ABSTRACT
One of the many questions facing ill people, or at least those with poor prognosis, is: how should we face death? Of course, this ques tion is one that every person faces, in some way, with the realiza tion that their existence is fi nite. e knowledge of our mortality is a heavy burden, and many philosophers have claimed that cultivating an appropriate attitude towards it is the key to leading a good life. Some, such as Socrates, Cicero and Montaigne, thought that prac tising philosophy is learning how to die, because the practice of pure thinking separates the soul from the body. As Montaigne writes in his essay “To Philosophize is to Learn How to Die”: “study and contemplation draw our souls, somewhat outside ourselves, keeping them occupied away from the body, a state which both resembles death and which forms a kind of apprenticeship for it” (1993: 17).
