A Wise Death

Glenn Braddock

 Socrates’ message for

Evenus: “wish him well and
bid him farewell, and tell
him, if he is wise, to follow
me as soon as possible”.
 “the aim of those who
practice philosophy in the
proper manner is to practice
for dying and death”. (Plato,
Phaedo)
Death and Wisdom
 Two assumptions about wisdom
 A wise person is not unnecessarily bothered, worried, or harmed
 A wise person leads, or at least attempts to lead, a good and valuable
life
 Some things that make life worth living
 Projects and goals
 Relationships with others
 Commitments, passions
 A wise death?
 What does a wise person think about death?
 How does a wise person organize his or her life and attitudes given
the fact that he or she will die?
 Death and the two assumptions: If it’s possible to eliminate or reduce
the harm of death, can a person do so and still live a worthwhile life?
“Death” in this discussion
 The end of a person’s existence
 My death for me, your death for you
 Not the dying process
Epicurus and the insignificance of
death
 “Get used to believing that death is
nothing to us. For all good and bad
consists in sense-experience, and death
is the privation of sense-experience”.
 “So death, the most frightening of bad
things, is nothing to us; since when we
exist, death is not yet present, and when
death is present, then we do not exist.
Therefore it is relevant neither to the
living nor to the dead, since it does not
affect the former, and the latter do not
exist”. (Letter to Menoeceus)
An objection to Epicurus’ argument
 Experiencing pain or the removal of pleasure are not the only
ways to be harmed
 Can also have desires that go unsatisfied and interests that are
thwarted
 Usually when interests are thwarted, we experience
unpleasant feelings, but the feelings do not make the event
bad
 “For the natural view is that the discovery of betrayal makes
us unhappy because it is bad to be betrayed – not that betrayal
is bad because its discovery makes us unhappy” (Nagel,
“Death”)
 Interest-thwarting account of death’s badness is consistent
with our common intuitions about the comparative badness of
actual deaths
The Epicurean timing challenge
 “when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is
present, then we do not exist”
 So when is the subject harmed by the thwarting of his or her
interests?
 Some possibilities:
 There is no determinate time (Nagel)
 After death: The dead have some kind of reality even
though they don’t exist (Yourgrau)
 During life: when the person acquires the interests that
will be defeated by death (Pitcher, Feinberg)
What all of this suggests about the
harm of death
 There is no universal answer to the question “Does
death harm the person who dies?”
 It depends on whether or not the person’s interests
are thwarted by death
 Our interests are largely in our own control: we can
make our own plans, set our own goals, adjust our
own desires
 So we have some control over whether we will be
harmed by our own deaths
 Should a wise person adjust his or her interests to
eliminate or reduce the harm of death?
Problems with becoming Epicurean
 The goal of the Epicurean life: “the health of the body and the
freedom of the soul from disturbance” (Epicurus, Letter to Men.)
 To secure tranquility, limit yourself to natural desires for necessary
things – relatively easy to satisfy
 “The purest security is that which comes from a quiet life and
withdrawal from the many…” (Diogenes Laertius, Principle
Doctrines)
 “There is no need for things which involve struggle” (Diogenes
Laertius)
 So becoming Epicurean involves avoiding
 Difficult, long-term projects
 Unnecessary entanglements in personal relationships
 Commitments and passions
 If you adjust your life in this way, you protect yourself from the
harm of death but at the cost of living an empty life
Epicurean vs. Stoic attitude adjustment
 Epicurean: Reduce your desires to those
whose satisfaction are well within your
control – most basic needs
 Stoic: Want only what actually happens –
calmly accept fate.
Living with Fate
 Epictetus
 “Do not seek to have events happen as
you want them, but instead to want them
as they do happen, and your life will go
well” (The Handbook)
 Marcus Aurelius:
 “To love only what happens, what was
destined. No greater harmony”
(Meditations)
 “So this is how a thoughtful person
should await death: not with indifference,
not with impatience, not with disdain, but
simply viewing it as one of the things
that happens to us” (Meditations)
Problems with becoming Stoic
 Fatalism and helplessness:
 Epictetus: “The most important aspect of piety towards the gods is
certainly both to have correct beliefs about them, as beings that
arrange the universe well and justly, and to set yourself to obey them
and acquiesce in everything that happens and to follow it willingly, as
something brought to completion by the best judgment” (Handbook)
 Coldness, lack of caring and real commitment?:
 Epictetus: “If you kiss your child or your wife, say that you are
kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be upset”
(Handbook)
 Marcus Aurelius: “Blot out your imagination. Turn your desire to
stone. Quench your appetites. Keep your mind centered on itself”
(Meditations)
Common mistake in Epicureanism and
Stoicism
 Focus on complete invulnerability
 Tendency to lead to self-centeredness,
coldness, lack of commitment, lack of
worthwhile interests
 Steven Luper: “To completely eliminate
death’s sting, we require an analgesic so
powerful that it would numb us to life”
(Invulnerability)
Seneca: On the Shortness of Life
 “It is not that we have a short time to live,
but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long
enough, and a sufficiently generous amount
has been given to us for the highest
achievements if it were all well invested.
But when it is wasted in heedless luxury
and spent on no good activity, we are
forced at last by death’s final constraint to
realize that it has passed away before we
knew it was passing. So it is: we are not
given a short life but we make it short, and
we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it”.
Seneca, “On the Shortness of Life”,
continued
 “But one man is gripped by insatiable greed, another by a laborious
dedication to useless tasks,…another sluggish with idleness”
 “Many pursue no fixed goal, but are tossed about in ever-changing
designs by fickleness which is shifting, inconstant and never
satisfied with itself. Some have no aims at all for their life’s
course, but death takes them unawares as they yawn languidly…”
 “Call to mind when you ever had a fixed purpose; how few days
have passed as you had planned; when you were ever at your own
disposal… what work you have achieved in such a long life…”
 “You are living as if destined to live forever; your own frailty never
occurs to you”
 “No one keeps death in view, no one refrains from hopes that look
far ahead…”
“Stoicism” about death without fatalism
and without goal of invulnerability?
 Stoics emphasize “living in accordance with nature” – often passive
acceptance of fate
 But might interpret this more loosely, as understanding, accepting, and
adjusting to reality
 Seneca’s argument (here) is not that we should prepare ourselves for
death at any moment, but that we should prepare ourselves for death
when it is likely to come – normal life expectancy
 Objection: “A man’s sense of his own experience… does not embody this
idea of a natural limit. His existence defines for him an essentially open-
ended possible future… If there is no limit to the amount of life it would
be good to have, then it may be that a bad end is in store for us all”
(Nagel, “Death”)
 Possible reply: what counts as a harm or misfortune is constrained by the
way the world actually works, not by metaphysical possibility
Some Seneca-inspired advice on facing
death
 “Keep death in view”
 Not morbid fascination with the event of dying
 Not obsessive thinking about, accepting, and
making yourself invulnerable to the fact that
death might come at any moment
 Rather, accept that you are mortal, that you will
change as you age, and that your life is likely to
last a certain number of years
 Don’t waste time on …? (Seneca: idleness,
pleasure-seeking, too much concern about what
others think of you, etc.)
Seneca advice, continued
 Have a plan. Adjust your projects to
 The likely length of your life
 The likely structure of your life -- aging
 Your own abilities
 “Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous
amount has been given to us for the highest
achievements”
Summary
 Epicurean argument for harmlessness of death does not work
because we can be harmed by unsatisfied desires and defeated
interests, not just by unpleasant experiences
 Since we have some control over our interests, we have some
control over whether we will be harmed by our own deaths
 Living a worthwhile life requires taking the risks that go
along with engaging in projects, making commitments,
having relationships. So the wise person will not seek
invulnerability to death
 But the wise person can accept the reality of mortality and
arrange his/her attitudes and goals accordingly, to minimize
the possibility that death will thwart interests
Questions about science, personal
death, and the annihilation of humanity
 Should we attempt to extend the normal
human life span?
 Would the end of the human species be a bad
thing?