Further Ways to Consider "Death is Nothing to Us"

On listening to Part 1 of the Emily Austin podcast interview, I looked up and read her paper “Epicurus on the Politics of Fearing Death,” which she referenced. (It can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/14801045/Epicu…f_Fearing_Death.)

She argues cogently from the source material to the following conclusion – which she sums up thusly: “I have argued that Epicurus does not believe all forms of the fear of death are irrational and eliminable. At least one fear – the fear of violent death caused by others – is brute and must be managed politically.” And: “In sum, I argue that Epicurus believes there is a fear of death that does not disappear, which we can control with due care and with close attention to the social environs.”

My thought is that, from a modern point of view, we might distinguish between that “brute fear” – which is likely part of the evolutionarily inherited “survival response,” which is a natural response, of physiological/neurological nature, to an immediate perceived threat – versus “maladapted” fears (which I’ll call “anxiety”), which are both unnatural and irrational (e.g., that I won’t be able to afford that trip to Rome, or that my girlfriend will break up with me … .)

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With that said, I thought that discussion of Dr. Austin’s views in this paper might just be interesting.