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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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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).