Learning about a philosophy entails learning about the philosophers from which their ideas were constructed. One of my professor James Porter, in the context of discussing Lucian critique on the passing of Peregrinus, said “look at how philosophers die it’s very important”. Lucian critique of Peregrinus was that his death was in service of fame not praxis (the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied, or put into practice).

In a sense Peregrinus “turning into fire”, while intended to immortalise himself, because it was a spectacle of vanity, made him the laughing stock of history. His essence was not in service of knowledge or wisdom, but the appearance of knowledge of wisdom. Lucian argues Peregrinus was trying to emulate the great Socrates. Seeing Socrates universal admiration and immortalisation he preformed the same actions in order to gain the same social and historical value. While Socrates drank the Hemlock and did not escape (Apology and Crito) in order to serve virtue, or so he could pester more people in the underworld, Peregrinus jumped into the fire as a performance of his philosophy not as a practice. Socrates was executed the day after his trial, while Peregrinus waited days for people to amass before his “ritualistic” suicide. Lucian is targeting Peregrinus’ theatrical self-immolation as an attention-seeking spectacle rather than a genuine philosophical act. ‘The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images,’ Peregrinus’ death wasn’t about the philosophical meaning of self-sacrifice but about how that sacrifice would be perceived, discussed, and remembered—it was about the image of philosophy rather than philosophy itself.

Lucian communicated his satire through epideictic oratory, praising and blaming people in theatrical displays. His accusation of “hollow philosophy” in Peregrinus could be reflected on to him. Lucian’s philosophy (if he even had one) and livelihood was spectacular, rather than lived/embodied. A counter to that would be understanding Lucian as a cynic, the theatrical harassing/embarrassment could be seen as a concentrated and systematised version of Diogenes.

Diogenes’ provocative public acts—masturbating in the marketplace, urinating on passersby, living in a pithos (large jar), and telling Alexander the Great to ‘stand out of my sunlight’—were fundamentally different from Peregrinus’ self-immolation. Where Peregrinus sought to create spectacle that would elevate his image, Diogenes created spectacle precisely to demolish the value of image itself. His performances weren’t designed to garner admiration but to expose the hollowness of social conventions and the artificial nature of societal values.

Lucian’s “Dead Come to Life” can be seen as an instance of that same subversive approach, using the spectacle of dialogue with the dead to expose the vanity and hypocrisy of the living. By having figures from the underworld critique the pretensions of philosophers and other elites, Lucian employs the same cynical strategy as Diogenes—creating a theatrical scenario not to elevate himself but to demolish the false images cultivated by those in power. His satirical dialogues function as philosophical performances that strip away social conventions through deliberate provocation, much like Diogenes’ public acts. Where Diogenes physically demonstrated the absurdity of social norms, Lucian literarily enacts this subversion by using the dead to speak uncomfortable truths, painting Philosophy as a whore and followers of philosophers as fraudulent hypocrites who make philosophy into a marketplace commodity. Both used spectacle not as self-aggrandizement but as a weapon to expose the emptiness behind societal pretensions.

In Debordian terms, Diogenes and Lucian were practising what might be called ‘detournement’ two millennia before the Situationists formalized the concept—he appropriated the mechanisms of spectacle to subvert the spectacle itself. When he walked through the Athenian marketplace with a lamp in daylight ‘looking for an honest man,’ he wasn’t seeking fame but exposing the dishonesty of those who did.

The irony, of course, is that both Diogenes’ and Lucian’s anti-spectacular philosophies have themselves become spectacle. Diogenes’ provocations are now among philosophy’s most memorable anecdotes, carefully preserved and repeated precisely because of their shocking, spectacular nature. Similarly, Lucian’s satirical dialogues, intended to puncture philosophical pretension, are now studied as literary masterpieces—the very act of canonization transforming his subversive attacks into cultural commodities. This pattern followed among the followers of the dog, cynics (in greek kynikos or dog like), like my favourite story of courtship: when Hipparchia insisted on following Crates and marrying Crates, he stood up, removed all his clothes in front of her, and said something to the effect of: “This is your bridegroom, this is all he possesses. Make your choice accordingly.” He deliberately displayed his hunched back, poverty and general diseased and ulcered form, essentially saying “this is what you’re getting.” They then ended up marrying.

This apparent “paradox” is perfectly explained by Debord who saw resistance to the spectacle as constantly in danger of being recuperated by the spectacular society. Just as Lucian’s mockery of philosophical celebrity has itself made him a celebrated figure, the very attempts to escape the logic of spectacle inevitably become new forms of spectacle—a dialectic that neither Diogenes nor Lucian could fully escape.

Yet this spectacle of philosophical lives and deaths—whether performed by the philosophers themselves or reconstructed by later commentators—raises a more fundamental question: Does how a philosopher lives or dies actually matter to the validity of their ideas? While Lucian’s critique of Peregrinus has merit in exposing hypocrisy, his general satirization of philosophical/intellectual action extends beyond mere critique of vanity into more problematic territory:

Firstly, philosophical identity exists in dialectical opposition with intellectual honesty. When one declares “I am a Kantian” or “I am a Christian,” they socially trap themselves in a prison of doctrinal consistency (or the interlocutor’s conception of the ideology). This identification fundamentally restricts intellectual freedom, meaning limits their choice of action. The gravitational pull toward orthodox thinking in ideology, whether created by the self or enforced by others conception of the ideology bind behaviour and interaction. For example, those who treat astrology as unquestionable doctrine allow themselves to be controlled by it—especially in its modern, commercialized form where an app effectively dictates emotions and shapes reality. The ideological cannon being so accessible creates an attack vector for sophists who want to create a reality for their victim. If the moon say you should be angry, their rhetoric can bend to direct that anger. Similar dynamics can emerge with any system of thought, from libertarianism to virtue ethics to nationalism. While ideology shifts over time the semantic power of it persists as an definite force. Hypocrisy as a system of judgment thus enforces this dogmatism, by implying dignity or raising adherence as an venerable and dutiful act. The pursuit of knowledge needs this negative freedom (freedom from constraint).

Secondly, you can make a statement that does not agree with your identity and the statement can still be true. An example of this is the smoking doctor argument (a la Richie Kim). Imagine smoking a cigarette with your doctor, your doctor could say to you “cigarettes contain numerous harmful chemicals, including tar and nicotine, which damage your lungs, heart, and other organs by causing cancer, constricting blood vessels, and impairing your body’s ability to absorb oxygen. You should probably stop smoking”. The fact that your doctor is also smoking does not invalidate his claim, he still right smoking is bad despite his contradictory action.

Appealing to identity or history as a method for invalidating claims is stupid, yet it happens all the time now with cancel culture. Kanye, saying the things he does and doing the things he does, does not mean that his music is bad. Heidegger was a bonafide nazi, does that make phenomenology false. Interweaving the individual with their ideas is a direct barrier to knowledge, judging the validity of a statement is up to reason and that reason should not include the identity of the individual.

Historical narratives can be useful for understanding the motivations of people. Kant was aspergers af thus his systematic, inductive examination of reason to derive moral principles makes particular sense when he preferred solitude but needed to develop explicit logical frameworks to navigate social interactions. Calling Kant a “tismo” tho does not invalidate the categorical imperative, as a rhetorical tool it can admonish his character and dissuade people from taking him seriously, but is not a logical negation.

Rhetoricians, pundits and other such sophists love to do this as it manipulates the emotional levers of the audience. You can appear to completely invalidate an argument by using ad hominem attacks, but that is itself a vain act. Ad hominem arguments are attempts of degrading the sophists opponent, usually out of insecurity because they cannot tackle the ideas themselves (looking at you Emerson).

So looking at the death of philosophers is not really important in the question gaining knowledge. It is attempts by sophists, who are too lazy to do philosophy, to show their superiority and not a critique of their ideas. I do recognise the beauty of a complete narrative, like a Socrates or a Cicero or a Benthem or a Huxley as it appeals to our need for narrative closure. This is a weakness in the human mind, not a weakness of argument. For mythologised figures it does become important, or any school or -ism named after the thinker themselves, thus many ancient philosophers do embody their philosophies. As we move into the modern age that doesn’t seem to happen as much. Below I have included a list of all the thinkers I love and how they died, some are narratively congruent to their ideas, others seemingly random or contradictory. Regardless I had a lot of fun putting this together with my friend Anika Yadav.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS

• Thales (c. 624-546 BCE, aged ~78), reportedly died from heat exhaustion and thirst while watching the stars, falling into a ditch according to some accounts—death fits.
• Anaximander (c. 610-546 BCE, aged ~64), died of natural causes, having established the first systematic cosmology and introduced the concept of the infinite (apeiron).Tracks.
• Pythagoras (c. 570-495 BCE, aged ~75), died either from starvation after refusing to cross a field of beans (which his philosophy forbade) while fleeing enemies, or was killed by political opponents. He was really weird, idk I like the first one better and am going to also never cross a field of beans in honour of him.
• Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BCE, aged ~60), died of dropsy (edema) after attempting to cure himself by covering his body in cow dung and lying in the sun, I think the Fragments are still some of the best philosophical works and think this is congruent with my reading of him. I also think I want to die like this.
• Parmenides (c. 515-450 BCE, aged ~65), died peacefully, having established the metaphysical tradition that would influence philosophy for millennia. Good enough death.
• Empedocles (c. 494-434 BCE, aged ~60), allegedly threw himself into Mount Etna to prove his divinity, though his bronze sandal was reportedly found at the crater’s edge, undermining his claim to godhood.
• Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 BCE, aged ~72), died in exile after being charged with impiety for claiming the sun was a hot stone rather than a god. He was just like the sun, far away and alone.
• Democritus (c. 460-370 BCE, aged ~90), died peacefully after a long life developing atomic theory, reportedly maintaining his cheerful disposition to the end.
• Socrates (470-399 BCE, aged 71), forced to drink hemlock after being convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and impiety. Most famous case of praxis.
• Plato (428/427-348/347 BCE, aged 80), died peacefully in his sleep after attending a wedding feast, like the pussy he was.
• Diogenes (412-323 BCE, aged 89), held his breath or ate a raw squid. This does have importance but Diogenes is a theatrical figure. His entire life was a performance to look at how absurd and heardish people were. So it checks out.
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE, aged 62), died of stomach issue. Although he did flee from Athens after the death of Alexander after being charged with impiety saying “I won’t let Athens sin twice against philosophy”. He died the following year but his fleeing from Athens and not accepting justice does show he served knowledge rather than the polus or the social contract. But being Macedonian he didn’t have the same loyalty as Socrates did, so most of the Crito would not apply to him.
• Zeno of Citium (334-262 BCE, aged 72), founder of Stoicism, reportedly died by holding his breath after breaking his toe (i do this too), declaring it was time to leave since fate had given him a sign (stupid Astrology shit).
• Epicurus (341-270 BCE, aged 71), died from kidney stones after enduring tremendous pain. Tracks I don’t like him I think his ideas caused a lot of damage, karma works!
• Chrysippus (c. 279-206 BCE, aged ~73), the great Stoic logician, reportedly died from laughter after seeing a donkey eating his figs and offering the donkey wine to wash them down. This is how I want to go.
• Carneades (214-129 BCE, aged 85), the great skeptic, died peacefully, having spent his life questioning everything except perhaps the inevitability of death.
• Lucretius (99-55 BCE, aged 44), died possibly by suicide according to some accounts, though others suggest natural causes—his great poem “On the Nature of Things” advocating for Epicurean materialism and fearlessness of death. Eh death but congruent.
• Cicero (106-43 BCE, aged 63), brutally assassinated on Mark Antony’s orders after opposing him politically. His hands and head were cut off and displayed in the Roman Forum. His death symbolised the violent end of the Roman Republic he had tried to defend, with his severed hands that wrote against tyranny and his tongue that spoke only lies ripped from his mouth. Read Parenti’s peoples history of Rome, Cicero is a op.
• Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE, aged 68), forced to commit suicide by Nero, slitting his wrists and taking poison, did it with dignity. Good stoic.
• Epictetus (c. 50-135 CE, aged ~85), died peacefully, the former slave having taught that freedom comes from within regardless of external circumstances. Nice death.
• Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE, aged 58), died of illness while campaigning, I mean eh.
• Plotinus (204-270 CE, aged 66), died after refusing medical treatment, seeking to return to “the One” through philosophical contemplation rather than bodily intervention. Ya he’s a weird guy who I think I really like, this is a good death.
• Hypatia (c.370-415 CE, aged c.45), brutally murdered by a Christian mob in Alexandria, torn to pieces with pottery shards. Sent to the stars which she had mastered by the angry phenomenal world, I hope she is dancing in Elysium.

INDIAN PHILOSOPHERS

• Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) (c. 563-483 BCE, aged around 80), died after accepting a meal from a blacksmith, possibly containing spoiled food. He reportedly knew the food would cause his death but accepted it anyway. Ensured his teachings would live on after, by waiting to die and letting people come and visit him before passing.
• Mahavira (599-527 BCE, aged 72), the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism, died through sallekhana (voluntary fasting unto death), the ultimate expression of Jain non-violence and detachment.
• Nagarjuna (c. 150-250 CE, aged ~100), founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism, died peacefully after establishing the Middle Way philosophy that influenced Buddhist thought for centuries.
• Ramanuja (1017-1137 CE, aged 120), died at an extraordinary age after establishing Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) and reforming Hindu temple worship. Makes sense.
• Kabir (1440-1518 CE, aged 78), the mystic poet-philosopher, died while traveling, with both Hindus and Muslims claiming his body, only to find flowers where it lay—a perfect end for one who transcended religious boundaries.
• Guru Nanak (1469-1539 CE, aged 70), founder of Sikhism, died peacefully after establishing a religion emphasizing devotion, equality, and service.
• Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534 CE, aged 48), the great Vaishnava saint and philosopher, died mysteriously while in ecstatic devotion, some say by drowning while in a trance.
• Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950, aged 70), died of cancer while maintaining that the Self is deathless, spending his final moments in silent meditation.
• Aurobindo (1872-1950, aged 78), the integral yoga philosopher, died after declaring his mission complete, having synthesized Eastern spirituality with evolutionary philosophy.
• Krishnamurti (1895-1986, aged 90), died of pancreatic cancer after a lifetime of teaching the dissolution of all philosophical and religious systems, including his own. Tracks.

CHINESE PHILOSOPHERS

• Confucius (551-479 BCE, aged 71-72), died naturally of old age, boring and proper.
• Laozi (6th century BCE, legendary figure), according to legend, disappeared after writing the Dao De Jing, riding westward on a water buffalo never to be seen again—the perfect Taoist exit. He really is the old one as he might have never died.
• Mencius (372-289 BCE, aged 83), died peacefully after developing Confucian thought in a more idealistic direction.
• Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE, aged 83), died naturally, having taught that death was merely another transformation in the endless dance of existence.
• Han Feizi (280-233 BCE, aged 47), died by forced suicide after his former classmate Li Si turned against him, a victim of the Legalist philosophy he helped create.
• Mozi (470-391 BCE, aged 79), died of old age promoting universal love and utilitarian ethics and challenging Confucian particularism. Good man, a loving man should die after giving every ounce of love to the world.

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHERS

• Al-Kindi (801-873 CE, aged 72), died peacefully after being the first to introduce Greek philosophy to the Islamic world.
• Al-Farabi (872-950 CE, aged 78), died while traveling, having synthesized Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic theology.
• Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980-1037, aged 56), died of colic after attempting to treat himself with extreme methods, ironically succumbing despite being one of history’s greatest physicians and medical philosophers.
• Al-Ghazali (1058-1111 CE, aged 53), died after experiencing a spiritual crisis that led him to mysticism and a critique of philosophy.
• Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126-1198 CE, aged 72), died in exile after his works were burned by conservative clerics, though his commentaries on Aristotle would later influence Medieval European thought.
• Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 CE, aged 74), died in Cairo after establishing the foundations of sociology and historiography.

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGIANS

• Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE, aged 75), died during the siege of Hippo by the Vandals, he synthesized Christian theology with Platonic philosophy but not with Pagan, should have tried harder buddy.
• John Scotus Eriugena (815-877 CE, aged 62), allegedly stabbed to death by his students with their pens, society just didn’t want his divine illumination. This is really funny tho.
• Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109 CE, aged 76), died peacefully after developing the ontological argument for God’s existence. Would have been much funnier if he fell.
• Peter Abelard (1079-1142 CE, aged 63), died in a monastery after his tragic love affair with Héloïse and subsequent castration, having revolutionized medieval logic and theology. Rough.
• Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE, aged 49), died en route to the Council of Lyon, having synthesized Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine in his Summa Theologica.
• William of Ockham (1287-1347 CE, aged 60), died possibly of the Black Death, famous for Ockham’s Razor, the man really did have the easiest cause of death. I also love evoking it to justify shitty but easy arguments. Thanks William.

RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN

• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527, aged 58), died after receiving the last rites of the Catholic Church, a conventional Christian death that means nothing if not contradicts his philosophy. Though it wasn’t really, he wrote The Prince for the the prince to gain favour. A good man, a good “protean” man. He would have been happy just chilling with seals but was faced with to many Menelauses in this world.
• Thomas More (1478-1535, aged 57), beheaded for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as head of the Church, reportedly saying “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first”. Good man, a Utopian death.
• Erasmus (1466-1536, aged 69), died of dysentery, a very human death!
• Montaigne (1533-1592, aged 59), died of quinsy (severe throat infection), I am sceptical of this though..
• Giordano Bruno (1548-1600, aged 51), burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition for heresy, refusing to recant his cosmological theories and philosophical views, becoming a martyr for intellectual freedom. He was also a dickhead (meaning insulting to those in power) tho and much like Galileo was probably the reason for their punishment not necessarily Heliocentric views.
• Francis Bacon (1561-1626, aged 65), died of pneumonia contracted while experimenting with snow preservation?!? He did literally sacrifice his life in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642, aged 77), died under house arrest, having been condemned by the Inquisition for supporting heliocentrism. He was an annoying piece of shit and his house arrest was more so for using the pope as the character of “the fool” when talking about geocentrism. The church was actually cool with heliocentrism just not with him.
• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630, aged 58), died of fever while travelling, good death.
• René Descartes (1596-1650, aged 53), died of pneumonia in Sweden, possibly hastened by the early morning philosophy lessons he gave to Queen Christina. Classic Frenchman.
• Blaise Pascal (1623-1662, aged 39), died young of stomach cancer.
• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679, aged 91), died from a stroke, pretty unremarkable.
• Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677, aged 44), died of lung disease (likely tuberculosis) exacerbated by inhaling glass dust from his lens-grinding work. Funny that his death was caused by his somatic merging with substance.

ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHERS

• John Locke (1632-1704, aged 72), died peacefully of natural causes, with his death having little symbolic connection. Also fuck this guy.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716, aged 70), died largely alone and unrecognized, with his funeral reportedly attended only by his secretary. This makes me really sad, Leibniz was so important and I really like his work, shout out Gottfried you are remembered as a real one even if no one acknowledged you in your life.
• George Berkeley (1685-1753, aged 67), died peacefully, the idealist bishop finally found the counter to his infallible claim, in death his vitality broke the visage of absolute materialism, maybe? maybe there is something there I should go back to this given I do go to the University named after the slave owner.
• David Hume (1711-1776, aged 65), died of bowel cancer with remarkable equanimity, maintaining his skeptical cheerfulness to the end and refusing deathbed religious conversion, good death.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778, aged 66), died of cerebral hemorrhage after a walk, good death.
• Voltaire (1694-1778, aged 83), died after returning to Paris in triumph after 28 years of exile, with his final months seeing him celebrated by admirers. On his deathbed, when asked to renounce Satan, he reportedly replied, “This is no time to be making new enemies,” pretty legendary. The man would also have like 50 espressos a day, he liked it with chocolate.
• Adam Smith (1723-1790, aged 67), died after a painful illness, having instructed his friends to destroy most of his unpublished manuscripts, I wonder why Mr Smith?
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804, aged 79), died quietly of old age after a life of legendary routine and regularity. Ya fuck this guy, this guy stinks!
• Denis Diderot (1713-1784, aged 70), died of heart failure after completing the Encyclopédie, he both fucked and helped the world but so does everyone. I am going to say sure there is poetry in this.
• Condorcet (1743-1794, aged 50), died in prison during the Terror, possibly by suicide, after writing his optimistic “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.” Ya tracks as well probs?
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797, aged 38), died of septicemia following childbirth, from the author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” this has to be one of the most poetic deaths on this list.

19TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHERS

• G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831, aged 61), died during a cholera epidemic, being seemingly random and having no meaning. Oh ideology!
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832, aged 84), per his instructions, was dissected in public, and his preserved body (with wax head) remains on display at University College London. Although the head on the body is a fake one because the it would get stolen so much. Rumour has it that the Imperial boys would steal it and do nasty things with his rotting mouth. It was replaced with a wax head as the head was discoloured and stretched.
• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873, aged 66), died in Avignon, France, with his stepdaughter by his side. Why was he in France? Also fuck JS Mill, but really why was he in france? Was he not at liberty to die in his homeland?
• Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860, aged 72), died in his apartment after suffering a heart attack, also tracks.
• Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855, aged 42), died of spinal disease, that had to have been a great cause of angst, im going to say that one tracks.
• Karl Marx (1818-1883, aged 64), died of pleurisy sitting in his armchair, a rather ordinary end. Also the fact that he died in his armchair is so poetic, he legit was an armchair historian/philosopher he also wasn’t but funny that that is the full stop to his life, detached.
• Friedrich Engels (1820-1895, aged 74), died of throat cancer, another one fallen to the mendacious demands of nicotine, this one might have some irony.
• Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, aged 44), died of tuberculosis, having lived deliberately at Walden Pond and pioneered civil disobedience, funny.
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, aged 55), died after a decade of mental illness and physical deterioration, with his philosophical warnings about nihilism ironically preceding his own mental collapse. He famously witnessed a coachman beating a horse in the street, overcome with emotion, Nietzsche ran to the horse, threw his arms around its neck to protect it, and then collapsed. I think he figured out he was wrong after that horse in Turin, and it broke his mind. At least wrong after BGE.

20TH CENTURY AND POSTMODERN THINKERS

• Max Weber (1864-1920, aged 56), died of pneumonia, seems his work ethic couldn’t save his lungs.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881, aged 59), died from a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by emphysema, having faced a mock execution earlier in life.
• Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910, aged 82), died at a remote railway station after fleeing his home in his final days, funny death.
• William James (1842-1910, aged 68), died of heart disease, maybe pragmatic?
• Bertrand Russell (1872-1970, aged 97), died of influenza, ya does not track.
• Franz Kafka (1883-1924, aged 40), died from tuberculosis after requesting that his friend Max Brod burn all his unpublished manuscripts—a request Brod famously ignored, thanks Brod!
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951, aged 62), died of cancer, with the manner of his death being unremarkable. There is an essay out there talking about why he didn’t kill himself when I think 5 of his siblings did, he did transform philosiphy into therapy so tracks.
• Martin Heidegger (1889-1976, aged 86), died of heart failure, the contradiction of being a Nazi and one of the best thinkers the world will ever seen probs did him in.
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980, aged 74), died of pulmonary edema, refused the Nobel Prize but couldn’t refuse a cig.
• Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986, aged 78), died of pneumonia.
• Albert Camus (1913-1960, aged 46), died suddenly in a car accident, a random, absurd death.
• Hannah Arendt (1906-1975, aged 69), died of heart attack, also makes sense.
• Theodor Adorno (1903-1969, aged 65), died of a heart attack in the Swiss Alps, shortly after an incident where female students exposed their breasts to him during a lecture, causing him significant distress in his final months. This is just really funny.
• Max Horkheimer (1895-1973, aged 78), died naturally, ya tracks as was a bit of a weasel.
• Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979, aged 81), died of stroke, very incongruent
• Jürgen Habermas (1929-present, aged 95), still living? wtf how is he still living?
• Michel Foucault (1926-1984, aged 57), died of AIDS, very on topic.
• Jacques Derrida (1930-2004, aged 74), died of pancreatic cancer, also weird he did not kill himself.
• Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007, aged 77), died of cancer, also weird he did not kill himself.
• Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995, aged 70), died by suicide, throwing himself from his apartment window while suffering from respiratory illness, completley makes sense.
• Félix Guattari (1930-1992, aged 62), died of heart attack, completley makes sense.
• Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998, aged 73), died of leukemia, pretty perfunctory not a very grand narrative.
• Paul de Man (1919-1983, aged 64), died of cancer, his legacy metastasised one it was discovered he was probs a helped the nazis.
• Roland Barthes (1915-1980, aged 64), died from complications after being struck by a laundry truck, I am going to give this a thumbs up as a good death.
• Guy Debord (1931-1994, aged 62), died by suicide, shooting himself in the heart after years of alcoholism and depression, a final gesture of refusal.
• Julia Kristeva (1941-present, aged 83), yet to see
• Hélène Cixous (1937-present, aged 87), yet to see
• Luce Irigaray (1930-present, aged 94), yet to see
• Judith Butler (1956-present, aged 68), yet to see, have not seen them on campus for a while
• Slavoj Žižek (1949-present, aged 75), is he really alive?

ADDITIONAL NOTABLE FIGURES

• James Joyce (1882-1941, aged 58), died after surgery for a perforated ulcer. I want to do an attempt at emulating him as a Eulogoly: Yes he said yes he would Yes to the surgeon’s blade but the body said No and the perforated ulcer, that punctured full stop in the sentence of his intestines, leaked life like ink from a broken pen, and in the Zurich clinic the great artificer of words found himself wordless, his final stream of consciousness flowing not in mollybloomesque spirals but in medical charts and morphine dreams, the wake beginning before the wake, here comes everybody to mourn the maker of modern prose who died as Dublin died in him, away from home.
• Virginia Woolf (1882-1941, aged 59), died by suicide, drowning in the River Ouse after filling her pockets with stones. I guess this one tracks just Yorkshire seems like a very bad place to do it.
• T.S. Eliot (1888-1965, aged 76), died of emphysema, to many cigs good man.
• Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924, aged 53), died after multiple strokes left him severely disabled, with his body subsequently embalmed and displayed in a mausoleum. Kinda make sense he worked too much, very much un marxist should have rested more, taken care of his needs first and that.
• Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937, aged 46), died in prison after years of imprisonment by el Duce, he might be me IRL soon.
• Walter Benjamin (1892-1940, aged 48), died by suicide at the Spanish border while fleeing the Nazis, this one tracks good Praxis.
• Georg Lukács (1885-1971, aged 86), died naturally
• Leo Strauss (1899-1973, aged 74), died of pneumonia, probs did too much in his life and was also wrong about what he did.
• Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997, aged 88), died naturally, have much a death of liberty
• John Rawls (1921-2002, aged 81), died of heart failure, failling into his veil of ignorance.
• Robert Nozick (1938-2002, aged 63), died of stomach cancer.
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961, aged 61), died by suicide with his shotgun. There is so much more to say about this man but legendary (watch this video). Please read into him, what a guy indeed!
• Sylvia Plath (1932-1963, aged 30), died by suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning by putting her head in an over!!! She left bread and milk for her children in another room.
• Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, aged 69), died on the same day as JFK’s assassination, after requesting and receiving LSD on his deathbed, still tripping while he died. Again Legendary, shame that guy stole the limelight of his death day.
• Che Guevara (1928-1967, aged 39), executed by Bolivian forces after being captured, with his final words being “I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.” Another legend.
• John Steinbeck (1902-1968, aged 66), died of heart disease in New York City, far from California.
• Oscar Wilde (1854-1900, aged 46), died in exile in Paris from cerebral meningitis, destitute and disgraced after his imprisonment for homosexuality, his last words were about the wallpaper: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
• H.G. Wells (1866-1946, aged 79), died of an unspecified sickness.
• George Orwell (1903-1950, aged 46), died of tuberculosis shortly after publishing “1984,” marrying Sonia Brownell on his deathbed. Too good for him to not die alone.
• Alan Turing (1912-1954, aged 41), died from cyanide poisoning, widely considered suicide following his chemical castration by the British government as punishment for homosexuality. The machine stopped. HALT. The war hero who had broken Enigma became an enigma himself, his final computation yielding only silence. OUTPUT: Death. The ghost in the machine finally escaped.”
• David Foster Wallace (1962-2008, aged 46), died by suicide after struggling with depression and attempting to wean himself from antidepressant medication. He deserves a Euology in my attempt at his own words: The thing about suicide is that it seems like a solution but it’s really a problem, specifically the problem of pain, which had become for David Wallace not metaphysical or spiritual pain but actual factual physical pain in his head, a pain that antidepressants had held at bay for twenty years until he’d tried to go off them and discovered that the pain was still there, had always been there, waiting like a faithful dog. The noose was tied with the precision of someone who had researched everything, who had read about drop distances and neck-breaking mathematics, because even in death David Foster Wallace was thorough, was careful, was trying to get it right.