Stoicism and Death: How the Stoics Prepared for Dying

Stoicism began in ancient Greece and was developed by Roman thinkers such as Seneca, Epictetus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is popular again today. One reason is how calmly it faces the hardest subject of all. This article explains what the Stoics taught about death and how they trained themselves to face it.

What did the Stoics mean by calling death “indifferent”?

That death is neither good nor evil in itself. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that the Stoics held virtue to be the only real good. Everything else, such as health, wealth, or pain, is an “indifferent.” The Stoics sorted indifferents into “preferred” ones, like life and health, and “dispreferred” ones, like death, disease, and pain. It is usually reasonable to avoid the dispreferred ones. But a person’s virtue, the encyclopedia says, depends on how they choose and use them, not on whether they have them.

This does not mean the Stoics did not care about life. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy says the Stoic view gives a normal scale of personal and social values its place, while denying that these things have worth in themselves. In other words, you can choose life and health and still say that your goodness does not depend on them.

What did Epictetus say about fear?

That fear is the real problem. Stoicism scholar Donald Robertson reports that Epictetus taught that the source of human evils, and of cowardice, is not death but the fear of death.

What is the “memento mori” practice?

A habit of remembering that you will die. Robertson notes that Epictetus mentions Roman generals in victory parades, who were followed by slaves whispering “remember that you must die,” to keep them humble. The Stoics turned this into a mental exercise. Robertson calls the meditation on death the high point of the Stoic practice of imagining adversity in advance. The aim was not gloom. It was to make death unsurprising, because it is natural and certain.

What did Marcus Aurelius think?

That a good life includes being ready to die. Robertson says Marcus Aurelius described true philosophy as, above all, waiting for death with good grace. He saw death as a natural and inevitable breaking up of the body into its elements, and so not something to fear as a disaster.

Is it enough to believe that death is indifferent?

Not by itself. Robertson points out that the idea alone is not enough to bring about a personal change. The Stoics thought a person had to train, with exercises, to make the idea part of how they actually feel. That is why the practice matters as much as the theory.

How is this different from other views?

Epicurus argued that death is nothing to us because we are not there to feel it. The Stoics reached calm by a different road: they accepted death as part of nature. For the first view, see What Do Philosophers Say About Death?. For how the “remember you will die” idea has lasted, see Memento Mori, and for the modern psychology of the fear, Death Anxiety.