In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thoureturn unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
- Genesis 3.19
“Why I Hope to Die at 75” by Ezekiel J. Emanuel has been an article much reference to, yet little actually talked about. I first read it after seeing it on my Facebook page, and if I were to believe what was implied there, Mr. Emanuel was a Bolshevik who expected each person to die at seventy-five to save the state money on medical bills. Fortunately, that much is not true. “Why I Hope to Die at 75” isn't a political hack arguing why we all need to die to save the system of our costs; rather, it's an argument for why we need to accept our mortality as part of a virtuous life.
In his essay, Mr. Emanuel doesn't carve out the middle, nor does he really want to. For instance, I don't think the example of his father is good evidence for refusing important medical treatments after 75. A life without teaching or doing rounds at the hospital, can still be plenty worthwhile and plenty active life. In Cato Maior de Senectute (On Old Age), for instance, Cicero provided evidence for an active life being possible in our old age by pointing out that Plato “died writing in his eighty-first year” (V.13).
Most people certainly cannot look forward to the creativity that Plato had in his old age, but the thought that one has to be running and doing rounds at the hospital to be considered properly active is simply mistaken. The Nobel prize in Physics that Mr. Emanuel uses to argue how creative we are isn't a useful standard since achievements in physics aren't dependent as achievements in philosophy, for instance, because a physicist doesn't have to be familiar with as many sources as a philosopher to be remarkable in his field. A physicist can rely on cleverness whereas a philosopher has to become erudite. Cicero makes this point when he argues that: “the most apt weapons of old age are the arts and practices of virtue” (III.9).
Mr. Emanuel, though, is arguing for big game. He's out to slay the entire notion that healthcare can make us immortal, or close to, and it is in that argument that he succeeds. No one is immortal, and we can actually hurt our ability to live a worthwhile life if we hold unto Brother Jackass too greedily. Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento! Memento mori! Let us never forget that death is apart of the natural flow of life:
And so, when the young die I am reminded of a strong flame extinguished by a torrent; but when old men die it is as if a fire had gone out without the use of force and of its own accord, after the fuel had been consumed; and, just as apples when they are green are not easily plucked from their trees, but when ripe and mello fall of themselves, thus with the young, death comes to the youth with violence, while with the old it comes with ripeness. To me, indeed, the thought of this 'ripeness' for death is so agreeable, that the nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land and is about to anchor in port after a long voyage (XIX.71).