"After the Day Star"

What else can one do in the time before sunset?  

A sunset is a recessing time of the day. A graceful decline; a descent towards a vanishing point, a repose. But to Plato, it is more than just a metaphor of Elysian rest. It is a recurring pause, a reminder that a day is once again done. Like all things in life, nothing stands still. Everything comes to an end.  As the sun thus quietly sinks in the skyline, a natural occurrence of cessations also break through the open canvas: the story closes, the melody fades, the water of the seas retreats, the flowers wilt, the leaves fall, and then the seasons change. In the book Living, Loving and Learning, Leo Buscaglia notes that nothing is permanent. The very moment “a thing reaches its height, it begins to decline. […] nothing endures but change.” 

Indeed, nothing lasts long. As each second ticks, everything moves from a beginning to an end, and so does human life. Our loved ones, to illustrate a point, are changing just as we are. But as we advance in prime, they in turn become frail and sickly. And they too will one day exit from life’s looming fate. Desolately, every man’s life is in itself intended by the natural world to move through a series of growth; it is always in a motion to reach its height and then, without any trace of choice, resolute to death.

So, what makes a beautiful sunset?  

Plato has a classic answer. To him, man should be made aware of the difference between the perfect world and the material world. Man, while in this (imperfect) world, should not devote on things that do not last, for no matter how successful man is with his earthly possessions, everything is but a fleeting investment of the future—impermanent, never meant for worldly contentment.  What merits a second look though is a life well lived. After all, to note the teaching of his great mentor Socrates: an unexamined life is not worth living. And it is in Plato’s Apology  that he shows how self-knowledge becomes an important component to a meaningful life. Norman Melchert says, “Just as the shoemaker cannot make good shoes unless he understands his material, [man] cannot construct a good life unless [he] knows himself.”  So, making fine shoes is like mastering the art of living; as in the same analogy, so also one lives well.

It is worth to note that Plato wants man to anticipate the sundown by examining the deeper self.  One should know the end to learn how to begin.  First, he must see to it that he is sensitive to his very own existence.  He should know the recipe of his life.  He needs to know the ingredients that are needed to understand human existence. In this likeness, he must prepare two baskets in hand—one contains the essential items for living while the other holds the useless pieces of life.  Correct knowledge is required to understand the differences of the two and follow that which is fitting while abandoning the unfit.   

Plato encourages detachment from mundane glamour.  Everything in this world is a poor imitation of what is truly real.  So one should not stick to what is not eternal and lasting. He means to free the self from the anxiety of life by wading off “bodily pleasures and adornments.”   It is only the living after all who are worried of such earthly entitlements, since a wise man, as he fits himself to the next world, does not attach himself to any elegant things or “bodily ornaments.”  He rather “despises them—in so far as there is no real necessity for him to go in for that sort of thing.”   This is what Plato means when he speaks of a man who trains himself in dying and living in a situation “as close as possible to death”  even at the outset of life.  He goes:  

"Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they would have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward." 

And thus, for the great thinker, a wise man is never surprised by death for he is at all times ready to go; he is a man sensitive enough to accept his borderline situation.   For that reason, “[The] philosopher’s soul is [also] ahead of all the rest.”   It is so because he follows “philosophy in the right way” and truly prepares himself “to face death easily.”   Simply put, “a true [philosopher makes] dying his profession [.]”  He sees to it that life is lived fully by anticipating death and he does this by making the most or perhaps the best in everything there is before the day star disappears. 

Lot Tabilid,Jr. Chapter 8: "Mindfulness of Death," Thinking Human: A Comprehensive Worktext in Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person for Senior High School (USC Press, 2016), 95-108.