This is from Socrates’
The thesis to be supported is a generalized version of his earlier advice to Evenus: that “the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death”
iep.utm.edu/phaedo/#SH3a
Whilst there is some truth to the above, I believe the Title.
“To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die”
is not effective and misleading if taken too seriously.
Philosophy-proper is most effective to deal with the indirect Existential Angst that emerged out of the inherent and subliminal fear triggered to avoid premature death.
If ‘mortality’ is a conscious fear or anxiety and concern for a person, then s/he is suffering from a mental illness, i.e. thanatophobia.
This is why the majority of humans will openly and heroically declared they do not fear death [consciously] while being ignorant the inherent fear of death is brewing unconsciously and subliminally within their brain.
From evolution, all humans are “programmed” not to have a conscious fear of mortality except intermittently which disappear easily.
It is only the odd exceptions that have a persistent conscious fear of mortality and they are suffering from thanatophobia and they would need psychiatric help.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_anx … sychology)
All humans are programmed to avoid and fear death else they will be reckless and die easily, so this fear is suppressed subliminally and is expressed indirectly.
But the problem is the suppression is not total thus there are leakages subliminally and this is manifested as angst and anxieties where the source is not easily traceable.
Existential angst is like a terrible itch where one do not know where to scratch.
But existential angst are more terrible pains and sufferings without a spot to scratch than the worst itch.
Thus the majority of human beings rely on the hit and miss [black box] methods to try to relieve the pains of the existential angst.
Religion and theism are determined to be the best balm to soothe the existential angst. The relief is immediate. Believed and viola! one is saved. Besides theism and religions there are other modes of beliefs [shamanism, magic, etc.] which you mentioned that would relieve the existential pains indirectly.
But as we had discussed, religions and theism has terrible cons [negatives] beside being a balm for the existential angst, but the trade off at present is in favor of the need of religion and theism to relieve the terrible pains of the existential angst.
Thus Philosophy-proper is the most effective approach to deal with the Existential Angst without the associated side effects of religions and theism.