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What does Epicurus say of death?

Epicurus says that death is nothing to us because while we live we are not experiencing, nor can experience, being dead. When are dead we cannot experience death because there is no us to experience death. His rejection of the bad nature of death is one where we cannot experience death so it cannot be anything to us. He is correct if, and only if, we do not live prior to or beyond our corporeal existence. I am going to reject the idea of life beyond physical death for two reasons; firstly I have no personal faith in such a thing and have remained unconvinced by religious books and religious folks, and secondly it is not useful to this argument because if there is life other than physical death then that death is still nothing to us as it is merely a transition from a dualist state to a soul only state (since, under these conditions, the non-corporeal component of the person cannot die).

Table 1 shows the premises of Epicurus’s argument leading to his conclusion.

Table 1

So we can say that Epicurus’s view on death is one of experience, but what of other considerations that he may be not addressing? Death, or a state of non-being, as a good or bad thing in value terms?

Deprivation as a bad

All beings that are subsequently deprived of what they have had can be said to be worse off than when they had what they had, this is an intuitive perspective on the badness of death. It is probably agreeable that it is a bad thing to die; to be and then to not be is a change in state for the person that presents a polar comparison whereby the former state is more preferable than the latter. In this estimation then death can be said to be a bad thing since there is an end to experience. This does not dent Epicurus’s argument since his concern is not one of potential loss incurred by being dead but rather the badness of being dead as a state of being.  Nor does the extended theory of deprivation, one where the person in potentiality is deprived of living beforehand, suffer via Epicurus for the simple fact that a non-existent entity cannot experience. If we contend that there is a bad value to deprivation of life then we must by consequence mourn every egg unfertilised and every sperm wasted, a ridiculous notion highlighted by the Monty Python song every sperm is sacred (Palin et al), where a set of moral beliefs leads to the creation of lives that are each consequentially driven into greater poverty by further proliferation. This is a simplification of the Catholic Church’s view on a moral imperative to not actively prevent possible life rather than casting their position as one where all possibilities are exercised.

Professor Shelly Kagan imagines a scenario where two persons from his audience are commanded by him to copulate, yet they don’t (Kagan, 2013). He postulates that there was within this proposed sexual union a potential for the creation of a life. He then asks the rest of the audience if they mourn the deprivation status of this potential life, an effort to discredit the notion that all those persons merely existing as potential are harmed if not brought into being. What is true of deprivation is that in any case and for any being there would always be more to do, a further project or desire for the future. Yet a deprivation can seem more wrong if it occurs earlier, like for a child rather than an adult, it can also feel more relevant if it deprives he/she who has lacked experience rather than a person who has a fuller existence, let’s say for argument a teenager that has never known what it is like to fall in love. Our value judgement on the bad nature of deprivation is reflected in the attitudes towards scenarios that can be imagined, the woman that exists and reaches the age of one hundred, having known many joys is not deprived of the same value as the African child that dies a five years old never having known clean water. Rightly our sense of what these two possible individuals have lost is different; we grieve less for those who have had a good innings. This intuition points us more in the direction of seeing the value in life as contingent on its content, if this is so then the value of a life is both in the experiences of the person living it and the persons concerned with them.

For existentialists life happens before personhood, value in life is created and has meaning through living and existence is merely the platform of personhood (Crowell, 2015). Removal of that platform is by consequence the removal of the life and the value, but existence itself is meaningless and absurd in that if value or meaning is recognised then it is so, but if not it is not. We may value existence merely in these terms and by doing so this gives us a greater reason to discard potentiality when considering pre-personhood deprivation since that which has or could have existence only, has not value yet. This approach may indicate that there is not value other than in human lives, since humans make projects of their lives that can be named essence, but I would argue against that view. Existence for an animal may be as value deprived as for a human but their essence, although less sophisticated, may contain the same sort of value internally.

Loss

It stands to reason that deprivation is a loss of something scenario, akin to happiness and accumulation. I use the internet, I would be lost without it, half the world isn’t online, are they concerned about being deprived? Maybe what is important to me as possession is not important to others since they have not possessed. In the same way it seems plausible to imagine that an existent life is deprived of life in a wholly different way than a non-existent, or potential, life may be. Psychologically it is easier to resist the temptation to smoke or drink or indulge in carnal activity if the person making the decision to do so has not the historical experience of opportunity cost. This point examines awareness of experience, alluded to by John Martin Fischer when criticising both Suits and Hetherington concerning their separate examinations of Nagel’s Mortal Questions (Fischer, 2006). Fischer’s point is that bad experienced may not be bad either in mediation or recognition, the victim of a bad happening may not realise that they are a victim, and by extension may not be one at all. Morally it is the observer that recognises the bad, the loss or the fall, and deems it so. Just as in the case Shelly Kagan posited of the two who do not mate, it is the audience that decides if some harm has befallen the potential life.

A matter of timing

So can a being be harmed if it has existed but no longer does? It feels correct to surmise that they cannot. Yet their past wish to be a certain being and to be represented to others as that being can be violated by some means and the acts concerned mediated as harm by those who continue to exist and are ennobled by association, this may be a misunderstanding of the terms wrong and harm. The expression of their preference against harm need not cease at direct relationships, history is replete with tragedies we can identify as wrongs, where instances of bad are recognisable long after the fact. A more plausible theory is where we can identify where and when a moral wrong has occurred, even after death, but not associate that with an idea of harm to the person concerned. For instance where a reputation is sullied undeservedly and the person is no longer around to refute the charges levelled at them; what would have been harm while they were alive does not lose its wrongness or its badness because they are dead. Oliver Cromwell was beheaded two and a half years after he died by order of King Charles II, his tenure as Lord Protector historically revised and remediated, has a wrong occurred? Maybe, but was he harmed?

Nagel’s example of the intellect reduced to that of a contented infant (Belshaw, 2014) identifies this lack of awareness yet contends that harm is apparent because the person has been deprived in potential of living a richer life. This postulate is premised on an assumption that higher intellect leads to better existence, this may not logically follow. In thinking about the animal that will die, little regard is given to the difference between its cognition of death and that of the human. We can successfully contend that animals lack the mental capacity of humans in that they do not think at a higher order, but their needs are met by lesser desires being fulfilled, so are they happy? On an account of happiness such as hedonism, has the now happy person been harmed or helped by having their intellect radically lowered? They may be better off deprived and now incapable of anxiety.

Harm as affect

Harm must have affect, it must be recognisable to the person it is happening to and at the time that it is happening, anything else is merely wrong, morally unacceptable and can be classed as bad, but it is not harm. Freud points out our attitude towards death as disturbed, we cannot imagine, emote and are ashamed to expect it, we repress our own feelings toward it and make of it an unnatural happenstance. We attribute to it the same affect as accident and describe it in terms of an external force where it is the resultant of something else rather than a natural step (Freud, 2010). In Freud’s terms we are in our own minds immortal while we are alive because we cannot envisage our own non-existence and we are so practiced in the pretence and repression of imagining non-existence for others as well, so as not to harm them while they exist, that we face non-existence, even in our deliberations, wrongly.

Conclusion

Epicurus makes a correct statement, practical and useful if we are atheist, yet one that we can still support if not; death is nothing to us, as an experience. If existence has value in intrinsic terms then the deprivation account points out where value can be assigned, but it is inconsistent as to when. It feels correct to use somewhat of a sliding scale when considering deprivation and the value badness of it since our sense of tragedy varies case by case. It seems ridiculous to consider deprivation as affecting imagined beings but plausible to consider previous beings as having been deprived, and it is not apparent that harm unrecognised is bad for the person being wronged but that does not remove its badness morally.

Paul Simon Wilson

Ref:

Epicurus, (2014). ‘The Epicurian view’ In: Belshaw C (ed), The value of life. 1st ed. 2014: Milton Keynes pp.54-55.

Howman,D. Jaquemin,A. Jones,T. Palin,M (1983). Every sperm is sacred lyrics. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.metrolyrics.com/every-sperm-is-sacred-lyrics-monty-python.html

Kagan, S (2013). Why is death bad for you?. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waoEVI9FN5Q

Crowell S (2015). Existentialism. [ONLINE] Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/#ExiPreEss

Fischer JM, (2006). Epicureanism about death and immortality. The journal of ethics. 10 issue 4 (), pp.335-381

Nagel, T, (2014). ‘The Epicurian view’ In: Belshaw C (ed), The value of life. 1st ed. 2014: Milton Keynes pp.56-58.

Freud, S (2010). Our attitude towards death. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bartleby.com/282/2.html