Epicurus: Why He Said Death Is Nothing to Us

Many people fear death. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus argued that the fear is a mistake. His argument is about 2,300 years old, and philosophers still argue about it. This article explains it and where it is challenged.

Who was Epicurus?

A Greek philosopher who lived from 341 to 271 BCE, according to the entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy cited in a University of British Columbia course reading. His Letter to Menoeceus is one of the few fully surviving writings of his, and it was preserved by a later writer, Diogenes Laertius. The goal of his philosophy was peace of mind, which the Greeks called ataraxia. A university reading by philosopher Walter Glannon says the Epicurean method for reaching it was cool, calm reasoning.

What is the argument?

That death cannot harm us because we cannot feel it. In the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus says that everything good or bad comes through sensation, and death is the end of sensation. So death is nothing to us. He adds that while we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we do not exist. One of his short maxims, Principal Doctrine 2, puts it this way: what has dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us. From this he drew a practical conclusion. A person who is convinced there is nothing to fear in death has no reason to fear anything about it while alive.

Why did he think death ends sensation?

Because he believed the soul is made of atoms. Glannon explains that in Epicurus’s physics, death is the separation of the soul’s atoms from the body, which then scatter. With no soul left, there is no one to feel anything. The argument therefore depends on a belief that there is no afterlife. It does not address views in which something survives death.

What did Lucretius add?

The symmetry argument. Lucretius was a Roman poet and Epicurean. In Book III of his poem On the Nature of Things, he asks the reader to look back at the endless time before birth. It was nothing to us, he says. Nature shows us that same mirror for the time after death. If it did not trouble us not to exist before we were born, he reasons, it should not trouble us not to exist afterward.

How is the argument challenged?

In several ways.

• Death can be bad without being felt. Many philosophers, following Thomas Nagel, say death is bad because it takes away good things we would have had. On that view the harm does not need to be felt. See Is Death Bad for the Person Who Dies?
• The argument may not hold even on its own terms. One paper argues that Epicurus’s central argument fails to support its conclusion, even if his own assumptions are granted. The paper also notes that the argument has been hard to counter, yet people still struggle to accept its conclusion.
• Before birth and after death may not be alike. Nagel and Derek Parfit gave different answers. Nagel said a person could not have existed earlier than they did. Parfit pointed to what he called our bias toward the future: we care more about what lies ahead than about what is behind us.

Is it about dying, or about being dead?

About being dead. Philosopher Stephen Rosenbaum argues that Epicurus is most plausibly talking about the state of being dead, not the process of dying. The process may involve pain, fear, and loss, and the argument does not address those. For research on what people actually fear, see Death Anxiety: What Psychology Says About the Fear of Dying.

Where can I learn more?

See What Do Philosophers Say About Death?, Stoicism and Death, and Existentialism and Death.