Episode 137 - Letter to Menoeceus 04 - On Death (Part Two)
Date: 09/01/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2646-episode-one-hundred-thirty-seven-the-letter-to-menoeceus-04-on-death-part-two/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Callistheni reads the completion of the death section — “for if he says this from conviction, why does he not pass away out of life… we must then bear in mind that the future is neither ours nor yet wholly not ours” — and the group works through three interlocking issues: the practical significance of “just as with food he seeks not the larger share but the most pleasant, so he seeks not the longest period of time but the most pleasant”; the philosophical status of the claim that it would have been better never to have been born; and the question of how to close this discussion on an affirmative note. Joshua opens with Stephen Greenblatt’s introduction to The Swerve, where Greenblatt describes his mother’s lifelong certainty that she was about to die young — a fear that, when she lived to old age, had wasted years in anticipatory grief and poisoned the lives of those around her — and argues that DeWitt was right to emphasize that attitude is a central practical dimension of Epicurean philosophy; the group notes that the same training that teaches to live well teaches to die well, and that the desirability of life is an explicit, unchallengeable premise of the letter. When the discussion turns to Epicurus’s rebuke of those who say it would be better never to have been born, Cassius reads from Sophocles (“never to have been born is best, but if we must see the light, the next best is quickly returning whence we came”) as the likely literary target, and Joshua adds the Ecclesiastes passage (“better than both of them is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun”) as the Judeo-Christian version of the same position; Epicurus’s response — that the man who sincerely holds this view should already be gone, and if he speaks in jest his words are idle — is read not as counseling for a suicidal person but as a philosophical rebuttal of an intellectual position. Montaigne’s “I want death to find me planting my cabbages but careless of death and still more of my unfinished garden,” the nautical image of the ship that is safest in port but that is not what ships are for, and Crantor’s insistence that feelings should not be suppressed are all brought in as complementary images of the engaged life, with Joshua also citing Walden’s “if we are really dying let us hear the rattle in our throats; if we are alive, let us go about our business.” The episode closes, as promised, with Richard Dawkins’s passage from Unweaving the Rainbow: “we are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones… the potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia… in the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I in our ordinariness that are here — we privileged few who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred.”
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 137 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host Cassius, and today we complete our discussion of death in the Letter to Menoikeus. Let’s join Callistheni reading today’s text.
Callistheni: For if he says this from conviction, why does he not pass away out of life? For it is open to him to do so if he had firmly made up his mind to this. But if he speaks in jest, his words are idle among men who cannot receive them. We must then bear in mind that the future is neither ours nor yet wholly not ours, so that we may not altogether expect it as sure to come, nor abandon hope of it as if it will certainly not come.
Cassius: Thank you, Callistheni. We started the death section last week, and today we will finish it and try as promised to end on a high note. Let’s start with the passage we introduced last time: the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another yearn for it as respite, but the wise man neither seeks to escape life nor fears its end. And then: just as with food he does not seek simply the larger share but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time but the most pleasant.
Joshua: I want to start with something that connects directly to that. In Stephen Greenblatt’s introduction to The Swerve, he describes his mother. She was constantly certain she was about to die young. Every time he left for school she reminded him she might not be there when he returned. Every time she went on a trip she said this might be the last time. She lived to a ripe old age, and the great tragedy is not just that she wasted years in anticipatory grief when death did not come, but that she allowed her fear of death to poison life — not just her own but the lives of those around her, including her son who wrote this book. That is what an unhealthy attitude toward death does, and DeWitt was right to emphasize that attitude is a central practical dimension of Epicurean philosophy. Epicurus is not just giving us facts to accept. He is telling us what to think about those facts.
Cassius: And the line about the desirability of life is important here. He says the wise man does not counsel the young to live well and the old to make a good end, not merely because of the desirability of life. The word desirability is used almost as a given — an unchallengeable premise. Life is desirable in Epicurean philosophy. That cannot be argued away by any interpretation of any other line in the letter.
Joshua: The phrase just as with food he seeks not the larger share but the most pleasant has two dimensions. Looking forward from a position of health and vigor, it is advice about not obsessing over how long you have to live, but rather about living well with the time you have. Looking from later in life, when death may be closer, it is reassurance that you can still pursue pleasure now, whatever time is left.
Callistheni: That distinction matters to me as well. This is not just abstract philosophy. It is something for a person who is laying in bed with a terminal illness and knows they have months left just as much as it is for someone young who feels no urgency at all. For the person facing imminent death, the point is not that their remaining time is worthless because it is short, but that it is still time in which pleasure is available and worth pursuing.
Cassius: Now, the passage that directly follows — yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born, but once born to make haste to pass the gates of death. Who is he writing against?
Joshua: Sophocles, almost certainly. He says: never to have been born is best, but if we must see the light, the next best is quickly returning whence we came. Sophocles predates Epicurus by a few hundred years, and that sentiment was probably well known. It is exactly what Epicurus is refuting. And there is a version of the same idea in Ecclesiastes: so I have praised the dead that are already dead more than the living that are yet alive, but better than both of them is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun. That is a direct Judeo-Christian parallel — and since most of our listeners come from an American western background, that Ecclesiastes reference is perhaps even more pointed than the Sophocles.
Cassius: So Epicurus is clearly writing against a recognizable and widespread intellectual position, not just an isolated claim. And his response is simple: if you sincerely believe it would be better never to have been born, why are you still here? It is open to you to exit. If you hold the conviction, act on it. And if you are speaking in jest, your words are idle. That is a philosophical rebuttal, not a counseling conversation.
Martin: Exactly. This is for a philosophical debate, not for someone who is actually depressed or suicidal. If someone puts up the position as a logical claim — it would be better never to have been born — you can use this argument to refute it. It is not appropriate to quote this to someone who is seriously struggling.
Callistheni: I agree with that completely. But even so, I think there is something therapeutically useful in sitting with the question. When someone says they wish they had never been born, it often reflects a feeling of hopelessness rather than a philosophical position. And I think engaging with Epicurus’s reasoning — about why life is desirable, about why pleasure is available even in difficult circumstances — can help. Not this specific retort, but the broader framework.
Joshua: Richard Dawkins makes the positive case better than almost anyone. He says in Unweaving the Rainbow: we are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I in our ordinariness that are here — we privileged few who won the lottery of birth against all odds. How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred.
Cassius: That is a perfect statement of the Epicurean position from a non-Epicurean source, and I want to come back to it at the end of the episode as promised. But let me first address the next passage: we must bear in mind that the future is neither ours nor yet wholly not ours. That is a realistic middle position — you cannot count on tomorrow as absolutely certain, nor despair of it as if it will certainly not come. What does that tell us about how to approach life?
Martin: I think the contrast is with Aristotle, who in the context of a friend helping another describes life as useful rather than desirable. Epicurus says desirable. Aristotle says useful. That difference captures something important. Epicurus is focused on the positive experience of living.
Joshua: Montaigne captures this well. He says: I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death and still more of my unfinished garden. Once you have settled in your mind that you are going to die and cannot do anything about it, you simply get on with the business of living. Death may come at any moment, but you live as if it will not, because the percentages support that. You do not let the fact that an unplanned moment could interrupt everything stop you from doing the things you want to do.
Cassius: And Crantor, whom someone posted on the forum this week, took the position that feelings should not be suppressed. If I am sick, I want to feel bad — I do not want to be sick and forced to pretend I am not. That is another way to approach this: full engagement with experience, not detachment.
Joshua: Henry David Thoreau in Walden has a related line. He says: if we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities. If we are alive, let us go about our business. That draws a hard line. Until you are dead, you have plenty to do. There is no need to endlessly worry about death or the desire to prolong life.
Callistheni: The image of the ship in port is safe but that is not what ships are for also came up on the forum. I looked at it from a practical sailing perspective. For the Mediterranean, rough waters are most likely in fall and winter, so you would choose a season with good weather, make sure no storms were on the horizon, and then sail. The point about safety is that you never sail at zero risk — you choose a reasonable risk and proceed. If you are always playing it safe, are you really living?
Joshua: And Don has been gathering all the nautical references in Epicurus and Lucretius on the forum. There is something inherently dangerous about going out on open water, and maybe what Epicurus is pointing to is that exposing ourselves to some risk helps us understand what it means not to be afraid of death — not in a reckless way, but in the way that choosing to sail rather than staying in port is the point of having a ship.
Cassius: The Epicurean equivalent of that from the positive angle is friendship. Principal Doctrine 27: of all the things that wisdom provides for the complete happiness of one’s entire life, by far the greatest is friendship. Callistheni raised this earlier, and I think it is the right note to build toward the closing on. Cultivating friendships means you have people alongside you as you move through life. The pleasures from friendship are among the most reliably available.
Joshua: And Thoreau’s last words at the moment of his death were: now comes good sailing. He did not believe in an afterlife. What he meant, I think, is that he had lived a good life, was happy with it, and that death — as Lucretius says — when it comes in good time is also an end to pain. Thoreau was dying of tuberculosis. So there was real pain involved, and death was not unwelcome. That is what makes the image beautiful: he had lived fully, and he received the end with equanimity.
Cassius: So let us close as promised with Richard Dawkins. Joshua, would you read it one more time?
Joshua: We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I in our ordinariness that are here — we privileged few who won the lottery of birth against all odds. How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred.
Cassius: That is as good a summary of the Epicurean position on death as anything Epicurus wrote himself, and it is a beautiful way to close this discussion. We will come back next week and move forward from death into pleasure. Thank you all.
Joshua: Goodbye.
Martin: Bye.
Callistheni: Goodbye.