The problem with ordinary “fear” and aesthetic fear

Whatever is unknown, ought not to be feared. Death is unknown. Therefore, death ought not to be feared. To reject the fear of death, Socrates adopts an agnostic position in the Apology:

After receiving the verdict of the jury and discovering that Meletus had proposed the death penalty, Socrates is allowed to propose another punishment. But he refuses to do so, and instead proposes certain rewards for himself, dismissing exile or imprisonment as alternatives to the capital punishment. In his refusal to beg the jury for mercy, Socrates further speculates on the nature of death: either it means annihilation of all senses or migration of the soul from one body to another (Ap. 40c). In the former case, death might resemble a dreamless sleep, which comes as a blessing (Ap. 40d–e). In the latter case, Socrates outlines no theory of the transmigration of the souls, as we might have expected judging by the original division, but sketches an ironic, imaginary encounter with dead heroes in Hades (Ap. 41a–c), which he fancies as an entertaining rather than a terrifying place. A more assertive Socrates proposes an account of the immortality of the soul, in the Phaedo. When Cebes notes in this dialogue that people fear that the soul might disappear after death (Phd.70a–b), a point not too dissimilar from one of the alternatives in the Apology, Socrates does not seem to agree with this possibility. Instead, he remembers “an old story” (Phd. 70c5–6) about the eternity of the souls of the dead that must return to animate the living, which forms the so-called “cyclical” argument, Phd. 70c–72e).