The universe is just there;
that’s the only way one can view it
and remain master of one’s senses.
The universe neither threatens nor promises.
It holds things beyond our sway:
the fall of a meteor,
growing old and dying.

These are the realities of the universe
and they must be faced
regardless of how you feel about them.
You cannot fend off such realities
with words.
They will come at you
in their own wordless way
and then,
you will understand
what is meant by
“life and death.”

Excerpt Dune, The Sayings of Muad‘Dib,
By Frank Herbert

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I have embarked upon a substantial reading project.  Almost reaching the end of the introduction, I will begin reading The Phaedo, one of the dialogues by Plato.  I read this account of the last conversation between Socrates and his closest friends, when I was in college.  That was almost forty years ago.  This time around, I bring forty years worth of adult experience to the text.  No doubt this text will be read differently, hopefully, better.

Plato, revered as one of the founders of philosophy in the West, was a student of Socrates.  Socrates disdained putting his philosophy into writing because he was of the view that a live dialogue best achieves the potential inherent in reason.  Plato was of a different mind and was an excellent writer and story teller.

Plato uses this account of Socrates death scene, Phaedo’s relating of Socrates arguments in support of a robust belief in the afterlife, — to advance his own matrix of ideas about existence, God, ideas, life and death.

I anticipate The Phaedo to be fascinating reading for someone such as I.  From time to time, I am reminded that I am a recovering Evangelical Christian.  The “afterlife” or better put, the afterlife/heaven is an important feature of evangelical thinking.  This anxious concern which underlies our smiles, our social facade, is not limited to Evangelical Christians.

Is it not simply human to wonder about the meaning of the one life which is ours to live? To wonder if what we become, if what we do — echoes in the next life?