2. Epicurus.
These attempts were mainly concerned
with gaining mastery over the
fear of death. It is
important, however, to realize that the first such
at-
tempts made by Democritus, and in
particular by
Epicurus, have been undertaken at a time when the
predominant view of death was that of dismal survival
in a bleak
Underworld. Consequently Epicurus' liber-
ating message consisted primarily in the denial of the
reality of
Hades. Later thinkers, however, had a differ-
ent, and clearly a more difficult, task of trying to
reconcile man
with death meaning total extinction.
According to Epicurus the fear of
death is one of the
two major afflictions of mankind, the other being
the
fear of the gods. Man fears death because he errone-
ously believes that he will experience pain and
suffer
after he has died. But, says Epicurus, death is depriva-
tion of sensation. As to the soul it
too does not survive
death because, as Democritus has taught, like all
things,
it too consists of atoms (albeit particularly fine ones)
which
will disperse at death. Consequently “Death, the
most terrifying
of all ills, is nothing to us, since as long
as we exist, death is not with
us, and when death comes,
then we do not exist” (Fragment XLVII,
in Whitney
J. Oates, The Stoic and Epicurean
Philosophers [1940],
p. 42).
This argument is frequently invoked even today in
spite of the fact that it
can be effective only against
the fear of what comes after
death—what may be done
to the dead body, as well as what is
supposed to happen
to one's “shadow” in Hades. (The
fear of mutilation
and desecration of the corpse and the fear of being
deprived of a proper burial were widespread in an-
tiquity and sometimes appear to have been stronger
than the fear
of death itself.) But what is mostly feared
today is precisely that which
has been so lightly dis-
missed by Epicurus,
namely, that one shall not exist
anymore.
Another obvious shortcoming of the Epicurean
argument is that it might
alleviate the fear of death
“at the thought of
death,” but not in its actual pres-
ence. The inadequacy of the argument in this respect,
as well as
with regard to the fear of annihilation, has
been noted even by some of Epicurus' contemporaries.
In one of
the Platonic apocrypha, the Axiochus, the
dying
ruler rejects it as “superficial twaddle which can
impress only
little boys.” Perhaps this was the reason
for which Lucretius,
while exalting Epicurus as the
great liberator from the “dread
of Acheron,” intro-
duced the
additional argument of a pessimistic evalua-
tion of life: “And quitting life you quit thy living
pain.
... For all the dismal tales, that poets tell, are verified
on
earth and not in Hell” (De rerum
natura, trans. John
Dryden, Book III, 978-79).
