death

See this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say I rather not touch the subject of philosophizing, especially when it comes to a complex topic such as death. Death can have a million points of view and theories, so let's keep it simple.

First off, just like Savater points out, it IS going to happen sooner or later. However, I'm gonna have to question Epicurus on this one. Sure, he may have been a great philosopher in his time, and I'd love to hear more about his theories, but there's just one little statement I disagree with. Not fear death? How dare he? I think we have more than the right to fear it, especially when it might not be a very peaceful one. How can we not fear something we've never experienced?

Quite frankly, it scares the hell out of me. Not because it's something I've never experienced, although I'm sure everyone has had that kind of feeling, sort of like getting nervous about something new. It's more like I don't feel like finding out whether I'm gonna get eaten by maggots and just rot away, or come back as an insect or a piece of grass if I'm unlucky, or actually walk through the gates of Heaven or Hell as my spirit self.

I've read/heard a few death experiences. Most of them I believe were quite unpleasant. Some even claim to have seen "the light". Even if these experiences can be explained scientifically, aren't those people the ones we should ask if there IS actually something to fear? What should we believe and rely on? Religion? Science? Both?

I might not be the best catholic in the world, but I do know this:

It's better to die believing in God, or a higher force, and then find out there is no such thing, then to die not believing in anything like that, and find out there is a God.

Death

Death is something everyone thinks about, maybe they don't think all the time about death. But sometime in their lives they have to think about it. There are people who think about it all the time, maybe they don't like how their lives is and they think about how death is. Like I said in my last blog of how Socrates died, he was a philosopher who was thinking about death at that time. A lot of philosophers think about death and try to explain it their own way. Looking at different aspects, science, religion and logic. Like Epicurus said that we can't be scared of death because we haven't even experienced it. I think that is a great argument that can be discussed, because some people think they know how death is. Maybe because they've seen it in the movies or TV shows or other places, but they think they know how death is. There is also the religious point of view, which it says that you can go to an afterlife and exist there. So that is there point of viewing death and that is why most people are scared of it. I'm not saying I'm not scared of death, but i just think that Epicurus theory is well said.

The unavoidable death

"Life is pleasant, death is peaceful. its the transition thats troublesome."- Isaac Asimov

The problem with death is not that is it unavoidable, the problem is that nobody knows what happens next. Some people fear whats next, I consider myself in the group that fears the idea of a nothingness after death. Dont get me wrong, I know it is unavoidable. but the idea of an ending to everything you know is just scary. And that idea of a nothingness brought another question to my head that it is even harder to answer and to give a valid argument.What if there wasnt a big bang? what would there be instead? nothingness??

As we are philosophizing in this class, we must not do what the average sheep person does. the average person just ignores thsi question because of fear and continues its life as if nothing happened. Although his fear is justified his actions are not, as we must overcome that fear to live life, and not to survive life.


Accepting death is hard, I read somewhere that when you are an old person the challenge in life is to accept death. Even though we are always at the same distance from death, death is most likely to occur at an advanced age. but we must always be prepared to be face to face with it. As I stated earlier, living a life with fear is just surviving life, therefore we must overcome the fear of death to have a good life

intro

Ugh..philosophy. I usually try to avoid this kind of topics. This particular subject tends to mess a lot with my head, and makes me feel insecure; makes me feel unsure. It makes me want to find out more, learn more, know more. It makes me feel rather insignficant when being compared to so many things. The simple thought of the word "philosophy" is more than enough to drive me insane and never want to touch the subject again.

Don't get me wrong though, I love being caught up in deep thought! It's like tying up knots for me. I could go on all day long, and find it rather amusing, but it'll get annoying if i can't find my way out of those twists and turns and end up with a big tangled-up ball of ideas and problems that in the end leads me down the road of "to nowhere".

I'm more than positive that a few hundred pages are not going to be enough to make me fully understand the term of philosophy, and will more likely leave me with more questons. However, the simple introduction to the book "The Questions of Life" brings up a lot of interesting points of view that are worth checking out. Comparing and contrasting science with philosophy has never been easier. I'm looking forward to obtaining knowledge and wisdom from these pages, and will most definitely share them with you.

introdutction

So I didn’t understand a lot of this introduction, but it looked interesting. “Questions of life” is a great title to this book because there are a lot of questions asked in this introduction. A lot of philosophical questions that make you think every time you say them. Philosophy is all about that, asking questions of the unknown. Even questions beyond the unknown, it may sound weird but that is how philosophy is described in this introduction. Talking of questions, Socrates a Greek philosopher was well known for that, the Socratic Method. He asked a lot of questions to random people, and he was also a teacher. This introduction also explains the death of this great philosopher, the fatal hemlock he drank. He had an opportunity to escape but he wasn’t going to deny his teachings to the ignorant. Maybe this book is like these, they are teaching us things that are going against are religion or our costumes. But this book is of philosophy and as I said before, there is going to be a lot of questioning in this book. So far by reading this introduction, it gives me an impression that a lot of questions are going to be answered in my head, a lot of thinking is going to be done.

Have you ever been busy with trivial stuff in life when all of the sudden your head gets struck with questions like “What the **** am I doing in my life?” “Where are we going?” “How did I ended up here?” “Who am I?”

The sad truth is, when most people think of this they just ignore these questions because of fear of what they don’t understand. So then people keep living their life’s like if nothing had happened

But what happens to those people who think “**** this! What’s life!?”

Well for me, that’s philosophizing. That’s really using your brain to the stuff it was made for. When you realize you may be living your life with blindfolds, then you really start to think.

This is just the start of the journey called Philosophy. And let me tell you, it is a hell of a journey.

Unlike science there are no absolute answers, never ever. Unlike science, the most important judgments is not what Socrates or Plato once said, but what we think about something. Of course, you must make sure your thought is coherent and supported. But the point here is to think by yourself, be yourself.

We wont be able to give absolute answers, but we will give thoughts that will calm our curiosity and fear of what we don’t understand