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    How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life
    How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life
    How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life
    Audiobook2 hours

    How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life

    Written by Seneca and James S. Romm

    Narrated by P.J. Ochlan

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    "It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die," wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always," and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker and dazzling writer who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

    Seneca believed that life is only a journey toward death and that one must rehearse for death throughout life. Here, he tells us how to practice for death, how to die well, and how to understand the role of a good death in a good life. He stresses the universality of death, its importance as life's final rite of passage, and its ability to liberate us from pain, slavery, or political oppression.

    Featuring beautifully rendered new translations, How to Die also includes an enlightening introduction, notes, the original Latin texts, and an epilogue presenting Tacitus's description of Seneca's grim suicide.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    TranslatorJames S. Romm
    Release dateMar 20, 2018
    ISBN9781684412297
    Author

    Seneca

    The writer and politician Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) was one of the most influential figures in the philosophical school of thought known as Stoicism. He was notoriously condemned to death by enforced suicide by the Emperor Nero.

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    Reviews for How to Die

    4.5/5

    270 ratings20 reviews

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    • 3/5
      some pretty good wisdom in here, pretty interesting, also very repetitive. You can tell it's one of those books that has been influential enough that almost the entirety of the book has been quoted in other books you have probably already read.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      stoic philosophy is a fav of mine and I recommend anyone who like logic and reason should give it a read

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I died 6 times during the reading of this book so it works for me.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Great content, mediocre narrator, I would definitely recommend this to both the healthy and the terminal.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The professional Scribd review would be difficult to surpass. Having just listened to this audiobook with my smartphone and earbuds over several of the dark hours just before the dawn - I began to take a different view towards what is called “eco anxiety” that is being promoted among young people by the “extinction rebellion” movement, that in turn is being underwritten by the IPCC report on carbon dioxide levels in the air we breathe. Listening to Seneca speaking in almost religious terms about our inevitable personal extinction, and the extinction of cities, empires and the world itself as being ordained by nature and reality itself - offers some paradoxical solace. The prophesy of “the end of civilization as we know it” is graphically laid out after about 4 minutes into Chapter 5 of 6. It occurred to me that the “Serenity Prayer” (that you can read about on Wikipedia) is really a perfect expression of the stoic world view for which Seneca, the Roman philosopher living at the time of Christ, is famous.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great compilation of Seneca’s writings on death. Must read for everyone.
    • 4/5
      It is a pity that discussion and knowledge of classical thinkers and philosophers has such a “intellectual connotation” that most people feel exclude from even try to know more. Modern education about western civilization cannot be completed without these books and authors that literally forge it. Its not a book to think about Seneca. It is a book to think about yourself. It gives his answers for sure, but the true value is in the questions that puts on the reader.
    • 4/5
      An interesting ordeal on death provided by a former friend of the most notorious emperor Rome ever saw.
    • 5/5
      Exemplary job by James Romm and PUP! The last excerpt from Annals by Tacitus summarizing Seneca’s death left such an eary feeling. But catalyzed much contemplation for me as a novice lover of Philosophy.
    • 5/5
      Seneca apits out the truth about the gift of life
    • 5/5
      Good compilation of Seneca's epistles. Spoiler: we all are going to die, so not use to fear it.
    • 5/5
      What a ghastly topic, Seneca is obsessed about death. There are a few valuable takeaways however, one, since there are more ways to die, than to be born, of which there is only one, suggests, that death is in our power. So when to choose it over life is the question. Is life an obligation one must live, or does one have a duty towards near and dear one's to offset the debt incurred while living.
      While his suggestion that when faced with a certain painful death, it might be wise to open one's vein and die peacefully is a valid choice.
      To die for honour, like Socrate did "a cup of poison" is a choice given only to a few.
      Overall concepts like honourable death, choice, fear of death, seeking death, suicide are topics that keep one interested till the very end. Five star for narration. Very clear and devoid of judgement.
    • 5/5
      The Stocis were a philosophical undertaking the we in today's world could learn from. As Seneca put it, you will dead longer than you are alive so why not make friends with death and work toward it with out fear.
    • 4/5
      Good short book if you haven't read Senecas' works already since it's all taken from his different writings. In general I would say its worth the 2 hours and well read too, pretty slowly so you have time to take in the ideas.
    • 4/5
      I have mixed feelings about this work. It holds alot of wisdom but also very disturbing.
    • 5/5
      beautiful collection of Seneca's key ideas on death, provides a view of a great stoics ideas on death, which seemed to pervade much of his life, and loom over his daily existence
    • 1/5
      I didnt like it was not what I expected compared to other seneka books.
    • 4/5
      Great thoughts from a man whose moral complications we know and whose thought shines on ...
    • 5/5
      Deep philosophy & very insightful. must read/listen in this day & age
    • 4/5
      Interesting take on death, it really give an alternative perspective