Plato and Death One of the most influential minds in western philosophy describing this search for meaning was Plato. Plato lived from 422-347 B.C, and was born into an aristocratic family in the city of Athens where he became a student of Socrates, and eventually a teacher of Aristotle. As a student of Socrates, Plato followed the structure of philosophical agreement to ensure a just society - no laws are to be broken despite their relevance. The ability for an agreed upon purpose to structure society, law, is important to both the general populace and to philosophers. This theme of law, self-actualization, and justification of responses, resources, and human thought would run through all of Plato's works. Plato's "Theory of Forms" or "Theory of Ideas" assets that non-material ideas are the basis for truth and fundamental reality, not the material and constantly evolving world we perceive on a daily basis. For Plato, these Forms were essential in formulating his views on the universe and human interaction within that universe. For example, Plato would not deny that we might be looking at a tree, but it is the consideration of that tree -- its color, texture, shape, smell, weight, position, etc. that, once we remove from the tree, is an independent variable from the physical nature of that object -- the tree. As one moves up from images, to material objects, into forms, one eventually reaches a hierarchy, or what Plato termed "Form of Good," the absolute truth of systems (Annas, 2003).

When Plato diverges into the idea of death,...

In the Phaedo, one of the dialogs from Plato's middle period, the tale of Socrates' death is told through one of Socrates' students, Phaedo of Elis. Phaedo was present during Socrates' famous drinking of hemlock, and recounts the ways that Socrates explores various arguments about the soul's immortality so that he may show the world that there is an afterlife in which the soul (the essence of humanity) lives after death. Death is, in fact, a rite of purification from the disease of the body and of culture; it is a place in which better and wiser Gods rule, more noble souls exist, and the processes that make humans evil, jealous, greedy, and all the negative vices, do not exist. "… so far as [death] is concerned, I not only do not grieve, but I have great hopes that there is something in store for the dead… something better for the good than the wicked" (Phaedo, 65a-67d). Rather than constantly fearing death, the good soul should reach out and embrace it as a way of moving on, learning lessons from one plane and applying them in another. For philosophers, especially, loves wisdom, learning, and the pursuit of knowledge. Therefore, by removing the trappings of humanity and moving into a realm of more pure thought in which time constraints do not exist, the true philosopher can only benefit from the lack of "corporeal" constraints: "He who has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, these being in…