In the “Letter to Menoeceus”, Epicurus claims that our fear of death is not rational. His one of the main arguments for this conclusion is the “Privation of Experience” argument. However, in the letter, there is no detailed explanation of how he leads the conclusion from this argument. In this paper, therefore, I will explain how this argument leads the conclusion, and will evaluate this argument.
First, as a premise, Epicurus asserts all good and bad consists in sense-experience. In his ethics, he is a hedonist, who believes pleasure is the highest good and pain is the worst and found on the instinct that people refuse pain without reason. So, he defines things cause pleasure as good and things cause pain as bad. Therefore, the sense-experience,
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which is an elementary awareness of pleasure and pain, is necessary to judge between good and bad. So, he thinks people’s judgements whether what good is or bad is based on the sense-experience. Next, he defines death is the privation of sense-experience. In his natural philosophy, he is an atomist, who believes that atoms are the fundamental consists of the world. He, therefore, expects the body would be decomposed into atoms when people died. At that time, as the function of sensory, such as a hearing, which consists of a state that atoms get together into a particular form, will not work, the sense-experience is also lost. So, when people die, the sense-experience would be lost. If the sense-experience was lost, we could not judge between good and bad because it is required for judgement and awareness. For example, if you could not see, hear, smell, taste, and feel anything, how can you tell what good or bad is? A state of death is such circumstance: there is nothing to sense. So, when people die, they regard death as neither good nor bad. Though the loss of awareness seems to be a bad thing, it is not true because we will never feel pleasure or pain after the death. This situation is indeed similar in the point that people do not feel anything to a state of sleep. Do you consider the condition during sleep as a bad thing? Therefore, though there is no reason to regard death as a good thing, there is also no reason to regard death as a bad thing because people feel neither pleasure nor pain during being dead. As a conclusion, as long as people do not feel pain, nothing will be a bad thing. It is natural for people to fear bad things.
However, there are no rational reasons to fear not-bad things. For instance, it is reasonable to fear a knife because a knife can cause your pain. That is why you always pay attention when you use it. However, it is odd to fear a pillow because a pillow cannot cause your pain in any case. That is why you have never paid attention when you use it. Therefore, when people feel a fear, there is a reason: the object will cause a pain. So, it is not rational to fear not-bad things.
Thus, Epicurus regards death as the end of our existence because we cannot feel anything after the death. But, it is not a bad thing as we cannot judge whether the end of our existence is good or bad because of the privation of sense experience. And, it is not rational to fear a not-bad thing. Hence, our fear of death is irrational.
However, at that point, I have a doubtful point: Is death really not a bad thing? Epicurus’s conclusion is based on the hedonism that regards pleasure as justice and emphasizes avoiding pain. Then, if death causes loss of pleasure, is not it a bad thing? For example, if I had my wedding ceremony tomorrow, I would be afraid of my death because the wedding ceremony will be one of the events gives me pleasure. How does Epicurus consider that death gets us lose
pleasure? About pleasure, Epicurus considers it as satisfying a lack. For example, when you are hungry, you are in a state of lack: pain. And, when the lack is satisfied by eating, pleasure will rise. However, as eating too much will also cause pain, too much pleasure must be also avoided. It is caused by expectation that, as the first bite was good, the next one is also good, so people should not focus on the future satisfaction, but on the satisfaction of the current lack. Therefore, he concludes that the best pleasure is being satisfied of the contemporary lack without pain and without too much pleasure. In my wedding example, there is no lack to be satisfied at that point, so, even if I died at that time, I would die in a state of pleasure. Moreover, even if I regarded the death as a lack of opportunity to be satisfied, I could not get pain from the lack because my sense-experience had already lost at that time. So, it is irrational for subjectivity to fear death, even if people died before a glad event because of the prevention of experience. However, how about for objectivity to fear death? For example, it is natural for a mother to fear her child’s death. How does Epicurus consider such fear of other’s death? The difference between own death and other’s death is whether a person can experience or not. Therefore, people fear death by seeing other’s death. However, to be exact, what people are seeing is not other’s death, but other’s causes of death, such as illness and injury, and the result of those causes, the loss of a person. Epicurus considers pain and sorrow as bad, so those causes and the result are bad. However, people cannot say death itself is bad because they do not experience it, though they experience its by-product. Therefore, it is also irrational for objectivity to fear death. Thus, death is not a bad thing in terms of subjectivity and objectivity completely. And, it is not rational to fear not-bad things. Therefore, our fear of death is irrational, and Epicurus’s argument is successful.
Epicurus was a philosopher who was born in 341 BC and lasted until 270 BC. He examined the situation of death and came to the conclusion that once one is dead, no harm can be done, due to the fact that they no longer exist. Stephen E. Rosenbaum is a philosophy professor. Rosenbaum wrote the essay “How to Be Dead and Not care”, in which he explains Epicurus’ views and then defends Epicurus’ beliefs about death. The reason why he defends Epicurus, is because he’s being logical. Rosenbaum also believes that we spend too much time thinking about death, which is something we will never have to experience. However, Thomas Nagel who’s a philosophy and law professor, disagrees with both Epicurus and Rosenbaum. Nagel believes that one doesn’t have to experience
I only see him being right if you look at death as something that is a positive idea. When death gets looked at as nothing but not looked at as something positive in the same sense, people are going to grieve about it. Epictetus’ argues we should not grieve because death is natural. Well if we look at it that way, then grieving is a natural emotion also. We cannot control what comes to us naturally. The grieving process can end up becoming a long stressful process. Therefore grieving can become a huge problem in someone’s life that can cause him or her to become irritable and intolerable to others. According to Epictetus’ philosophy, the point of life is to be happy. Grieving is going to cause your life to be the opposite. Attempting to ignore death is only going to cause us to think about it more. Constantly thinking of the loss of your loved one is going to cause you to think of them. Most likely, he or she will go on to think of the memories they had with their loved one and then continue to go through the grieving
Intellectuals are philosophers, are writers, are artists. They are all those people who work with their minds by questioning the events that touch them and that are touched by them. To recall a Plato's famous allegory, we can say that intellectuals are those who are able to look beyond the shadows and never take concepts for granted. However, some questions as what their role is and, more specifically, whether they should be engaged in politics are still unanswerable. Over the years answers and behaviors towards the engaged culture have been various and we can assume that the intellectuals who cannot separate the two live their lives actively for they want to be part of the events that surround them and let awareness win over apathy. On the contrary, we can assume that those who let apathy win are the intellectuals that look at politics and culture as two different and specific concepts and live a solitary life far from society. However, this is not an appropriate judgment because it would be difficult to consider to which extent solitude can be regarded as cowardliness and to which extent action can be regarded as consciousness.
“Bernard Williams is a distinguished twentieth-century english moral philosopher” (Jacobsen, p. 104). His perception of death and desire varies greatly from Lucretius who was a Roman follower of the ancient atomism and defended the views of Epicurus who like Lucretius, declared that death is a bad thing for people. On the contrary, Williams asserts that death gives meaning to life and that immorality might not be such a good thing and rather he believes that it is to be undesirable. The reasons as to why Williams thinks that a person’s death is a bad thing is due to the fact that when a person dies they are no longer able to fulfill/satisfy the desires we had when we were alive.
Epicurus was admittedly a Hedonist, and this philosophy has had a huge influence on his work. Especially so on his death argument. Hedonism is, “the doctrine that pleasure is the only thing that is good in itself for a person, pain the only thing that is bad in itself for a person.”
Many people seem to fear death, but philosophers such as Socrates and Epicurus would argue that one has no reason to fear it. Socrates sees death as a blessing to be wished for if death is either nothingness or a relocation of the soul, whereas Epicurus argues that one shouldn't worry themselves about death since, once we are gone, death is annihilation which is neither good nor bad. Epicurus believes that death itself is a total lack of perception, wherein there is no pleasure or pain. I agree with Epicurus because Socrates doesn't give a sound argument for death as a blessing, whereas Epicurus' argument is cogent. I would also argue personally that death is not something to be feared because, like Epicurus, I see no sufficient evidence showing we even exist after death.
Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism, saw death as a total extinction with no afterlife to ensue, he regarded the universe as infinite and eternal and as consisting only of space and atoms; where the soul or mind is constructed of indestructible parts that can never be destroyed. He sought to free humanity from the fear of death and of the gods, which he considered the main cause of unhappiness.
Epicurus' ethics was a form of egoistic hedonism, meaning that the only thing essentially valuable is one's own pleasure. Anything else that has value is valuable merely as a means to securing pleasure for oneself. Epicurus associated this theory to a refined and individual view of the nature of pleasure, which lead him to recommend a virtuous, moderately frugal life as the best means to securing pleasure. His ethical theories find a foundation in the Aristotelian commonplace that the highest good is what is valued for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else. Epicurus also agreed with Aristotle that happiness is the highest good. However, he disagreed with Aristotle by identifying happiness with pleasure. Epicurus gave two reasons for this. The main reason was that pleasure is the only thing that people do having value just for its own sake; that is, Epicurus' ethical hedonism is based upon his psychological hedonism. Everything we do, he claimed, we do for the sake of ultimately gaining pleasure for ourselves. This is supposedly confirmed by observing the obvious behavior of infants, who instinctively pursue pleasure and shun pain. The truth in this is also found in the behavior of adults, but in adults it is more difficult to see that this truth, since they have much more complicated beliefs about what will bring them pleasure. This hedonism was widely denounced in the ancient world as undermining traditional morality. "The trouble with Epicureanism is its assumption that the self is a bundle of natural appetites and passions, and that the end of life is their gratification. Experience shows that such a policy consi...
Intro : Introduce the concept of death, and how the concept of death is shown to be something to be feared
Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, is one of the most influential ancient thinkers. Epictetus believed the purpose of moral philosophy was to help show people the way to lead better lives. He believed that some things in this world are un-controllable and some things are controllable; some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Epictetus believed our opinions, impulses, desires, aversions, or whatever is our own doing is up to us; however, our bodies, our possessions, our reputations, or whatever is not our own doing, is not up to us. He also believed that we should not try and control the world, but accept it and make the best out of every situation. Epictetus’ aim was to live well, to secure happiness and to offer different solutions as to how life was to be lived. I will attempt to summarize some of Epictetus’ disciplines in a way that will give a simple view on how one should live their life; and also try to interpret his views into modern day living so that through their application ones life will become simplified and therefore enhanced.
Socrates was a philosopher who was true to his word and his death was ultimately felt by his closest friends and followers. In Phaedo, Socrates is met with his closest friends during his final hours as they await his death. At this point Socrates is prepared for death and seems to welcome it. Although death may seem like a scary inevitable fate that we all must face at one point; Socrates saw death as a privilege mainly because he believed that the soul was immortal. As a result, Socrates provides arguments as to why he believed the soul was immortal and even though all his arguments lacked unconvincing evidence, he does bring up good points. In this paper I will talk about Socrates’ most and least convincing arguments on immortality, and explain what Socrates’ problem was with Anaxagoras.
Death is nothing to us, because good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness. Therefore, a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, and not by adding to live and unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality.
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This philosophical study will define the good aspects of death that is revealed through the monotony of life over extended periods of time. In my view, death is a good thing because the concept of “self” presumes that I will remain unchanged if I was to live as an immortal. over time, the concept of I would become stagnant, and i would soon wish to kill myself out of boredom. Bernard Williams is an important premise for this belief, since the assumption of immortality usually rests on the assumption of maintaining the “self” over long periods of time. I do not believe that this motive is substantial in the desire to love forever, which would make death a good thing in terms
Socrates states, “death may not in fact prove the greatest of all blessings for mankind; but people fear it as if they knew it for certain to be the greatest of evil”. I agree with Socrates that we don’t know what death is, and it is possible for death to be a good thing. There is not a definite answer to what death feels like or what happens after you die. Even when we ask people about death, we are going to get infinite ideas about death. If we do not know about death then why fear something we do not know. We also cannot decide whether death is actually considered “evil”. There are many circumstances that people may think that it is better for a person to die than to live. In medical practices there is term known as euthanasia, which is intentionally ending a life in order to relive pain or medical assisted suicide. We cannot determine whether it is a bad for a person to die because this may actually end their