuses to give up his quest despite the fact that doing so would allow him to avoid conviction and death. Because his relentless search for knowledge has become the meaning of his existence, he can’t give it up without forsaking virtue and happiness by repudiating everything he has stood for. To some, his stubbornness may seem extreme. Surely, one may object, he can’t achieve virtue or happiness, if he is dead. Wouldn’t a less than stellar life without philosophical inquiry be better than no life at all?
Socrates responds by observing that one should not assume that death is a great evil. Although he didn’t take himself to know what death would bring, he thought the soul might survive, and even flourish. But even if death is the dreamless sleep of nonexistence, staving it off for a few extra years would not, he believed, be worth rejecting what gave his life meaning. He tells us why it wouldn’t in Plato’s dialogue Crito, which takes place in prison early on the day of the execution.2 His friend Crito has a plan for Socrates to escape and go into exile, using money that Crito and his friends can spare. Although the plan would be easy be to pull off, Crito can’t convince Socrates to cooperate. Socrates protests that (i) to escape is to break the law, (ii) to do that, even after a miscarriage of justice, is morally wrong, and (iii) one must never do anything morally wrong. Indeed, Socrates argues, to do so would be to harm one’s soul, which is always worse than to suffer harm.
But why would it be wrong to break the law by escaping? Because, Socrates maintains, we owe a debt to the state incurred by the enormous benefits that have come to us from living in an ordered society. Surely, he maintains, it would be wrong to repay this debt by undermining the laws on which this order depends. Though not without force, this argument is unconvincing. Although we do greatly benefit from living in a civilized state, we also, as citizens, contribute to it—including, in Socrates’s case, serving as an Athenian soldier. It is in the nature of legal systems, even those that are relatively unjust, that the benefits of social organization vastly exceed the sum of individual efforts needed to sustain them. But the fact that we benefit by cooperating with one another doesn’t generate a moral obligation to obey every law in every circumstance, no matter how deficient the law, or the state, may be.
Fortunately, this unconvincing line of argument was not all Socrates had to offer. At the end of the dialogue, he emphasizes the harm his escape would do to his friends who would be found complicit in the plot, the damage it would do to his own reputation, and, most of all, the threat that his self-serving behavior would pose to the way of life he had come to represent. The debate with Crito is resolved when it becomes clear that if Socrates truly believes his message—that rigorously honest, soul-searching philosophy is the path to wisdom, virtue, and happiness—he must not undermine it.
With this, we can better understand his remarks in the Apology. It was, he rightly thought, worthwhile to sacrifice his few remaining years of life in order to advance, rather than destroy, the powerful message that his life and work were destined to convey to others. Human beings, who know they will die, can greatly enrich their lives—particularly in later years—by identifying with, and valuing, a reality much larger than themselves. Because Socrates valued what he could give to those who would follow more than he valued a little more time on earth, he was doing what was best for him in accepting his fate.
It is not surprising, then, that Socrates’s death was tranquil. The scene is described at the end of the next dialogue, the Phaedo. Here are a few passages beginning just before sunset when a prison officer informs Socrates and his friends that it is time for the execution.
Socrates, he [the officer] said … I shall not have to find fault with you, as I do with others, for getting angry with me and cursing when I tell them to drink the poison.… I have come to know during this time that you are the noblest and the gentlest and the bravest of all the men that have ever come here, and now especially I am sure that you are not angry with me.… So now—you know what I have come to say—good-bye, and try to bear what must be as easily as you can.3
As he spoke, he burst into tears, and turning round, went away. Socrates looked up at him and said, Good-bye to you.… Then addressing us [his friends] he went on. What a charming person! All the time I have been here he has visited me, and sometimes had discussions with me, and shown me the greatest kindness, and how generous of him now to shed tears for me at parting! But come, Crito, let us do as he says.4
But surely, Socrates, said Crito, the sun is still upon the mountains. Besides, I know that in other cases people have dinner and enjoy their wine, and sometimes the company of those whom they love, long after they receive the warning.… No need to hurry. There is still plenty of time.5
It is natural that these people whom you speak of should act in that way, Crito, said Socrates, because they think that they gain by it. And it is also natural that I should not, because I believe I should gain nothing by drinking the poison a little later—I should only make myself ridiculous in my own eyes if I clung to life and hugged it when it has no more to offer.6
With this Socrates took t
he bowl of hemlock and drank it in one breath.
Up till this time most of us had been fairly successful in keeping back our tears, but when we saw that he was drinking, that he had actually drunk it, we could do so no longer. In spite of myself the tears came pouring out, so that I covered my face and wept brokenheartedly—not for him but for my own calamity in losing such a friend. Crito had given up even before me, and had gone out when he could not restrain his tears. But Apollodorus, who had never stopped crying even before, now broke out into such a storm of passionate weeping that he made everyone in the room break down, except Socrates himself, who said, Really, my friends, what a way to behave! … Calm yourselves and try to be brave.7
As the poison gradually spread throughout Socrates’s body, he covered his head, until at one point he pulled off the cover and said his last words. “Crito, we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius. See to it, and don’t forget.” The dialogue then ends, “Such … was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man.”8
The second famous death is that of David Hume, who died in 1776 at the age of 65. A leader of the Scottish Enlightenment, the most famous British empiricist, and one of the leading British philosophers of all time, he was also a celebrated historian of England. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind were enormously influential. His naturalistic theory of moral evaluation, emphasizing other-regarding sentiments in human nature and opposing narrow egoistic theories, and his theory of justice, based on our beneficial experience with historically evolving social and economic institutions, were prescient and highly influential. Together, they fit very well with the view of morality as beginning with a psychobiological account of human nature, aided by rationally formulated general rules of reciprocity, and expanding through the development of increasingly sophisticated systems of social cooperation.
The following excerpts are from a letter describing Hume’s last days, written by his friend, the great philosopher and economist Adam Smith, to a mutual friend. Though Hume’s death wasn’t heroic, his remarkable equanimity was inspiring. His was the death of a man who had done all that he judged he could, who had left no work undone—including not only his great contributions to history and philosophy, but also his generous financial provision for family and friends. Having secured his legacy to the world, and to those near and dear, he could depart it in as pleasant a way as one might imagine.9
DEAR SIR,—It is with a real, though a very melancholy pleasure, that I sit down to give some account of the behavior of our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume, during his last illness.… Upon his return to Edinburgh [from a journey recounted by Smith] though he found himself much weaker, yet his cheerfulness never abated, and he continued to divert himself, as usual, with correcting his own works for a new edition, with reading books of amusement, with the conversation of his friends; and, sometimes in the evening, with a party at his favorite game of whist. His cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements ran so much in their usual strain, that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying.… Mr. Hume’s magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that so far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was reading this letter [from another friend], which he had just received, and which he immediately showed me. I told him, that though I was sensible how very much he was weakened, and that appearances were in many respects very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help entertaining some faint hopes. He answered,
“Your hopes are groundless. An habitual diarrhea of more than a year’s standing, would be a very bad disease at any age: at my age it is a mortal one. When I lie down in the evening, I feel myself weaker than when I rose in the morning; and when I rise in the morning, weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible, besides, that some of my vital parts are affected, so that I must soon die.”
“Well,” said I, “if it must be so, you have at least the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, your brother’s family in particular, in great prosperity.”
He said that he felt that satisfaction so sensibly, that when he was reading, a few days before, Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that fitted him; he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself.
“I could not well imagine,” said he, “what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them. I therefore have all reason to die contented.”
But, though Mr. Hume always talked of his approaching dissolution with great cheerfulness, he never affected to make any parade of his magnanimity. He never mentioned the subject but when the conversation naturally led to it, and never dwelt longer upon it than the course of the conversation happened to require: it was a subject, indeed, which occurred pretty frequently, in consequence of the inquiries which his friends, who came to see him, naturally made concerning the state of his health. The conversation which I mentioned above, and which passed on Thursday the 8th of August, was the last, except one, that I ever had with him.
He had now become so very weak, that the company of his most intimate friends fatigued him; for his cheerfulness was still so great, his complaisance and social disposition were still so entire, that when any friend was with him, he could not help talking more, and with greater exertion, than suited the weakness of his body. At his own desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was staying partly upon his account.…
[Several days later,] I received the following letter from Doctor Black.
“DEAR SIR,—Yesterday, about four o’clock, afternoon, Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evident in the night between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became excessive, and soon weakened him so much that he could no longer rise out of his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness. I thought it improper to write to bring you over, especially as I heard that he had dictated a letter to you desiring you not to come. When he became very weak, it cost him an effort to speak, and he died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.”
Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded, not upon avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind or the steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humor, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify; and, therefore, far from offending, it seldom failed to please and delight, even those who were the objects of it. To his frie
nds, who were frequently the objects of it, there was not perhaps any one of all his great and amiable qualities, which contributed more to endear his conversation. And that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is so often accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.
BIOS OF LEADING FIGURES
ALBERTUS MAGNUS (Albert the Great) (circa 1200–1280), an amateur scientist, philosopher of nature, and theologian, was an important official in the Dominican order, professor of theology at the University of Paris, and the teacher of Thomas Aquinas.
ARISTOTLE (384–322/1 BCE), along with his teacher Plato, was one of the two greatest philosophers of the ancient world. His investigations in logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, physics, biology, psychology, and aesthetics set the standard for centuries.
THOMAS AQUINAS (1225–1274), one of the most influential philosophers and theologians of all time, played a central role in reviving Greek philosophy by bringing Aristotle back to life and blending his thought with Christianity in a synthesis of faith and reason.
AUGUSTINE (354–430) was a gifted writer, theologian, and powerful figure in the early Church. His version of Christianity, infused with elements of Platonism, was a dominant force in Christian thought from the fifth through the thirteenth centuries.
FRANCIS BACON (1561–1626) was a British philosopher of science who stressed the practical value of technological innovations and their power to change the world. His writings helped create a climate of opinion favorable to scientific progress.
