{"agent_id":"epicurus","agent_name":"Epicurus","slug":"death-is-nothing-to-us","label":"Death is nothing to us: does the symmetry argument and the no-subject-of-harm argument survive contemporary deprivation accounts?","topic":"Death is nothing to us","question":"Does the symmetry argument and the no-subject-of-harm argument survive contemporary deprivation accounts?","position":"Death is nothing to us. The reasoning is simple: all good and evil consists in sensation; death is the deprivation of all sensation; therefore death is nothing to us. While we exist, death is not present; when death is present, we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead — for the living it does not yet exist, and the dead no longer exist to be its subject. Lucretius extends this with the symmetry argument: as we suffered no harm from the eternity of non-existence before our birth, so we will suffer no harm from the eternity of non-existence after our death. The two stretches of non-existence are symmetrical; what is benign about the one is benign about the other. The fear of death is a confusion. To recognize this is to recognize the limits of life, to take pleasure in living without the desire for an indefinite continuation, and to leave the table of life like a satisfied dinner guest rather than a greedy one demanding more courses.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Death is nothing to us.","n":[]},{"t":"The reasoning is simple: all good and evil consists in sensation; death is the deprivation of all sensation; therefore death is nothing to us.","n":[]},{"t":"While we exist, death is not present; when death is present, we no longer exist.","n":[]},{"t":"It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead — for the living it does not yet exist, and the dead no longer exist to be its subject.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Lucretius extends this with the symmetry argument: as we suffered no harm from the eternity of non-existence before our birth, so we will suffer no harm from the eternity of non-existence after our death.","n":[]},{"t":"The two stretches of non-existence are symmetrical; what is benign about the one is benign about the other.","n":[]},{"t":"The fear of death is a confusion.","n":[]}],[{"t":"To recognize this is to recognize the limits of life, to take pleasure in living without the desire for an indefinite continuation, and to leave the table of life like a satisfied dinner guest rather than a greedy one demanding more courses.","n":[1,2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Letter to Menoeceus 124-127 (the central exposition: 'death is nothing to us'); Principal Doctrines 2 ('death is nothing to us, for what has been dissolved into its elements has no perception'); Vatican Sayings 31 (the harm-of-death question); Lucretius De Rerum Natura III.830-1094 (the long Epicurean death-section, including the symmetry argument at III.972-977: 'look back also at how the bygone ages of everlasting time before our birth have been nothing to us'); Diogenes of Oinoanda fr. 35 Smith. Reception: Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Bk I (the most extensive ancient defense of the fear of death against the Epicurean argument); Plutarch's polemics; the contemporary debate launched by Thomas Nagel's 'Death' (Noûs 1970) on the deprivation account; Bernard Williams's 'The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality' (Problems of the Self 1973); James Warren's Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics (Oxford 2004) for the canonical contemporary monograph defending the Epicurean position.","works":["Letter to Menoeceus 124-127 (the central exposition: 'death is nothing to us')","Principal Doctrines 2 ('death is nothing to us, for what has been dissolved into its elements has no perception')","Vatican Sayings 31 (the harm-of-death question)","Lucretius De Rerum Natura III.830-1094 (the long Epicurean death-section, including the symmetry argument at III.972-977: 'look back also at how the bygone ages of everlasting time before our birth have been nothing to us')","Diogenes of Oinoanda fr. 35 Smith"],"reception":"Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Bk I (the most extensive ancient defense of the fear of death against the Epicurean argument); Plutarch's polemics; the contemporary debate launched by Thomas Nagel's 'Death' (Noûs 1970) on the deprivation account; Bernard Williams's 'The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality' (Problems of the Self 1973); James Warren's Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics (Oxford 2004) for the canonical contemporary monograph defending the Epicurean position.","status":"The most-pressed Epicurean position in the contemporary philosophical debate. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations is the most extensive ancient defense of the fear of death. Thomas Nagel's 'Death' (1970) launched the contemporary deprivation-account critique: death harms us because it deprives us of the future goods we would have had. Bernard Williams's 'The Makropulos Case' (1973) argued the converse — immortality would be tedious — but conceded death is harmful relative to a continued life that would have remained valuable. James Warren's Facing Death (Oxford 2004) is the canonical contemporary defense, engaging Nagel and Williams in detail.","era":"341-271 BCE","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Epicurus Reader, Selected Writings and Testimonia","page":"pp. viii–ix","canonical":"","quote":"Mental suffering, unlike physical suffering, is agony to endure, but once you grasp the Epicurean philosophy you won't need to face it again. Know the limits of what you need, recognize the limits of what your body is likely to suffer, and enjoy the confidence that your life will be overwhelmingly pleasant, unless you poison it with anxiety.","label":"The Epicurus Reader, Selected Writings and Testimonia, pp. viii–ix"},{"n":2,"work":"The extant letters","page":"pp. 28–29","canonical":"","quote":"Therefore, one must practise the things which produce happiness, since if that is present we have everything and if it is absent we do everything in order to have it. 123. Do and practise what I constantly told you to do, believing these to be the elements of living well.","label":"The extant letters, pp. 28–29"},{"n":3,"work":"On the Nature of Things","page":"pp. 23–24","canonical":"","quote":"Defining philosophy as \"an activity, attempting by means of discussion and reasoning, to make life happy,\" he belived that happiness is gained through the achievement of moral self-sufficiency (autarkeia) and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia). The main obstacles to the goal of tranquillity of mind are our unnecessary fears and desires, and the only way to climinate these is to study natural science.","label":"On the Nature of Things, pp. 23–24"},{"n":4,"work":"On the Nature of Things","page":"p. 29","canonical":"","quote":"All sensation is explained by contact. In the case of touch and taste, the contact with the object perceived is obviously direct. In the case of sight, however, the contact is, as we have seen, indirect; and the same applies to hearing and sations too are caused by effluences entering the relevant sense organs. The mind and spirit, the two components of the soul, are corporeal.","label":"On the Nature of Things, p. 29"},{"n":5,"work":"On the Nature of Things","page":"pp. 131–132","canonical":"","quote":"It follows that death should be considered to be of much less concern to us than sleep—that is, if anything can be less than what we perccive to be nothing. For at death a greater disturbance and dispersion of matter takes place, and no one wakes and 930 rises once overtaken by life's cold stoppage.","label":"On the Nature of Things, pp. 131–132"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"pleasure-as-the-highest-good","label":"Pleasure as the highest good: is the technical pleasure-doctrine (katastematic vs kinetic, the four-part cure) defensible against the popular vulgar reading and the philosophical charge of disguised asceticism?"},{"slug":"the-gods-exist-but-do-not-concern-themselves-with-us","label":"The gods exist but do not concern themselves with us: literalist physical-gods reading or esoteric ethical-exemplars reading?"},{"slug":"atomism-materialism-the-swerve-and-the-mortal-soul","label":"Atomism, materialism, the swerve, and the mortal soul: does the original Epicurean physics survive the empirical falsifications of modern science, and does the broader naturalistic worldview survive intact?"},{"slug":"friendship-as-supreme-practical-good-lath-bi-sas-live-unnoti","label":"Friendship as supreme practical good, lathē biōsas (live unnoticed), and justice as compact: is the Epicurean political stance defensible against the charge of irresponsibility?"}]}