There is a reason the subject of death has been central to every religion and philosophy throughout history. “The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner,” Socrates says in Plato’s Phaedo, “is to practice for dying and death.” Since our body “fills us with wants, desires, fears, all sorts of illusions and much nonsense,” we can only achieve true wisdom when our soul is liberated from our bodies by death. And this is why philosophy, he says, is about “training for dying.”
