Language:
English
Year of publication:
2016
Titel der Quelle:
Interpreting Primo Levi
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2016) 67-81
Keywords:
Levi, Primo, Philosophy
;
Holocaust survivors' writings History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Moral and ethical aspects
Abstract:
Since at least Socrates, reflection on human mortality has been central in philosophy. It has been taken as virtually axiomatic that death is the worst that can befall us and that if we are not to die ignominiously we must prepare ourselves for death. Hence it is that philosophy has long seen itself as telling us that we should seek to develop the kind of attitude toward death that allows us to do that. Indeed, philosophy has often seen itself as a form of this preparation: the act of philosophizing, so the thought goes, is itself a kind of dying, since it involves a withdrawal of the thinking self from world and body, and thus mirrors or models death in some way. At another level, philosophy might help with preparing us for death by offering concrete suggestions for thinking about it less fearfully. Socrates, Plato, Seneca, Lucretius, Montaigne, Spinoza, Heidegger, and countless others repeat this sense of the relation between philosophy and death, inflected in numerous different forms and styles.
DOI:
10.1057/9781137435576_6
URL:
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