Epicurus's Thoughts on Death

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Humankind’s greatest fear is death. According to Epicurus the soul is a material article. The soul is no less corporeal than any other part of the body, because it too, is part of the physical body itself. If one was to agree with Epicurus, they would stand to reason that when someone’s physical body dies the soul dies as well. Epicurus proposes that there are no grounds for people to fear death. He says that people fear and expect “some everlasting pain, as happens in myths. Or they fear the loss of sensation itself that comes with death, as if it were something that affected them directly. However, if the soul dies with the body, then there is no reason to fear death, because there will be no feelings any longer” (The Essential Epicurus 41). Extrapolating that thought further, if there is no soul left to prolong living, then there is no afterlife. Without something to continue existing, there is no essence of that object anywhere else either.
Epicurus considers anything of existence to be made up of atoms. He introduces his theory about the materiality of the soul as he characterizes it as “a body of fine particles dispersed throughout the entire organism...” (The Essential Epicurus 32). By describing the soul in this manner, he includes the soul in the cluster of the rest of the existing objects in the universe that are made up of atoms and particles. Since Epicurus discourses the soul this way he does not leave it to be speculated that the soul is on different grounds from other concrete objects.
It is redundant to fear death because, according to Epicurus, it has no affect on us. Once something is dead it loses feelings, emotions, and any state of being that it had before. When a person dies, both the body and soul die s...

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Epicurus also puts forward that humans are capable of living a higher quality life, to an immense extent, if the fear of death is diminished. By halting of the yearn for immortality, people can devote their attention to the life that they do have power over, and make that the best life possible for themselves.
Due to the circumstance that the soul does not exist without the presence of the body to reside in, the soul will die along with the body. Since Epicurus says that this is true, he also is able to conclude that there is also no afterlife. By abiding by Epicurus’ optimistic out-look on the present life, people can have a sense of liberation. They can begin to devote themselves to developing the best life possible, discharging any fears of an afterlife, and as an end result, reaching the ultimate goal of happiness, which Epicurus describes as ataraxia.

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