Epicurus is considered to be the first atheistic philosopher. He was born at the end of the Greek classical era and lived at the beginning of the Hellenistic era. During that period, society was turbulent and people generally lived a life of displacement. On the one hand, with the political conquest of philosophy beyond the boundaries of the city-state, philosophy began to place people in a broader space to think; on the other hand, the changes in the city-state’s political life also made philosophy gradually drift away from politics. Socrates would The analytical paradigm in which human character is closely integrated with national politics is gradually disappearing. Epicurus’ philosophical thought was born under this background. He does not care about the development and justice of the country, but only cares about people’s problems: people generally live in disease and fear. Epicurus believes that the fear of death is the most difficult to overcome. How to face death is a problem that must be solved if people want to eliminate pain and gain happiness.
Epicurus’ theory of death is based on Democritus’s atomism. In the eyes of Epicurus, the totality of existence is composed of objects and voids. Void is infinite and absolute nothingness, and atom is the eternal existence and indivisible, the foundation of all things. Atoms are constantly moving in the void, and they are sometimes hooked and separated from each other due to their different shapes. The change in the state of the atoms leads to the change in the state of the object. The movement of the atom is inherently downward, but it will be skewed randomly, which constitutes the endless randomness in the world. In a nutshell, Epicurus believes that all things are composed of atoms, and the essence of all objects is atoms. Atoms are not stable but will change randomly. Such atomic changes will lead to changes in the world’s matter.
Similarly, the soul and the body are also composed of atoms, and this isomorphism also means that the soul is as dead as the body. The body will inevitably go through the process of birth, aging, sickness, and death so does the soul. When the aging body can no longer provide a place for the soul, the two will perish together. This is true not only for humans but also for all things. Except for the eternal nature of the atom itself, nothing can exist forever, and everything will inevitably go to decline. Epicurus first explained the inevitability of death. He emphasized that no one can escape death. In any case, death will happen. It doesn’t just happen to humans, it’s true to everything. Epicurus’ view is very much like what Luke Laixiu said in his poem, “The old things always give way and are replaced by new things… Many generations of people have perished before then. And this demise will continue forever.” This sounds pessimistic, it seems that we will never be able to escape death, it will always entangle us. But on the contrary, Epicurus’s attitude towards death is not pessimistic at all. He proved this through his argument on the relationship between death and atoms.
As mentioned above, when everything is likely to die, Epicurus believes that atoms are immortal. For humans, death does not mean that the atoms in the body are dead, but the soul atoms are lost from the body, but the atoms do not die after being lost, it just leaves the carrier of the “body”. Therefore, the existence of atoms can be regarded as a feature of a person’s life. Since humans can be considered alive only when atoms exist, the abilities that humans possess when they are alive, such as perception, cognition, and learning, are also considered to have a lot to do with atoms. In general, Epicurus believes that the existence of atoms in the body is a basic condition and characteristic of human life.
Interestingly, Epicurus believes that death has nothing to do with us. He stated in “Basic Principles” that “death has nothing to do with us, because after the atoms in the body disappear, there will be no more feelings, and the things that no longer feel have nothing to do with us.” The logical relationship behind this sentence is that when When atoms exist, we can feel, and because of atoms, we must be alive. And when the atom leaves our body, we die according to atomism. But because the atom leaves our body, we actually lose the sense, and we cannot perceive that we are “dead”. Therefore, from this perspective, death has little to do with us. I think the essence of this phenomenon is that in Epicurus’ eyes, the nature of life and the nature of death are contradictory. The nature of life is the existence of atoms, so people have feelings; while the nature of death is the dissipation of atoms, people have no feelings. Therefore, when a person feels, death will never occur; when a person does not feel it, it means that the atom is lost and the person is dead. But people don’t feel it anymore, and naturally, they can’t feel “death”. What does what we can’t feel have anything to do with us?
As Epicurus said later: “The most terrible of all evil-death-is of little importance to us, because when we exist, death has not yet come to us, and when we die, we no longer It exists. Therefore, death does not exist for the living and the dead.” From this, he also proposed that death is meaningless. The “meaningless” of death in Epicurus’s eyes is not the “non-meaning” as the antithesis of “meaning”, but the “meaningless” that is purely neutral and does not contain value judgments. Death means the loss of atoms, but this loss does not mean the loss of a certain “meaning” while maintaining a certain “existence” itself, but the disappearance of the “existence” itself. To put it simply, meaningless here does not mean that something exists but loses its meaning; on the contrary, because the thing does not exist, the meaning caused by it is also lost, so it is “meaningless.”
Therefore, although Epicurus believes that death will happen eventually and is inevitable, he will certainly not lead a pessimistic life. On the contrary, because in his opinion, death has nothing to do with us in essence. Because death has nothing to do with people, we should not waste time immersing in the fear of death. To him, fearing death or praying for eternal life are just stupid futility. At the same time, he also believes that when we recognize the truth of death, we will actually lead a more comfortable life and be able to enjoy everyday life. In fact, he did. According to legend, the school lived in his house and courtyard, completely isolated from the outside world, so he was called the “garden philosopher”. It is said that there is a sign at the entrance of the courtyard that reads: “Stranger, you will live a comfortable life here. Enjoying here is the best thing.”
Although we don’t know how Epicurus died, I guess, even if you ask him if he was afraid when he was about to die, he might say, “Of course not, because death has nothing to do with me. As far as I am alive, I will never feel his presence.”
Work Cited
Epicurus, and Cyril Bailey. Epicurus: the Extant Remains. Georg Olms Verlag, 1989.
“Lucretius.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lucretius.
“Epicurus.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 June 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus.