Ethics

Keep your death in mind

Conflicts

Spinoza holds the opposite: “A free man thinks of death least of all things”, and his wisdom is “a meditation not of death but of life”. He credits no one.

1. by the 2nd c. BCE

   “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

   Psalm 90. Earliest we can find, more than 1,700 years earlier.

2. 1677

   “A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”