Practicing for Death: Integrating Mind & Body, East & West with Krishnan Venkatesh and Claudia Hauer

Continuing the Conversation: a Great Books podcast by St. John’s College

Socrates says that the intellectual practice of philosophy is a practice for dying. But what if the body is the vessel that can best prepare us for the end of life? In this episode, martial artists Krishnan Venkatesh and Claudia Hauer, both tutors in Santa Fe, sit down to discuss the problems of a philosophical separation of mind and body.

Through the writings of two essayists—the 13th-century Japanese author Dogan and the 16th-century French author Montaigne—Venkatesh and Hauer explore how physical presence and pain can take us out of our minds and into a practice that prepares us for the vicissitudes of life and the certainty of death through an integration of mind, body, and soul.