In this course, we will examine relations between the concepts of life and death by surveying a variety of ancient and modern philosophical accounts of them. We begin the course by exploring ancient philosophical practices designed to cultivate ways of thinking about death. We will be especially interested in how these specific practices of thinking about death helped determine various philosophical ways of life, distinct cultivated forms of thinking and acting. In doing so, we follow Pierre Hadot’s account of ancient philosophical practices in What Is Ancient Philosophy? and look at selected texts by Plato, Epicurus, Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, among others. In the second half of the course, reading texts by Michel Foucault, Philippa Foot, Georg Simmel, and Michael Thompson, we investigate contemporary philosophical problems surrounding the concept of life. Here we will take a number of approaches: we will mark out certain historical questions about the cultivation of forms of life; we will discuss euthanasia; we will compare life to adventure. Finally, we will look at the treatment of forms of life, relations between ways of speaking and ways of doing, in particular the role of picturing in our understanding of speaking and doing, and death in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.
