Is It Rational to Fear Death?

In this essay I will show why I think it is irrational albeit understandable to fear death to do this I will look at why people fear death and what major contributors to ethical philosophy such as Epicurus have to think about the issue.

Death is one of the great mystery’s yet to be unraveled, it is the unknown that many people really fear, the uncertainty of what comes next if anything. Different cultures face death in a different way some accept it some believe in reincarnation many more believe in an afterlife. But are these people misguided? I think that the unflinching belief in an afterlife is quite a gamble but people are free to believe what they want to believe.

Epicureans are people who follow the teachings of Epicurus who focused on maximizing pleasure by calculating actions and weighing up short and long term consequences to heighten pleasure. The example given by Jostein Gaarder in “Sophie’s World” is rather apt:

“Buy two hundred crowns worth of chocolate bars…About half an hour later when all that delicious chocolate is eaten, you will understand what Epicurus meant by side effects” (Sophie’s World, pg 112)

So epicureans consider pleasure to be good, and pain to be bad as such one of Epicurus’ main goals was to curb the fear of death amongst folk as it causes anxiety and therefore unhappiness. Epicurus came to the conclusion that the fear of death is based on the false assumption that death is bad. At first glance this looks like this could work the other way round, arguably Epicurus is basing his theory on the false assumption that death isn’t bad, for all we actually know it could be awful. Epicurus bolsters his argument by introducing the symmetry theory which essentially states that before we are born we did not exist so the concerns of the world are of no concern to us and likewise when we die we cease to exist, thus we feel no pain therefore it is irrational to fear death. I both agree and disagree with this idea, I think yes before we are born we know nothing of the world for we have never been alive and thus is of no consequence, but going from a single cell to a conscious being is a lot different than going from a conscious being having known what it is like to be alive to nothing. I think that Epicurus is being a bit callous when he says: