Death Category

Topics: Change Consistency Death Eternity Happiness Independence/Dependence Injustice Loss Normality Parenting Personal Identity (True Self) Questions Sacrifice Selfishness Strangeness Suffering Virtue

Philosophers: Emily Dickinson Fyodor Dostoevsky Ralph Waldo Emerson Alexander Hamilton Heraclitus Homer Franz Kafka Friedrich Nietzsche Plato Rainer Maria Rilke William Shakespeare Socrates Henry David Thoreau Ludwig Wittgenstein

When We Lose Something, We Haven't Lost Everything
Text: Emily Dickinson, poem

In what begins as a love poem, Emily Dickinson’s musings shift to a philosophical reflection upon the nature of loss. And loss, she concludes, is never the whole story. For where there is loss, there was once something had. And where there is something had, there must at some point and in some way be loss. Full essay.

Would You Want To Live Forever?
Text: Homer, The Odyssey

Through this tale of Odysseus’s plight, Homer prods us to consider our wish for immortality more carefully. Exactly what is it that we want when we want to live forever? Full essay.