In the section “Death” in De Rerum Natura, Lucretius addresses to our mortal fear that death brings the loss of everything we are, and that we must one day forfeit ourselves to the universe. Unfortunately, he does this by urging you to come to the understanding that losing every aspect of what a person is, both physically and in the world of forms, is inevitable. Death eradicates both mind and body; the two are intrinsically linked in life and death. Furthermore, it should be by this very fear of the inevitability of personal oblivion that we are soothed. Our consolation is this, that losing yourself should be welcomed as it is in a loss of self that we become unable to be inferior and woeful. Lucretius is using epicurean thought to justify …show more content…
Man 's thoughts of death and eventual oblivion is mainly concerned with “whose subject he would be in life or death,/ Which doom, by land or sea, would strike him down” (Lucretius, “Death,” 150). This idea of death in the mind of a stoic is a predetermined one. It something that cannot be changed. You will achieve your end as it is innately yours and cannot be swayed. While, in keeping with epicurean thought, Lucretius is urging us to realize that it does not matter which evils you face in life and by which doom you meet your end, as long as it was in pursuit of your highest good, happiness. Without life you can never have an potential that existence brings. Life entails hardship for man and “he must be there,/ Himself, to feel its evil, but since death/ Removes this chance, and by injunction stops/ All rioting of woes against our state” (Lucretius, “Death,” 151). This promise of serenity in death is the epicurean promise, and it reveals that death will be the point at which you come nearest to your ultimate and highest happiness, all of which would be utterly impossible without first living and experiencing the due evils of
Epicurus was a philosopher who was born in 341 BC and lasted until 270 BC. He examined the situation of death and came to the conclusion that once one is dead, no harm can be done, due to the fact that they no longer exist. Stephen E. Rosenbaum is a philosophy professor. Rosenbaum wrote the essay “How to Be Dead and Not care”, in which he explains Epicurus’ views and then defends Epicurus’ beliefs about death. The reason why he defends Epicurus, is because he’s being logical. Rosenbaum also believes that we spend too much time thinking about death, which is something we will never have to experience. However, Thomas Nagel who’s a philosophy and law professor, disagrees with both Epicurus and Rosenbaum. Nagel believes that one doesn’t have to experience
Epicurus’s Death argument is very simple, and thus can be hard to refute. The basic premise is that is that no one feels any pain while they are dead, thus being dead is not a painful experience, so being dead is not bad for the one who is dead. My goal for this paper is to prove how those premises fails. In section 1 I will explain in greater detail Epicurus’s argument, in section 2 I will attack those arguments citing various theoretical examples, and in section 3 I will defend my attacks against potential rebuttals.
...Epicureans and Stoics] offered a conception of the world and human nature which drew its support from empirical observations, reason and a recognition that all men have common needs” (6). Though both views opposed each other in various ways, they both provided man with a way to live and to care for oneself.
In his work, “The Enchiridion,” Epictetus outlines multiple examples of how we should react or behave in certain situations, one of these being death. In section 3, he states that “If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.” His logic follows a clear path - if you only kiss things that are human, that means you only kiss things that will inevitably die because that is a necessary piece of being human. Therefore, when the people you kiss, or love, die, it should not disturb or upset you because it was a given from the moment you met them that they would eventually pass away. While his description may seem callous and difficult to actually put
Being that death is a universally explored topic, William Shakespeare, a master of English literature, opted to thoroughly investigate this complex notion in his play Hamlet. Shakespeare cleverly and sometimes subtly brings the reader/viewer through a physical and spiritual journey of death via the several controversial characters of Hamlet. The chief element of this expedition is undoubtedly the funerals. Every funeral depicts, and marks, the conclusion of different perceptions of death. Shakespeare uses the funerals of the several controversial characters to gradually transform the simple, spiritual, naïve, and somewhat light view of death into a much more factual, physical, serious, and down to earth outlook.
One of the main ideas which form part of the answer as to what it means to follow nature for the Stoics is the following of an intended trajectory. As the oak tree strives to achieve its natural form of the best oak tree that it can become, it is upon its natural trajectory of reaching its potential. So too, borrowing from Aristotle, humans have the potential of becoming excellent in their own right through...
On the surface, one might not find much overtly attractive about Camus’s cold philosophy expressed by Meursault in the cell he spiritually shares with all people awaiting inevitable deaths as the universe watches on with indifference, but there is a freedom that comes with letting go of hope that tries to cover up fear. If society tries to prosecute each person with the moral guilt of those that have been buried, it is liberating to reject those presumptions of guilt. There is a happiness that can be found in that freedom and an appealing strength in being able to face the howls of execration from the spectators of every individual’s march toward death in a benign, indifferent universe.
To begin with on a long enough timeline, everything comes to an end. The happiness you felt yesterday all of a sudden ended, the pain you might feel tomorrow will sooner or later end. Every time it rains, it stops raining and every time you get injured, you heal. You are reminded of this everyday. Although this is true, the first thing to remember is that your life will eventually end. Nothing lasts forever, and everything is temporary. That’s one of the many things about life The Enchiridion by Epictetus is trying to explain to its readers. The reading says not to get used to things and people, because they all come and go and we will have to let them go (1). And yet we live our lives like the finest things that happen to us will never end
More specifically, Stoicism is a moral guide for humans. Though nature is absolute and perfect through God, the human thought is the one and only feature of life that is controlled and changed by people. Humans have the ability to reason and to know that everything in life is determined. For every event that they encounter, humans are able to acknowledge the fact that it is a part of their life plan. Therefore, a person can control whether he/she accepts that the action is unchangeable. Many humans think that they have a choice for all that they do and all that happens to them. But in Stoic reality, natures plan has one path with no possible differences. Thus, good is not defined by what a person does; but, by a per...
The Ancient Greeks sought to define how humans should view their lives and how to create an existence dedicated to the basis of the “ideal” nature. This existence would be lived so as to create an “honorable” death upon their life’s end. Within their plays, both dramas and comedies, they sought to show the most extreme characteristics of human nature, those of the wise and worthy of Greek kleos along with the weak and greedy of mind, and how they were each entitled to a death but of varying significance. The Odyssey, their greatest surviving drama, stands as the epitome of defining both the flawed and ideal human and how each individual should approach death and its rewards and cautions through their journeys. Death is shown to be the consequence
“Bernard Williams is a distinguished twentieth-century english moral philosopher” (Jacobsen, p. 104). His perception of death and desire varies greatly from Lucretius who was a Roman follower of the ancient atomism and defended the views of Epicurus who like Lucretius, declared that death is a bad thing for people. On the contrary, Williams asserts that death gives meaning to life and that immorality might not be such a good thing and rather he believes that it is to be undesirable. The reasons as to why Williams thinks that a person’s death is a bad thing is due to the fact that when a person dies they are no longer able to fulfill/satisfy the desires we had when we were alive.
‘Death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist’ (Epicurus)
Epicurus believed that death was not a misfortune. He Believed that once an individual passes away, he or she looses their wordily sensation. He drew that sensation is a necessary condition of value to a person, so without it, the person will not sense, therefore be incapable of feeling. Contemporary philosophers however object this theory. Arguing that death is bad precisely because it deprives a person of good experiences which one could not possibly experience when deceased. In paragraph one of this essay, it expands on the epicurean argument for death not being a calamity for the one passing away. The second paragraph will look at the with this view and lastly paragraph three will consider the objective argument of Thomas Nagel and Fred Feldman.
What goes through the minds of those who know they will perish is a phenomenon to the minds of those who have not experienced the dance with death. For some, the moment that they know they will die is mere seconds before their own tragic ending, and others know long before it will happen. It is in these stretches of time that will test our intellect of our mind, body, and world when the time comes to know if we have truly lived. One definition of “living” is stated, “full of life of vigor”, which John Keats exhibited to the extreme. (Merriam-Webster) John Keats, world-renowned poet, knew his end was coming and he aspired to transcribe his thoughts into words on a page; it is with these words in which we, those who lack the experience of knowing
Marcus Aurelius was a famous philosopher in 121 through 180 C.E. He lived a hard life and even though he was surrounded by crowds he was considered a recluse. He was known for his kindness and mercy. The last years of his life were spent on a military campaign. It is said that these years were the hardest and loneliest. However, instead of becoming bitter and angry Aurelius wrote The Meditations. This was a diary or journal of his personal thoughts. He believed that by writing this it was his duty to his soul. The Meditations, is a popular piece of stoic literature. In this paper I will be describing how Aurelius used stoicism in book two of The Meditations and what I liked and did not like about what he said.