Death

The axis: death as an exercise of freedom, an examination of meaning, a pose to
be unmasked — or a question that need not be answered.

Learning to die: death sets free

Montaigne (montaigne) — to philosophize is to learn to die: he who has thought death through is free, and the loss of life ceases to be an evil. Grounding: nauchitsya-umirat, uchis-umirat-chtoby-byt-svobodnym, uchitsya-umirat-uchitsya-zhit.
Epictetus (epictetus) — keep death before your eyes daily: the anticipation of death kills base thoughts and excessive desires. Grounding: predvarenie-smerti, razlichay-podvlastnoe.

Death as an examination of meaning

Tolstoy (tolstoy) — death destroys every finite meaning: only a meaning that death does not destroy will do; otherwise there are four means of escape, the noose among them. Grounding: smert, smysl-kotory-ne-unichtozhaet-smert, chetyre-vykhoda.
Pascal (pascal) — man is a reed between two abysses, condemned and aware of it; diversion is flight from that thought, the wager the answer to it. Grounding: myslyashchiy-trostnik, dva-beskonechnykh, pari.
Schopenhauer (schopenhauer) — existence is vain and finite; a sober look at what it costs is the beginning of worldly wisdom, not an occasion for consolations. Grounding: tshcheta-sushchestvovaniya, zhizn-nado-preodolet.

Death is not a subject: unmasking and silence

La Rochefoucauld (larochefoucauld) — the sages' "contempt of death" is a pose built by necessity: neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily. Grounding: prezrenie-k-smerti.
Confucius (confucius) — while you do not know life, how can you know death? The question is turned back to the duty of the living. Grounding: ming, xiao.

Axis of dispute: Montaigne against La Rochefoucauld — the exercise of dying
against the unmasking of that exercise as a pose; Tolstoy against Epictetus —
death as a question about meaning, not as an object for the training of
judgment.