Why is Philosophy alternatively defined as “learning to die?”

“To philosophise is to learn to die – philosophising is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being.--Karl Jaspers, Philosophy and Science, World Review Magazine, March 1950.

”We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.”
-Socrates

Philosophy is the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge or conduct. It deals in the truth of existence, hence the finality of things; everything has it end or death.

People seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly of their own accord in preparing themselves for dying and death. Since Philosophy is search for truth, in searching we must totally abandon our human earthly wisdom for the true human wisdom begins with the recognition of one’s own ignorance. Even the famous philosopher, Socrates was conscious that he doesn’t know everything.

We must empty ourselves with previous knowledge and facts accumulated in prior years. We are in fact to be convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body, and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. We must die to ourselves for the only true knowledge comes from knowing that you know nothing. It seems that the wisdom which is desired and upon which we profess to have set on our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and when we face our maker.

To philosophize is to learn to die - that is philosophizing is a soaring up to the Godhead. To learn to die is to learn how not to die - meaning we should exhaust all our resources that when we die, there is profit in dying. Here we say, he who wishes to maintain life, he will lose it, and he who gives up will find it. Only he who has come to the ground of himself and has known the whole depth of life which has once abandoned everything and has him, been abandoned by everything. He for whom everything disappear and who saw himself alone with the infinite, a great step which Plato compared to death. The possibility of a free beginning for philosophical thinking lies in the abandonment, being abandoned by everything and everyone, himself abandoning everything, a step of death.

The history of Philosophy can be approached as a history of philosophers that proceeds by examples remembered. Let’s take Francis Bacon as an example. For him to observe the effect of the refrigeration in a cold freezing day, he stuffed a chicken with snow and caught pneumonia.

What is reality? Is this world real? Explain.

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, he gave us an idea about his view on reality. The prisoners were chained in a way that they would never see what’s outside the cave. They we’re there since they were alive and saw nothing except the shadows in the wall of the cave and heard nothing except echoes that the captors mimic.

Plato made this for us to imagine what will happen next if the prisoners were freed and finally see what’s at their back. Let’s put ourselves in the situation, let’s say we were prisoned since we started breathing and never saw anything, even ourselves, except for shadows. If I would be asked to define reality, I guess I would view reality as these shadows that I’ve been seeing since I was born.

So in Plato’s belief we could summarize that the world we have does not exist in a way because what we see and have are not genuine; they are all mere copies of a copy of the real world that is existing beyond man’s conception of reality.

On the other hand, in my own opinion, I believe that reality is what exists right now. It is shaped by our beliefs and visions; reality can be a positive or a negative entity. Reality is what we merely believe that is true.

Yes, this world is real. Just like a prisoner in Plato’s allegory of the cave, this is where I am and these are the things that I’ve been seeing since I was born so I would believe that the world I am living right now is real. In contrary to this, I couldn’t prove that what I believe right now is true unless I would die and see things in a different way. With that, I could prove that this world is real or vice-versa.