At the Deathbed of a Hedonist: Epicurus & Death Acceptance:
How does a hedonistic worldview, aiming to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, reconcile with the acceptance of death?
After 72 years in pursuit of pleasure and surrounded by his loyal followers, the group of atoms that made up the ancient greek philosopher, Epicurus finally dispersed.
I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions.
Epicurus Epistle to Idomeneus
I don’t know about you, but I am definitely going to start adding “and also dysentery” to the end of sentences when the mood strikes me.
Epicurus, the thinker responsible for the school of Epicureanism a form of Hedonism in Greek philosophy, argues that “death is nothing to us”. A doctrine he took so seriously that his followers epitaphs often read “Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo” (I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care).
Such nonchalance about mortality is a widely controversial take even to this day, as many philosophers categorize death as deprivation, and therefore a harm worthy of fear.
In his book, “Facing Death” James Warren pushes further into Epicurus’ arguments against the fear of death. What aspects of death and dying are significant sources of fear? They could include at least four specific fears:
The fear of not existing.
The fear of your own mortality
The fear of dying prematurely with unfinished business.
The fear of the biological process of dying itself.
Instead of addressing death as a social construct, heavy with the emotional baggage of grief, Epicureanism considers death as a biological event and existential status, absent of both pain and pleasure. What causes the pain we experience surrounding death is the fear of death, but not actually being dead. Thus, Epicurean arguments in support of death-acceptance address these fears, as opposed to the concept of death itself.
Because Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, the ultimate goal and sole intrinsic value of life is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Following this line of reasoning, death, viewed as a biological event, is devoid of any positive or negative attributes intrinsically. On the other hand, the apprehension towards death often leads to considerable anguish and unease, hence it's morally good to mitigate such fears.
I read an account on Epicurus’ own death from Diogenes Laertius (not that Diogenes), a biographer of the most well-known ancient Greek Philosophers. He suffered an excruciating death attributed to “the stone”, which sounds a lot more menacing and badass than a urinary blockage.
he went into a brazen bath, properly tempered with warm water, and asked for a cup of pure wine and drank it; and having recommended his friends to remember his doctrines, he expired.
According to Laertius, Epicurus maintained his cheerful demeanor despite his agony–glass of wine in hand, like any good hedonist would. Which is awesome for him, but to be honest a little unrelatable.
I’m fortunate not to know the pain of a kidney stone, but I have suffered an immense amount of pain in other areas. One question that’s a particularly fun one to answer in the wake of a cancer diagnosis, is “what does chemotherapy feel like?” in which case I would normally retort “0/10 would not recommend”.
But more seriously, I recall the days, sometimes weeks, of laying in bed and praying for sleep (the most accessible form of time-travel within my wheelhouse at the time of writing). The only succinct descriptor for chemotherapy that I can manage, is that I consider it the agony of forced awareness. Parts of my body I rarely thought about or felt suddenly weighed on me in intolerable ways. Every bone ached, my stomach churned, throat burned with acid, and my mouth parched and sore with open wounds. Is it even physically possible to feel your liver? Because I swear that I did.
I simply wasn’t myself because the pain and fear was all-consuming and exhausting. At the time, I often was afraid that this would be all my life would amount to; a brief flash in the pan of normalcy, and then a (too) long and painfully strange exit, being held hostage by my own body. These feelings could be well-placed into category four of our fears of death listed above.
Do I wish that I had the clarity, stamina, and dedication to the bit of Epicurus? Maybe a little, but mostly no. More importantly, a martyr complex was not an option I had the luxury of consciously adopting. Every day was about survival and reaching the islands of respite in between the sea of nausea on my little raft of Zofran™.
Before I was diagnosed, I considered my ideal form of death acceptance very similarly to Epicurus, by which I mean to say, a rather casual disregard of existential terror and a rather casual expectation of super-human focus, strength, and durability in the face of great physical and mental challenges. Facing these terrors myself, and coming to terms with my own physical and mental frailty has taught me how to sit with these moments of discomfort, not dismiss them. We can minimize pain, not by eradicating or repressing it, but by giving it the space to flow through us and find outlets in understanding and compassion–positive portions of our lives that are made richer by the pain we endure and our emotional capacity to share the burden.
We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.
Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus
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