L11 | OUR ULTIMATE FAITH

• OUR ULTIMATE FAITH

  • Many philosophers have believed, and still believe that death is nothing to fear.
• SOCRATES, 390 BCE

  • sentenced to death for, among other things:
  • refusing to acknowledge the official deities of Athens
  • radicalizing youth
  • generally honking off the people in charge. 
• SOCRATES

  • But even when he faced his own imminent death, he remained calm and unafraid. He was a philosopher, after all. And fear was no match for his ability to argue.
  • Socrates didn’t think we could know if there’s an afterlife or not, but he thought there were really only two possibilities.
• DEATH IS EITHER

  • POSSIBILITY 1: Dreamless Sleep
  • Nice, not scary, could use the rest
  • POSSIBILITY 2: Passage to Another Life
  • Get to hang out with cool people from the past who have already died.
• EPICURUS

  • Ancient Stoic philosopher Epicurus didn’t think so.
  • lived about a hundred years after Socrates, and he rejected the belief in an afterlife altogether. Instead., he said we’re just our bodies, and nothing more. He didn’t find death scary

  
• MATERIALIST

  • Someone who believes that you, equals your body
• DEATH

  • Cessation of sensation
  • Neither good nor evil
  • Things are only evil, or bad, if they feel bad
  • meant non-existence. And there was nothing scary about that, because, there won’t be any you to have any feelings about not existing
• EPICURUS

  • death can’t be bad for you at any time. Because once it arrives, you’re gone! The thing that eventually kills you, Yeah, that’s going to be bad for you, before your death. But that’s not death.
• • you and Death are never present at the same time. And if there’s no you when death is present, then there is no time in which death is bad for you.
• FEAR OF MISSING OUT

  • THOMAS NAGEL
  • Contemporary American philosopher
  • Some people dread death because they’ll miss out on things that they want to experience.
  • If you don’t feel some sort of deep sense of loss at what you missed before you were alive, why should you feel loss at what you’ll miss after you die?
• SANCTITY OF LIFE

  • life is just always inherently good
• QUALITY OF LIFE

  • distinguish between lives that are full of good experiences, and those that aren’t.
  • don’t think that there’s something inherently valuable about merely being alive
  • some deaths might actually be positive or valuable – like, if they bring about an end to a terrible, painful existence.
• Zhuangzi

  • Ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher
  • believed that there’s no reason to fear the death of your loved ones
  • death is just one more change – why treat it differently?
  • When it’s time for the people you love to move on, the last thing you should do is hold them closer
• FUNERAL BLUES AUTHOR

  • WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN