Good Old Socrates

I haven't read Plato's accounts of Socrates' words for over fifty years until today, when I happened to read the following from Phaedo:

 The aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.

You see, I have had this thing for a long time about death being the over-riding, all-important fact of our lives, but even my best friends are not with me on that. I myself can not think of anything more basic or important than understanding the reality and implications of death.

Cruelty to another person, or pride, or false belief, seem unacceptable once you you get the point, it seems to me. “Life is too short for this” has consequently come to mind in one form or another across my lifespan as a sort of talisman.

So I'm reading a bit more of Plato/Socrates and I come across this, in the account of Socrates trial:

The fear of death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may or may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of all evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know.

They do put him to death, as you will remember, despite him saying such things as the following at his trial:

Be sure that if you kill the sort of man you say I am, you will not harm me more than yourselves. I am far from making a defense now on my own behalf as might be thought, but on yours', to prevent you from wrongdoing by mistreating the god's gift to you by condemning me.

*       *      *