1 Should we fear death? Epicurean and modern arguments by Russell Blackford First published, in slightly different form, in The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans, ed. Immortality Institute. Buenos Aires: LibrosEnRed, 2004: 257-69. 1) Introduction Most of us fear death, to a greater or lesser extent, though some philosophers believe that we would do well to accept it and to fear any prospect of immortality. Bernard Williams, in particular, has argued that we would eventually suffer unbearable ennui, and come to welcome death, if we had the ability to live for hundreds of years.[1] Though we might die earlier than we’d like, he suggests, the fact that we all die is actually a good thing. Many others have argued, ever since antiquity, that death is at least not something to be feared. In this essay, I argue that it is rational to be attached to life and live as long as we can, though not to fear death with the intensity, or nagging anxiety, that human beings often do. Furthermore, our reasons for being attached to life are also reasons why we should want to live indefinitely. In the ancient world, the first philosophical attacks were made on the rationality of fearing death, based on the assumption that there is no afterlife and that death extinguishes all sensation, thought and awareness. Separate issues arise, of course, if we have religious grounds to believe that there is an afterlife of eternal bliss or punishment. I will set those aside, and consider the fear of death and our attachment to life purely from a secular philosophical viewpoint. (I will also set aside whether it is rational to fear the process of dying, as opposed to death itself—though there is no doubt that the process is usually painful and nasty.) The locus classicus of the debate is the work of the Hellenistic philosopher Epicurus and his followers, who viewed death in a strikingly modern way, as the end of all sensation or awareness. On that assumption, we cannot rationally fear it as a great unknown, or as a prequel to divine judgment and possible punishment. Is there any other rational justification to fear death, or consider it a bad thing? What is so bad about death? 2) Arguing like an Epicurean In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus argues that “all good and evil lie in sensation”.[2] Since death is the extinction of sensation, it is “nothing to us”, something that is neither good or evil.[3] This can be formulated as what I will call The Basic Epicurean Argument: