Jān dādan dar rāh-i īdah'hā: Persian 1400

What do Socrates, Hypatia, Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, and Jan Patuka have in common? First, they all faced the most difficult choice one day: stay true to their beliefs and die, or abandon them and live. Second, they all chose to die. Their spectacular deaths have not only become an integral part of their biographies but also their works. "The Book of Living in the Way of Ideas" is a philosophical work in its own way. Socrates may never have written a line, but his death is one of the greatest philosophical bestsellers of all time. Dying for Ideas examines the limited situation in which philosophers find themselves, the only means of persuasion they can use is their own dying bodies and the public spectacle of their deaths. This book tells the story of the philosopher's encounter with death from several angles: the tradition of philosophy as the art of life. The body is a place of self-exaltation; Death is a classical philosophical topic; taming death and self-improvement; Finally, the sacrifice of the philosophers and their live performance of a martyr's death, followed by death and disappearance into myth. Dying for Ideas, while rooted in the history of philosophy, is an exercise in breaking down disciplinary boundaries. This is a book about Socrates and Heidegger, as well as "Fasting unto Death" and Gandhi's self-immolation. It is about Girard and Pasolini and self-improvement and art