What Would Epicurus Say To Someone Who Said To Him That The Value of Being Dead and Being Alive Are Equal?

Hey Cassius , did you use the wrong quote?

You're quoting my own quotation of Diogenes but then talking about logical argument about pleasure being the highest good. Unless I'm missing the point.

Quote from Cassius

I'm not trying to seed this just to start conversation but I can predict who among us might have some interest in this topic so I am going to go ahead and prod:

Pacatus ? Patrikios ? DaveT ?

Cassius

I will have to agree with DaveT that I don’t see the value in this topic, from an Epicurean point of view. Life is worth living, and death is nothing to us. Something that is “nothing” to us has no value; therefore it can’t be compared to something that has value.

This was a key topic in the article you posted on June 29 by Max DuBoff ”Death of an Egoist: An Epicurean Approach to Fatal Self-Sacrifice”.

The original question: What Would Epicurus Say To Someone Who Said To Him That The Value of Being Dead and Being Alive Are Equal?

Let us suppost that there is a person who is in daily bodily pain, and who is having difficulty in managing that pain, then that person may ask themselves if it feels "worth it" to be alive while suffering so much (perhaps it was a terrible car accident which caused this, or perhaps it is old age pains). But...death is cessation of all feeling and conciousness -- and so that particular person may be left with a conundrum, if they feel that both life and death seem to them of equal "value". (And because I think that there are some situations in which strong pains may actually interfere with living).