To Live Well You Must Learn To Die Well: Simon Critchley's Book of Dead Philosophers

The Murder Of Cicero, 19th Century book illustration.

As promised... I am supposedly going to do a book a day for the month of December, outlining my favorite books from 2009. This is of course to counter the typically stuffy nature of my normal posts. I mean there is only so much Mary Shelley and Maxim Gorky a guy can foist on the world.

We'll start it off with morbidity. After all we just got done talking end times mumbo jumbo.


The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley. Vintage Books. Nonfiction. 265pp. $15.95. Click on the image of the book above to purchase the above book and support the Devil's Accountant.

“To philosophize is to learn how to die.”
–Cicero.

First up on my list of favorites from 2009 is Simon Critchley's morbid compendium of perished philosophers. It's a real hoot.

In precise entries organized both by time and area of the world inhabited by the then alive philosophers, Critchley composes a rarefied cyclopedia of the manner in which the greatest of minds have thought about and met with death.

The Book Of Dead Philosophers is essentially my favorite type of work – the introductory kind. It transforms a typically austere subject accessible to curious people who want to learn. The entries are brief and easy to understand. You can pick the book up and read it front to back if you like, but even the author admits that this is not necessary.

You could easily read an entry a day, picking random entries on a break or while sitting on this country’s most infamous reading chair.

Yes. I did just allude to this being a great book for toilet reading. Let's be honest after all. We do read there. And there are certain types of materials that read best on the can.

If that's scandalous to you then know that it will read with equal effect on a lectern or at the library table. Just read it.

If you do you will learn something of the history of ideas and maybe arrive at the kind of resolve espoused in the brave quote that opened this article. Incidentally Cicero’s death was quite violent. Having written a tract against the despotic Marc Antony, Cicero had fled Rome in order to avoid reprisal. Antony sent an assassin (certainly a well-trained soldier) nonetheless.

Cicero had long stood in opposition of both Caesar and Marc Antony. He was a patriot and against the shift from Republic to Imperialism. He was fleeing to the sea but when he learned that he would be overtaken he stopped, turned back and went directly towards his pursuers. He was easily dispatched. He was an orator, a lifelong politician and philosopher. Marcus Tullius Cicero was no match for Antony’s battle-hardened assassin and yet he boldly faced him.

Long before his death, Cicero wrote: “A great commander’s death is famous; but philosophers mostly die in their beds. Still it makes a difference how they die.”

You did well, Cicero. Life is not death, but knowing and being fearless before death, to keep a little bit of it always with you, can make for some great living.