The mind, body and soul are connected therefore the soul must die with the body, therefore the soul must be mortal, therefore one will experience nothing after death, therefore one should not fear death. That is the Super Sparknotes version of Book III of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. It looks so tidy on the page laid out like that, but when broken down and considered with respect to human nature and existence, it becomes far more complex, as many things often do when taken out of the context of academic theory and applied to, for lack of a better term, real life.
Lucretius introduces his argument with an explanation as to why death evokes such fear while at the same time assuring that he will eliminate those fears by disproving them. “For just like children who tremble and fear everything / in the dark night, so we are afraid in the light sometimes / of things that ought to be no more feared than /the things that children tremble at and imagine will happen.” (3.87-89)
He begins with “now I maintain that the mind and soul are held joined together / with each other and make one nature from each other […] the other part of the soul, spread through the entire body, / obeys and is moved by the direction and impulse of the mind” (3.135-3.140). He further explains the mind, body, and soul connection with, “and neither the power of the body nor the soul is seen to be able / to feel sensations separately for itself without the energy of the other, / but sensation is kindled and ignited throughout our flesh / by shared and interdependent movements from both sides. / Moreover the body is never created by itself / nor does it grow on its own nor is it seen to endure after death” (3.333). The line in this passage most revealing ...
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...fterlife, is almost necessary to ensure goodness.
Lucretius’ ideas on the afterlife are as good as any, if his Epicurean ideology is helpful to some that is wonderful, but it is no different than other ideas on the afterlife because they all share the goal of eliminating fear. He writes, “Assuredly there is an unalterable limit to of life for mortals, / and it is impossible for us to avoid death and not pass away” (3.1076-1080). In these words death is inevitable, one must accept it as nothing, think nothing of it and live life because it is all she has. In truth, death is indeed inevitable, but one must live with a curiosity toward it, looking to it for solace and motivation if necessary, and living life as if it is all she has.
Works Cited
Lucretius, translated by Walter Englert. On the Nature of Things. Newburyport:
Focus Publishing, 2003. Print.
Fear is one of the most powerful emotions, therefore by using fear as a rhetorical strategy it makes Edwards’s argument more memorable and more likely to be taken to heart due to the audience’s dreading eternity in a “lake of burning brimstone,” (2) and a “pit of glowing flames of the wrath of god” (2). Fear turns the imagined into something tangible and because the audience has no way of actually discovering heaven or hell until they die, they are more likely to accept his argument and accept god into their lives in order to avoid hell.
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
Is it possible to live without fear of death? If you can, does it change your life and who you are as a whole? Lindqvist believes so. Early in the book he proposes the idea that with fear of death life has a deeper meaning. That only with the fear of death do...
The argument that the Epicureans fabricate in order to refute the negativity of death is alluring but ultimately dysfunctional. The foundation disintegrates in a wave of implausibility, allowing for the possibility that the ultimate consequence of death could potentially be bad for a person. Even hedonism, teeming with pleasure, cannot cast off the iron chains of death. For Epicureans, it may be the only obstruction to the plausibility of ataraxia. Death itself carries no negative impact on hedonistic individuals, but “he fears death not because it will be painful when present but because it is painful in anticipation” (LS 150).
“Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but
Socrate explains the fear of death to be irrational, as it would be ignorant to think that death was the greatest of evils and not consider it to possibly be the greatest blessing to mankind. He believes that death is either lead to and process much like sleep in which the sleeper doesn 't dream, or another in which it is like a trip where all dead souls are traveling from one place to another in which they all meet. Ultimately Socrate believes the truth to be that a good man would have no fear of what is after death as nothing can or will hurt a good man. Socrate 's view that fear of death being irrational is fair, despite arguments can be made on whether their is a heaven or hell, or an afterlife. The true argument doesn 't revolve around
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.
When people ponder death they wonder about the unknown with trepidation. As a young man, William Cullen Bryant wrote the "Thanatopsis." His thoughts progress from the fear of death to the acceptance of the event. People should not fear death because everyone dies and becomes a part of nature.
Throughout the evolution of philosophic thought, there have been many different views on the relationship of mind and body. The great philosopher Plato and the Neoplatonists held the belief that man's body is merely a prison of his soul, but St. Augustine later refutes this with his idea of the disembodied soul. He distinguishes between the concept of the physical form and the spiritual soul, and he argues that humankind can be redeemed because of the God spirit contained in the intellectual soul. This intellectual soul is not an inseparable part of the body, as St. Thomas Aquinas postulates. Instead, this soul is indeed the higher part of man, the state and well-being of man depends upon its stability.
There are multiple views on death and the afterlife and each view is different depending on the religion or belief that someone practices. Some religions believe in a heaven but not a hell, some believe in both and others do not believe in either. The religions that are practiced today were created by our ancient ancestors who had the ability to think beyond themselves. Practicing a religion and having an idea of death and an afterlife back in ancient times laid a foundation on how religion is seen and practiced today. Mesopotamians, Egyptians and Hindu’s created the concept of death and life after death through what they believed and practiced in ancient times.
He begins by looking at the very common views of death that are held by most people in the world, and tells us that he will talk of death as the "unequivocal and permanent end to our existence" and look directly at the nature of death itself (1). The first view that
Marcus Aurelius' book Meditations gives a clear and concise view of what death is and how man should cope with it. There are many factors that Marcus must take into account when he is pondering death. There is death on a physical plane of existence, and there is death on a supernatural plane of existence. How man is related to both of these concepts can differ drastically, but both are equally important concepts in man's view of death. The way that man approaches death and how he should view it in life are other factors that also play an important role in Marcus' philosophy of death.
Intro : Introduce the concept of death, and how the concept of death is shown to be something to be feared
We should not focus on pleasures of the body and only fulfill those that are necessary to live. The soul’s only desire is wisdom, which can only be achieved through the intellect and not through the deceitful senses. This can be illustrated by the fact that the true form of things such as justice, beauty and goodness can never be perceived through the senses. However, we are born with some sort of sense of what these things are, therefore there must be an ideal form which the things in the emperical world are somewhat equal to. Since the mind already has a sense of these forms when its born, the soul needs to be immortal. (102-104,
The soul can be defined as a perennial enigma that one may never understand. But many people rose to the challenge of effectively explaining just what the soul is about, along with outlining its desires. Three of these people are Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine. Even though all three had distinctive views, the similarities between their views are strikingly vivid. The soul indeed is an enigma to mankind and the only rational explanation of its being is yet to come and may never arrive.