Plato says that philosophy is a preparation for death. When we start asking philosophical questions in our teenage years, this is exactly what we are looking for: an intellectual refuge from the complexity and size of a reality that encompasses us, and that we do not control in any way. This is what so-and-so calls the search for truth when it is the other way around. It is the search for a refuge, therefore, the search for intellectual security against the complexity of the real. It is only after dedicating yourself to this activity for some time that you begin to feel a little more protected, inasmuch as you accept your own state of unprotection and no longer seek protection. Then the subject calms down and, one day, discovers that there is something called reality. I did not invent it, it is not an object of my thinking. It is something I am in and it is, without a doubt, much more interesting than anything I have thought of.

The encounter with this reality is the mark of what we can call intellectual maturity

Intellectual maturity is when we no longer seek that conceptual, doctrinal scheme, or that belief that will defend us against reality, but when we seek to adjust our intelligence to the reality we are living, that is, we no longer want to escape reality . We want to enter it and experience it with all the measure of its complexity, its wealth, in such a way that we are sure that our actions in our modality of existence represent a conscious experience of this reality that we will never embrace or dominate, but in which we want to make sure that we were, that is, we want to make sure that we were awake, living in the reality that surrounds us and not within a world of ideas that we ourselves created to defend ourselves. This is the maximum measure that human intelligence can achieve: conscious and lucid participation in a reality that it cannot embrace. In other words, we do not know what the limits of reality are, what the whole picture is, nor the final answer, but we know where we are, what we are doing here and we know what is happening.

I often have this feeling, even when it is depressing in nature. If we are suffocated under problems, if there is misery, fear, persecution, etc., it is better to know what is happening than to ignore it. Because otherwise, we will be like a bunny that is running in the middle of the bush and suddenly gets shot and doesn’t even know where that crap came from.

The difference between human and animal suffering is this. The pet suffers and has no idea why. And we can (as far as we can), within the very experience of suffering, take an image of our dignity, of beings who have access to the truth. And this is the most we can achieve in this life. When Aristotle said that the higher form of life is the contemplative form, that is what he meant. It is to understand what is happening. If instead of trying to understand, one seeks only to defend oneself from the situation, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, one does exactly what a pet does. Now, if the pet also doesn’t understand the situation, it is evident that when he seeks pleasure, he finds pain and when he runs away from pain, he finds even more pain.

The cognitive attitude towards this creates, not a state of beatitude, but a kind of superior tranquility. And this is the attitude with which Socrates faces death. He says: “I don’t know exactly what death is but I know more than you do. I have some idea what’s going on and what’s going to happen to me. That’s why I’m not afraid”. This is, at the same time, the beginning and the culmination of philosophy. Philosophy cannot go beyond that. And all these magnificent intellectual constructions that we see in modernity (Descartes’, Spinoza’s, Leibniz’s metaphysics, the Enlightenment, this whole thing) are often just an escape, a defensive attitude of individuals who want to build a intellectual building within which they can be closed. It is clear that the construction of all these apparatuses, instead of calming the fear, increases it. In addition to having to face the pressure, the difficulties, the humiliations of normal life, these individuals have to hold the building to prevent it from falling over by covering it with a stick here, a glue there, with a spit, to prove that they are right, that that view of the universe is the true one and all the others are false. All of this is an idiot occupation because, where do they go when they die? Are you going inside that conceptual building you created? There is not a single case of experience of a state of clinical death in which people say that they died and went into Aristotle’s or Spinoza’s metaphysics. Nobody went to one of these places! These things only existed in the minds of Aristotle and Spinoza, they are not the real world and neither is the real answer.

When Plato says that philosophy is a preparation for death, that is what he is talking about. Whatever can be obtained in the doctrinal construction will always be less than the soul of the listener. Because the listener’s soul will have Eternal Life and these intellectual constructions will not! The most the philosopher can do is try to give his listeners those moments of clarity that are the expectation of Eternal Life. Remembering Eternal Life is the philosopher’s ultimate function: to understand transient life, the moment that passes and the real situation in which we live, and to draw the soul from the living consciousness of the situation to remember the hope of Eternal Life (which is more than hope, it is certainty). This consists of all philosophy, and this is brutally compacted in these two texts that I am recommending to you: Socrates’ Apology and the Phaedo. For the time being you understand this in my formulation, in a little while you will not only understand within the formulation in which you are listening, but in the formulation that Plato gave you in these two magnificent texts.