Death and mortality
Living in the knowledge that we die.
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Every book on this shelf was written by someone who knew they would die, and most of them say so on the first page. The Iliad is a poem about the day of your death and whether it can be made to mean anything. The Phaedo is a conversation held while the hemlock is being prepared. Hamlet holds a skull. Pascal writes that we are all condemned to death, some of us sentenced each day in front of the others, and asks how anyone can think about anything else.
The tradition splits on what to do about it. The Stoics, in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, say to rehearse it until it loses its power. Lucretius says that where death is, you are not, so it is nothing to you. Augustine and Dante say it is a door. Montaigne, who tried the Stoic rehearsal for years, gives it up in the later essays and decides that nature will teach you how to die when the time comes, and that the point is to learn how to live.
This shelf is unusually approachable: the Apology, the Enchiridion and the Phaedo are all short and are among the first books assigned in most programs. King Lear and the Pensées are where it becomes hard.
