Death Is Nothing To Us: Part Two
When do you consider a life to be complete? We say "right now."
Last week, I presented two key Epicurean arguments against the fear of death. First, as resolute materialists, we are convinced that there is no life after the dissolution of our bodies: since we will be unable to perceive pleasure or pain when we no longer exist, death cannot be considered either good or bad. Second, while some still consider death to be a bad thing, in that it deprives us of potential pleasurable experiences, Epicurus is unconvinced by all such models: in his view, we seek a state of enhanced happiness, and the mere prolongation or variation of pleasures does not actually achieve this aim.
Today, I will turn to a closing consideration of two frequently proposed alternatives to Epicurean untroubledness in the face of death. Is death always bad, and living an extra day always better? Or is death acceptable at the end of a long, full life, but tragic when it cuts one off “too soon,” with vital experiences and projects uncompleted? Epicureanism finds both of these alternative models of a good and complete life to be deeply problematic. They are destructive to happiness, as well as logically and psychologically unpersuasive.
Is an “additive model” of the good life better?
Zoom out from the narrow phenomenon of death itself and consider instead the big picture of a human life. “Is death bad?” can also be phrased as “is it bad when life ends?” Viewed from this perspective, we might ask whether we consider it good or bad, acceptable or tragic, when life ends under various different circumstances. Is there such a thing as a good, complete life that no longer gains from further temporal extension? In a very helpful paper, Epicurean scholar Benjamin Rider presents two common mental frameworks which people often appeal to in order to evaluate the “completeness” of a life, along with their Epicurean critiques and alternative.1
The first of these pre-philosophic models which you will commonly encounter can be called the Additive Model. In this perspective, a further year or minute of life is always good, since it presents the opportunity for additional positive experiences. In this understanding, death is always bad, whether it comes at age 15 or 115, kicking and screaming or with peaceful acceptance. This is the position of Thomas Nagel, who ends his celebrated article on the cheerful speculation that “a bad end is in store for us all.”
I’m explicitly describing this mindset to make clear two levels of Epicurean objection to such thinking. One level consists of the specific logical difficulties described previously: we don’t think it makes sense to consider a non-existent person capable of being harmed, nor do we think that that a happy person is made happier by an extra increment of life. But there is another difference of approach, in some ways even more fundamental, that characterizes ancient philosophy broadly in contrast to the modern philosophers who might defend the Additive Model: we think that philosophy should look at the world, then help people understand it in a way that promotes their well-being, peace of mind, and happiness. Many modern philosophers—and significant chunks of contemporary culture more broadly—have abandoned that as a core goal.
What, after all, does the message of Nagel boil down to? Something like:
Are you anxious and fearful about death? Good, that’s the way you should feel. Are you tempted by arguments that maybe it isn’t a bad thing after all? Don’t believe them. Peace of mind is an illusion and you should not let yourself be persuaded from your misery.
Such a view claims that it is being hard-headed and realistic, following the truth to whatever uncomfortable place it leads. “We can’t just assume that reality will make us happy,” they might say. I think this claim is itself obfuscatory and illusory, obscuring the fact that the Additive Model is itself a created framework, one that constructs a definition of “the bad” that aligns with certain feelings of its proponents, but which does not serve the broad human preference for happiness.
The Epicureans are not unwilling to admit the concrete realities of the world. The actual constraint on human nature here is that people die; our lives are finite. A mental framework that defines an inevitable part of our existence as bad is therefore flawed and not fit-for-purpose. Epicurean acknowledgment of this is not blithe disregard of the truth—
There is no mistaking that life must end for all mortals. We cannot avoid death; we must go to meet it.
(On the Nature of Things, 3.1078-1079)
—it is a recognition of the conditions of human existence. Following that recognition, we view the task of philosophy to be that of finding the most productive way of living our lives in light of those facts: ancient philosophy has a therapeutic function. Many contemporary academics might disagree, but I think most normal people fundamentally would not want to abandon this. Few parents, for instance, would send their children to an actual therapist who tried to instill in them the idea that death was indeed a terrible and fearful thing that ought to be regarded with daily dread, rather than helping them to adopt a more functional perspective. In terms of its psychological consequences, the Additive Model is clearly terrible therapy.
Seen from this lens, the Additive Model does not merely instill a fear of death. It is actually one manifestation of a more broadly harmful mindset, one in which more is always better. It teaches not only fear of death, but unappeasable dissatisfaction in life:
Nothing is enough for one to whom enough is little. (Vatican Saying 68)
A lack of gratitude is what makes us endlessly greedy for novelty in our daily life. (VS 69)
Lucretius describes the same phenomenon at length. On some level, if you choose to abandon the intelligent pursuit of happiness, there is only so much Epicurus can do for you. He thinks that you will inevitably still grasp at perceived sources of pleasure in your life—petty and dissatisfactory things, like the sense of superiority to the naively happy people who don’t worry about death—while never achieving stable contentment. But if you share Epicurus’ view that a happy life is a good object to pursue, then you should not adopt a therapy of anxiety and dissatisfaction. You wouldn’t foist it on your children and you shouldn’t adopt it for yourself.
How about a model of “time-dependent completeness”?
Many people recognize the inevitable dissatisfaction embedded in the Additive Model as a flaw, and so it is not uncommon to hear allusions to what Rider calls a Time-Dependent Completeness Model as an alternative. In one version of this, people think of life in stages: perhaps we should be more accepting of a 90-year-old dying than of a child or young adult, who did not get to experience all the “natural” stages of life. Or perhaps a more flexible notion of “projects” might be appropriate—maybe a man’s life can be considered more complete if he gets married, raises children, or finishes his great novel, but tragically curtailed if his personal endeavors are left unfinished.
This is somewhat better than the Additive Model, in that it allows for some possibility of contented passing. But Epicurus would say that these thresholds and projects are arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is to say that a given 80-year-old will die more happily than a given 50-year old? Some 80-year-olds are miserable, while some 50-year-olds are well-satisfied with their lives—where and why should we draw a line? Are those who never marry, don’t have children, or fail to complete a literary masterpiece doomed to unsatisfactory lives? If there are no objective standards for such value-bestowing projects, and they are all personally constructed, then why make your happiness contingent on something that may or may not come to pass? Why set requirements for happiness, rather than accepting it now? As Whitman eloquently put it:
Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last, In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best, In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest, Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for another hour but this hour.
(“A Song for Occupations”)
Epicurus alludes to the universality of our true goal, regardless of age, at the beginning of the Letter to Menoeceus:
The young must not delay the practice of philosophy, and the old must not grow weary of the love of wisdom: it is never too early or too late to seek the health of one’s soul. To say that it is not yet time for philosophy, or that the time for philosophy has passed, is like saying that it is not yet time to be happy, or that the time for happiness is over.
More broadly, he is dismissive of many common “projects” and requirements that people set for themselves before they will allow themselves to be happy. Some people have grandiose thresholds (wealth, political power), while others have more modest ones (a family, academic credentials). None of these are intrinsically necessary. People have been happy without them.
A man who has understood the limits of life knows that the things that remove the suffering of want and make his whole life complete are easy to obtain, so there is no need for the things involving competition. (Principal Doctrine 21)
The good is easy to obtain. Other requirements for happiness ultimately consist in kenai doxai—groundless opinions, rather than objective truths. Just as I would be unwilling to teach a child that death is always bad (the Additive Model), I would also be unwilling to endorse a model that said that a good and complete life is impossible if one does not live to the age of 90, marry, raise children, or achieve a notable career. I refuse to tell anyone that they are too young or too old for happiness.
Conclusion
Neither the Additive nor Time-Dependent Completeness models therefore hold up to scrutiny. Instead, Epicurus proposes what Rider calls a model of Time-Independent Completeness. We still have something to strive for—a life of complete happiness—but it is not measured in duration. It is measured in the magnitude of our pleasure, a magnitude which is ultimately limited to the complete absence of pain and is fundamentally unrelated to the number of pleasurable sensations we experience.
To recap: If you are worried about an afterlife, don’t. It doesn’t exist. Your nonexistence after death will be no more painful than your nonexistence before birth. If you feel sorrow because of the pleasures you won’t experience, don’t. Again, you won’t exist. Furthermore, varied pleasure isn’t what you should be seeking. The success of your life is not a cumulative scorecard. Life is something to be lived now.
If you can’t help thoughts of “wouldn’t one more year be good?” from crossing your mind, then consider where this leads—to endless dissatisfaction. If you are setting thresholds for a complete life in your mind—celebrating your hundredth birthday, raising children, achieving a career milestone—don’t. All such lines are artificial creations, groundless opinions. Do you really want to sentence all who fail to achieve them to lives in which happiness is impossible?
There is no life after death.
Happiness is not determined by scorecard.
The additive model condemns everyone to dissatisfaction.
The projects model condemns many to dissatisfaction.
And so the Epicureans conclude: death is nothing to us.
Benjamin A. Rider, “Epicurus on the Fear of Death and the Relative Value of Lives,” Apeiron 47, no. 4 (2014): 461. Available on Academia.edu.
This is the best short article I have found on the subject. Book-length treatments include Epicurus and the Singularity of Death: Defending Radical Epicureanism by David Suits and Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics by James Warren. I haven’t read them yet, because academic books aren’t cheap. If you would like me to review these books, sign up for a paid annual subscription (with no current benefits) and I’ll get shopping.