The Joyful Practice of Stoic Death Writing
Do you want to think about death intensely, every day, for a month straight? It’s not as morbid as it sounds. I’ve had the pleasure of participating in a 28-day workshop or “challenge” called “The Joyful Practice of Stoic Death Writing”1. I recommend it.
Every day, we were sent (via email) a quote about death written by Marcus Aurelius, along with a few thoughts about this quote from the author of the workshop – stoic, writer & coach Kathryn Koromilas. In addition to those, there were always a few writing exercises & attention exercises to engage in, in order to internalize the quote and its wisdom. For instance, we were often asked to reformulate the quote with our own words, or to think to ourselves some kind of “Memento Mori” during the day. Each email came with a countdown reminding us of the passage of time; “There are 28 days left”, “27 days left”, etc. This really puts you in the mood. The group of people who went through these exercises could speak to each other and with the organizers on a private Facebook group and also during three “check-in” Zoom sessions at the beginning, middle and end of the challenge. Overall, this workshop was a very pleasant experience, and I am beyond delighted that people took the time to organize this type of event centered on practicing philosophical exercises, not just talking about them.
I want to talk about two things: the content of the workshop and the design of the workshop. What I am most excited about is its design, for reasons that will immediately become clear.
The Content
My review of the content of the workshop will be impeded by the fact that, by and large, the content was not the right fit for me. Though I suspected it, this workshop gave me confirmation that I am not afraid of death; or at least not in the way that Marcus Aurelius was afraid of death. And if that is your situation too, this challenge, in its current form, might not be the right philosophical exercise for you. In the group I was a part of, there seemed to be a divide between people who were afraid of death, and benefited2 from Marcus Aurelius’s thought experiments, and people who were not afraid of death (or not in that way), and who became a bit fed up with the Emperor’s antics.
It seems to be the case that Marcus Aurelius is someone who felt acute anxiety at the thought of oblivion. So much so that he needed to call to mind particular philosophical images in order to manage to stop clinging to life so hard, and thus let go of the anxiety that comes with that much clinging. If you do not experience this problem, these images of life’s vanity appear very peculiar... Why is Marcus Aurelius going on and on about the fact that all is dust and blood, and no one will remember him anyway? It’s true enough, I get it... but why is he harping on it? Interestingly, people who commit the mistake of reading his writings as if they were his diary (and not a repository of philosophical exercises) often conclude that he must have been very depressed (or bipolar) which gives you some idea of the general mood of the “vanity thought experiments” he employs (if you happen to not be into them). So it works for some people, but not for everyone, and not for me! It’s not anyone’s fault.
That said, I was quite surprised by the fact that almost all of the quotes about death we were asked to ponder were from Marcus Aurelius. Initially I thought there would be more Stoic philosophers on offer than just him. If there was more diversity in the quotes we contemplated, then perhaps I would not have had the problem of not relating to that one particular type of death anxiety that Marcus Aurelius has. Indeed, throughout the workshop I found it very valuable to think about death for other reasons than just anxiety. For example, remembering that this is one of our existential parameters paired really well with the “view from above” exercise, which asks of us to remember our tiny place in the whole of the cosmos. I found it very affirming to remember that aging and death are things that are going to happen to me: it made me feel alive, lucid, and focused. There was even one exercise where we were reminded that we could calculate how many weeks we (probably) have left to live. I found this very challenging (the math is simple, but thinking about what that means is tough). To do that sort of thing instills a sense of urgency in your life even if you are not afraid of death. Indeed, those two things can be separate. If I have a project that I care about, it is good for me to realize that I should hurry to finish it before it’s too late, even if I don’t have any metaphysical angst about oblivion.
The Design
Let’s now talk about the design of the philosophical exercise! As I said earlier, we are given a wise quote, and we are offered a few ways to interact with it. This was the most exciting part of the workshop for me. I was very excited about it because it goes to show how digital technologies (the newsletter, in this instance) can deliver a very classic experience of philosophy as a way of life, in a very effective manner. A staple of philosophy as a way of life is the handling of wise quotes. I mentioned in passing that the writings of Marcus Aurelius themselves are a repository of philosophical exercises. It is Marcus Aurelius’ personal collection of wise quotes and philosophical points that he sets out to revisit again and again in order to internalize them fully. It is something we call hypomnemata3. As Michel Foucault points out, the word hypomnemata can refer to “account books, public registers, or individual notebooks serving as memory aids.” and more specifically, they can refer to note taking for the purpose of philosophy as a way of life:
“Their use as books of life, as guides for conduct, seems to have become a common thing for a whole cultivated public. One wrote down quotes in them, extracts from books, examples, and actions that one had witnessed or read about, reflections or reasonings that one had heard or that had come to mind. They constituted a material record of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering them up as a kind of accumulated treasure for subsequent rereading and meditation.”4
“These hupomnemata should not be thought of simply as a memory support, which might be consulted from time to time, as occasion arose; they are not meant to be substituted for a recollection that may fail. They constitute, rather, a material and a framework for exercises to be carried out frequently: reading, rereading, meditating, conversing with oneself and with others. And this was in order to have them, according to the expression that recurs often, prokheiron, ad manum, in promptu. “Near at hand,” then, not just in the sense that one would be able to recall them to consciousness, but that one should be able to use them, whenever the need was felt, in action.”5
The Death Writings workshop was a very cool opportunity to dive into that tradition, of exercising wisdom with a journal. We were essentially guided in creating our own philosophy as a way of life journal. It wasn’t merely about admiring wise quotes and memorizing them for the sake of repeating them. We were prompted very specifically, to respond to a quote with our own reflections, or to reformulate it in our own words, or to summarize the quote with a keyword, or to think about how the quote applies to our own lives. Or even to remember it at a crucial moment, in order to influence our actions. This was a very successful on-boarding experience into the hypomnemata tradition!
My only real criticism of the workshop design is that we were given to ponder, not the original Marcus Aurelius text, but slight reformulations of it, authored by Kathryn Koromilas. I think this was meant to make the quotes more accessible, but I don’t think that was successful. As soon as I caught onto the fact that this was happening, I systematically compared the original quote and the reformulation, and I did not find that they made the original text significantly easier, and I even found that, in some instances, it obscured the original meaning or made the prose less striking6. It felt like I was reading one’s idiosyncratic reformulation of the text: the kind that you would produce if you practiced the Death Writings workshop itself. I don’t think there was a need to put that “modernization” front and center, though it’s a nice example of the reformulation exercise being performed in front of our very eyes.
My biggest regret for this workshop is that I did not choose a physical notebook to practice the exercises in. I reasoned that it would be easier to use my computer where I do all of my philosophy work. But I really missed the tactile experience of a journal in my hands. It was fundamentally a “journaling” workshop, and I did not realize that until it was too late, in spite of repeated warnings! What was I thinking?! My decision to stick to the computer came from the same part of me that felt really busy with “life” (the inauthentic life, mind you) and that did not manage to slow down enough to benefit from the workshop as much as I could. Because of that, I neglected to do this very interesting exercise where you simply had to copy by hand the quote given to you, in a very mindful manner. I procrastinated trying this task, because it felt so futile, and unnecessary to do it, and yet the rare times that I did it, it was the most grounded and meditative I felt in the entire workshop… I truly missed out on this aspect. Don’t make the same mistake I did.
Conclusion
I would love to create my own version of a hypomnemata newsletter! I find the idea very exciting. Now that is the type of nerdy spiritual thing that I’m here for! Otherwise, if you think that this Stoic workshop is for you, I recommend it. It's fun and potentially transformative.
(08/07/2024)
Pierrick Simon
my email: lemiroirtranquille@outlook.fr
(do not hesitate to reach out)
Bluesky: @pierricksimon.bsky.social
Twitter: @PhiloTranquille
NOTES:
1It is written and designed by Kathryn Koromilas ( https://kathrynkoromilas.com/joyful-death-writing/ ), and this time around, the event was translated and organized by the French stoic group Stoa Gallica ( https://stoagallica.fr/ )
3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypomnema#cite_note-2
4— Foucault, Michel. “Self Writing.” Translated from Corps écrit no 5 (Feb. 1983): 3-23. https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.hypomnemata.en/
5idem
6For full transparency, I was reading the French translation of Koromilas’ text. I did not have access to the English version.
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