Epicurus' Death Argument Epicurus' view that death is not to be feared has had an enormous impact on Western thought for over two thousand years, regardless of the strength of his other views. He argued that man should rid himself of the irrational fear of death. Epicurus began his argument with his conclusion, "that death is nothing to us." His basic argument is laid out as follows:
1. Death involves neither pleasure nor pain.
2. The only thing that is bad for us is pain.
Thus, death is not bad for us. His basic argument as laid out is a valid one. The conclusion does follow if we accept the premises as true. We must accept the first premise based on Epicurus' metaphysics of atomism and physicalism. If one intends to support or attack Epicurus' argument it must be through the second premise. There are a few arguments that one could use to try and refute the conclusion, but I believe that these are groundless if one takes the time to delineate what Epicurus meant by "death." I will list these and then refute each one individually. First, one might ask why it is that we take precautions against death, such as, wearing seat belts or not walking alone in dark alleyways at night. Second, one might ask why it is then that we have laws against murder. Finally, if I were to tell you that I had given you a poison pill with your morning juice that would cause you to die painlessly in the next four hours you would be understandably upset. These are all easily explained once we understand what Epicurus meant by "death." By "death," Epicurus did not mean the process of dying which may be very painful, and thus, bad for us. He also did not mean the moment of death, of which we may or may not have an experience and which may be good or bad for us, but of which we have no experience until that moment. And, then we are no more. What he meant was, being dead. If we accept the metaphysical implication that we no longer exist and that we no longer have sentience when we are dead, then his argument is sound. Critics of Epicurus also seem to assume that his disregard of death implies an indifference to life. This cannot be assumed, and it is in fact incorrect. Being alive must be generally considered to be a good. If as Epicurus says, that "pleasure is the first good and natural to us," and we agree that we must be alive to experience pleasure, it follows that being alive is a good. Someone could object to this reasoning by offering the example of someone serving a life sentence of solitary confinement or someone with a painful, terminal illness. They might be inclined to say that in this case that being alive is not a good, and furthermore that death would be better. If death were indeed better than it would be a good, and thus would contradict our conclusion. I would counter by saying that although life as a whole may not be good for these people that it is still necessarily a good. There is always the possibility of release from confinement, or of a cure. Also, these people are still able to enjoy the pleasure of reading a good book or in the case of the terminally ill, to enjoy the pleasure of their loved ones. Further, to say that death is a good is but word play. Based upon our previous elucidation of "death," one could say that dying or the moment of death might be a good for these persons because their pain would presumably be shortened. But being dead is still nothing to them; they cannot experience it. We are now prepared to deal with the above objections. The reason that we take precaution against death is that, (1) being alive is generally a good; and that (2) the precautions that we take are to prevent a painful death, or worse, disfigurement and a life of suffering from debilitating injury. The reasons for laws against murder are that, (1) if being alive is generally a good, then one should not be able to end that good for someone else; and that (2) the murder of someone may cause pain and suffering for that person until they are dead, or for their loved ones who must live with the loss of the one murdered. As for being upset about being given a poison pill, one may fear the process of dying, which just because it is painless does not make it a good, or one may fear the moment of death. One may experience the anguish of knowing that they have unfulfilled desires, or one may experience the anticipation of one's death. This anticipation of death is bad for us, and is exactly what Epicurus set out to show is an irrational fear that we can rid ourselves of. Thus, the fact that someone is upset about being given a poison pill is due to valid reasons, or to confusion about "death," or to the irrational fear of death that Epicurus was trying to remove from man. But, in no case is it because of a fear of being dead. Thus, Epicurus' death argument is sound. Man should not fear being dead.