Abstract
“Death, which is the most horrifying of evils, is nothing to us; whenever we, on the one hand, exist, death is not present. On the other hand, whenever death is present, we, then, do not exist” (Ep. Men. 125). According to Epicurus, in section one hundred twenty-five of his “Letter to Menoeceus”, if death is the deprivation of all sense-perception and the annihilation of the subject, it cannot be bad, for there must be an existing person to perceive that harm. The Epicureans, as James Warren suggests, therefore, advocated a sharp distinction between life and death. This paper argues that the clear threshold between existence and nonexistence that the Epicureans were so keen to establish is not as unambiguous as they maintained, since the point at which a person can be said to have died is indeterminate. While there is a distinct difference between life and death, I contend that the boundary the Epicureans upheld is fuzzy; the process of dying—the move from life to death—could be an uncertain and potentially painful process that ought to be feared. I aim to demonstrate, moreover, that the Stoic therapy for the fear of dying, primarily that of Epictetus and Seneca, mitigates our fears of this uncertain, nebulous stage and serves as a more effective palliative than the Epicurean by encouraging us to embrace uncertainty instead of resisting it. There is, according to the Stoics, a kind of certainty in uncertainty, namely that we know that we cannot know; acknowledging the insuperable epistemic gap with which we must all contend acts as a kind of consolation, for it, to the Stoics, may compel us to adopt attitudes to overcome the fear of future uncertainty, namely the fear of dying and possible pain. I seek to show (a) how the Epicurean therapy for the fear of dying is flawed, primarily by exposing a kind of logical vagueness that can be profitably analyzed as a sorites paradox; (b) how the Epicureans could have challenged the proposed sorites paradox; (c) why this vagueness ushers in a sort of uncertainty that harms the Epicurean hedonic project; (d) how Epictetus’ and Seneca’s treatment for the fear of dying is more efficacious than the Epicurean; and (e) how Epictetus’ and Seneca’s respective treatments could be challenged. I conclude that the Stoic therapy is more effective than the Epicurean, for the former fills the lacuna that the latter leaves open; dying, to the Stoics, ought not to be feared, but it is ultimately up to us whether we choose to adjust our mindset so as not to dread it.