Plato on life and death

The most famous practice is the exercise of death. Plato alludes to it in the Phaedo, whose theme is precisely the death of Socrates. Here, Socrates declares that a man who has spent his life in philosophy necessarily has the courage to die, since philosophy in nothing other than an exercise of death. It is an exercise of death because death is the separation of the soul and the body, and the philosopher spends his time trying to detach his soul from his body. (67)