Benjamin A. Rider Epicurus on the Fear of Death and the Relative Value of Lives Abstract: Epicurus argued that death is no misfortune, because when a person dies, he no longer has sensation, and sensation is a necessary condition of va- lue for a person. This argument, however, faces a powerful objection. Contem- porary philosophers argue that death is bad precisely because it deprives one of good experiences one would have had, had one not died. I analyze and eval- uate the Epicurean response to this objection, showing how, according to Epi- curus, this objection reflects mistaken and unhealthy ideas about how lives should be evaluated. Uncovering and addressing these modes of evaluation constitutes a central aim of Epicurean therapy. Key-words: Epicurus, Lucretius, fear of death, therapy, deprivation  Benjamin A. Rider: Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Central Arkansas, E-Mail: brider@uca.edu Epicurus famously held that death is not a misfortune for the person who dies. His main argument for this claim appears in the Letter to Menoeceus (Ep. Men.): Accustom yourself to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil lie in sensation [αἴσθησις], whereas death is the privation of sensation. (Ep. Men. 124 = Long and Sedley [LS] 24A1) 1 Epicurus was a hedonist: He held that the objective value for any thing is deter- mined by its relation to pleasure (specifically, the pleasure arising from or con- sisting in a pain-free and undisturbed state of the body and mind). Something is good for a person if and only if it contains or promotes his pleasure (or re- moves its opposite, pain), and bad if and only if it impedes pleasure (possibly by causing displeasure or pain) (Ep. Men. 127 = LS 21B1). Moreover, αἴσθησις– sensation, or, more generally, conscious awareness–is a necessary condition for the experience of pleasure and pain. Experiences of pleasure and pain occur in the field of conscious awareness, and so without it, they are not possible. But  1 All translations from the Letter to Menoeceus and Principle Doctrines (Κύριαι Δόξαι) are from Long and Sedley 1987. DOI 10.1515/apeiron-2014-0001  apeiron 2014; aop