Another aspect of Plato’s “Apology” (or the Defense of Socrates) that impressed me was Socrates’ fearlessness in the face of death. Of course, Socrates was about 70 years of age at the time of his trial and execution. He had benefit of experiencing many of life’s satisfactions, including marriage, fatherhood and a “career” as philosopher/gadfly. By the standards of the ancient world, in which life expectancy was less than 40 years, Socrates had enjoyed a long and active life.
Still, death does not concern him. He accepts its reality as a natural process of life, possibly a blessing. “Gentlemen, to be afraid of death is nothing else than thinking one is wise when one is not, since it means fancying that one knows what one does not. Nobody knows, in fact, what death is, nor whether to man it is not perchance the greatest of all blessings; yet people fear it as if they surely knew it to be the worst of evils…Therefore never for the sake of evils which I know to be such [base and wicked] will I fear or flee from what for all I know may be a good.”
These sentiments today are liberating and counter-cultural. Why? We live in a time when the reality of death — the shadow it casts over our lives — is vigorously denied. I heard a story, probably apocryphal, of an octogenarian who when told of her cancer and poor prognosis said, “‘Why me?”
When confronted by medical staff, death is denied differently; it’s seen as a problem to be fixed. In fact, the motive behind our obsession with medical progress may be our deep-seated fear of death. “[A]s long as I can buy this to fix that, I sustain an illusion of permanence,” said Arthur W. Frank, author of “The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics.” “So long as there is more to buy, whatever needs fixing will be fixed, and I will continue to be.”
Bio-ethicist Daniel Callahan suggests that endless medical progress distorts our view of ourselves. It treats dying and death, not as the last stage of growth and a natural phase of life, but as an embarrassing failure.
In his seminal book, “Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society,” Callahan cautioned against spending precious financial resources to extend the life span of the very elderly at the expense of the entire health care system, in particular improving the health care of the very young.
He believes Americans need a health care system that balances sensible aspirations with sensible limitations. “The proper question is not whether we are succeeding in giving a longer life to the aged,” he said. “It is whether we are making of old age a decent and honorable time of life. Neither a longer lifetime nor more life-extending technology is the way to that goal.”
Some may wonder why they should bother reading a 2,500-year-old text like Plato’s “Apology.” One reason is that Socrates’ opinions about death are timely and relevant and inform our current, often acrimonious, debate on reforming the U.S. health-care system.
