Non Fui, Fui, Non Sum, Non Curo
I chose the "General Philosophy" category as I'm uncertain what category applies to this post. My guess is I'll be told what it is, in a kindly manner I hope. This OP will take up some space, so pass it by if you're bored by it.
In the old forum, I once wondered whether Latinbot would ever make an appearance. It didn't, and it hasn't here, the title of this post notwithstanding. The title is Latin, though, and this is its translation: "I was not, I was, I am not, I care not." It's a phrase said to have Epicurean origins or inspiration. It appeared on the grave monuments of followers of Epicurus in ancient times.
His followers took comfort in the fact that death was an end Lucretius praised Epicurus for saving us from the religious belief in the horrors of the afterlife. Before the time of Lucretius it seems the Greeks generally viewed the afterlife as being gloomy--a grey, dreary, shadowy life after death. From what I read, the Jews had no certainty of an afterlife as we think of it. Christianity, perhaps under the influence of Persian and other "oriental" religions, brought us the happy thought of eternal torment after death for the many, eternal bliss of some kind (which according to some would include the pleasure derived from observing others writhing in the flames of hell) for the blessed few. The so-called mystery religions promised a more happy afterlife to initiates and became more popular in the imperial period. I speak only of the ancient Mediterranean which I have some familiarity with, not the ancient or modern East, of which I know little or nothing.
The Stoics had no conception of an afterlife in which we survived as individuals. Some thought that we would be merged into the Divine Reason, surviving if at all for a short period of time. As far as we can tell, they felt no more horror at the thought of their ends than did the Epicureans.
This is all merely to say that, at least before the dominance of Christianity, there were many people who expected not to exist after their deaths and were unconcerned by it. I supect that such people exist even now.
In a different thread I asked some questions regarding Heidegger's musings on "the nothing" and our dread or anxiety, by which "the nothing" is encountered. That dread, as far as I can tell, either brings on "the nothing" or results from our understanding that "the nothing" or nonexistence awaits us; is our inevitable end. Perhaps both. Eventually, I encountered the kind of accusations I've come to expect whenever I criticize that great and worthy thinker, despite the fact that I was in that case actually trying to take him seriously--not an easy task for me. Even, perhaps, to understand what he was saying.
"The nothing" of Heidegger and "nothingness" of e.g. Sarte seem to concern many, and cause them to dread and it's clear that warning them of reification and pointing out that there's no thing to dread does little to assuage their concern, dread, anxiety or whatever form of disturbance they experience when they encounter "it" or because they encounter "it." And, I wonder why that's the case, given the fact that it clearly didn't concern many of the ancients (any maybe some of those that currently inhabit this place of woe).
I speculate that we hold ourselves, as individuals, in much greater regard than our ancestors held themselves. We think of ourselves as individuals more than they did. Think of the way we insist on "our rights" as individuals. Think of those who claim we have no duty to others, except perhaps the duty not to harm them directly. Consider the concern among certain of the religious with their own salvation.
This is to generalize, of course. But I think that one must love oneself a great deal to react with so strong an emotion as dread to the knowledge of pending nonexistance, though it's clear enough that we won't care when that comes to be.
Perhaps we wouldn't dread if we understood, better, our place as part of a vast universe (yes, that just might be a Stoic kind of concept). Just a thought or two, submitted for your consideration.
In the old forum, I once wondered whether Latinbot would ever make an appearance. It didn't, and it hasn't here, the title of this post notwithstanding. The title is Latin, though, and this is its translation: "I was not, I was, I am not, I care not." It's a phrase said to have Epicurean origins or inspiration. It appeared on the grave monuments of followers of Epicurus in ancient times.
His followers took comfort in the fact that death was an end Lucretius praised Epicurus for saving us from the religious belief in the horrors of the afterlife. Before the time of Lucretius it seems the Greeks generally viewed the afterlife as being gloomy--a grey, dreary, shadowy life after death. From what I read, the Jews had no certainty of an afterlife as we think of it. Christianity, perhaps under the influence of Persian and other "oriental" religions, brought us the happy thought of eternal torment after death for the many, eternal bliss of some kind (which according to some would include the pleasure derived from observing others writhing in the flames of hell) for the blessed few. The so-called mystery religions promised a more happy afterlife to initiates and became more popular in the imperial period. I speak only of the ancient Mediterranean which I have some familiarity with, not the ancient or modern East, of which I know little or nothing.
The Stoics had no conception of an afterlife in which we survived as individuals. Some thought that we would be merged into the Divine Reason, surviving if at all for a short period of time. As far as we can tell, they felt no more horror at the thought of their ends than did the Epicureans.
This is all merely to say that, at least before the dominance of Christianity, there were many people who expected not to exist after their deaths and were unconcerned by it. I supect that such people exist even now.
In a different thread I asked some questions regarding Heidegger's musings on "the nothing" and our dread or anxiety, by which "the nothing" is encountered. That dread, as far as I can tell, either brings on "the nothing" or results from our understanding that "the nothing" or nonexistence awaits us; is our inevitable end. Perhaps both. Eventually, I encountered the kind of accusations I've come to expect whenever I criticize that great and worthy thinker, despite the fact that I was in that case actually trying to take him seriously--not an easy task for me. Even, perhaps, to understand what he was saying.
"The nothing" of Heidegger and "nothingness" of e.g. Sarte seem to concern many, and cause them to dread and it's clear that warning them of reification and pointing out that there's no thing to dread does little to assuage their concern, dread, anxiety or whatever form of disturbance they experience when they encounter "it" or because they encounter "it." And, I wonder why that's the case, given the fact that it clearly didn't concern many of the ancients (any maybe some of those that currently inhabit this place of woe).
I speculate that we hold ourselves, as individuals, in much greater regard than our ancestors held themselves. We think of ourselves as individuals more than they did. Think of the way we insist on "our rights" as individuals. Think of those who claim we have no duty to others, except perhaps the duty not to harm them directly. Consider the concern among certain of the religious with their own salvation.
This is to generalize, of course. But I think that one must love oneself a great deal to react with so strong an emotion as dread to the knowledge of pending nonexistance, though it's clear enough that we won't care when that comes to be.
Perhaps we wouldn't dread if we understood, better, our place as part of a vast universe (yes, that just might be a Stoic kind of concept). Just a thought or two, submitted for your consideration.
Comments (38)
When you were young were you afraid of death in an abstract sort of way?
The dread of non-existence is instinctive, biological. It becomes possible as a general condition due to the reflective capability bestowed by language. Heidegger's point is that for us (for dasein) our being becomes an issue, and that this most primordial condition shapes, in various ways, due to different responses to it, all of human life. This cannot be escaped by repeating an empty mantra to ourselves such as the one that provides the title to this thread. Telling yourself you don't care that you will die is just a way of distracting yourself from the reality of your deepest anxiety; a way of temporarily fooling yourself.
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house
I think part of the problem is that 'understanding our place' fails when we confront the placelessness of death.
Of the two, hell has been illustrated and dramatized much more successfully than heaven. Heaven has become most suitable as a setting for jokes. The most interesting description of heaven I heard was "being swept up in a continuous orgasm". Fine for a few minutes, but an eternity of orgasm is first difficult to imagine, then it drifts into unbearable tedium.
Ecclesiastes.
There's also the possibility that the Stoics and Epicureans were talking out of their ass and were playing lip-service to an equanimity and serenity. The Greek peninsula gave birth to all sorts of philosophical life-coaches in the midst of political turmoil. These "sages" garnered followers and actually competed with other philosophical schools to gain adherents.
I don't think the evolution of philosophical concepts can be attributed solely to their intellectual content. Though I don't endorse a uni-directional reductionism, we have to look at the economic and social dimensions as well. I suspect a contributing reason to this change in perspective comes from the destabilizing effect the end of the Roman Empire had on the surrounding region, followed by the Crusades, the Mongol invasion and the Black Death, all of which left countless dead. Clearly, the intellectualism of the Stoics doesn't cure a bacterial infection.
People feared death as much in the past as they do today, I think. They were just better at sublimating that fear into an aesthetic existence, a way of life that was unsustainable, whose eclipse ran parallel with the introduction of the rationalism of Socrates.
'I realized that everything is in vain,
And I hated life.
This too was in vain.'
Of course nearly all humans have an instinctive, visceral fear of things that could make us die, like being unable to breathe, caught in a fire, or being attacked by a knife-wielding assassin. But that has nothing to do with the existential fear of non-existence.
I find persuasive your allusion to the modern Western obsession with individualism and individual rights, and that that may be at the root of the modern fear of no longer being alive.
It makes me wonder whether that fear is less common in more communalist cultures, such as the Chinese. I also get the sense that earlier cultures - whether nomadic tribal, rural feudal or municipal, were much more communalist. When survival is harder to maintain, one becomes much more conscious of one's dependence on the people around us. Oddly, we are all now more dependent on others for our survival than ever before, yet this illusion of rugged individualism is stronger than ever, in the West at least. I doubt that people in nomadic tribes, whether in ancient or modern times, spend much time quivering about the inevitability of their ultimate cessation.
The earliest writing I am aware of that is filled with dread of non-existence is The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy. And I am not aware of anything from a non-Christian background that projects such dread. Although the existentialists were mostly non-Christian, they emerged from a Christian culture and I think were very much shaped by it.
Ecclesiastes 7:10
This is a super interesting way of framing things. Equanimity would've been a hot commodity back then, so maybe they were just superior marketers.
I've also had the thought that a good chuck of stoicism might be post-hoc rationalization of the anhedonia that follows on the heels of deep trauma - plenty of trauma, back then, to go around. A more genteel version of people who've been hurt and then brag loudly that they don't give a fuck, and even believe it.
Either way, as a strong emotional avoider, I'm of the belief that emotions have to be worked through, not bypassed or bracketed. Including fear of death, if you've got it (I believe some people don't, or at least not to the same degree. I didn't have it for a long time, but somehow I contracted it.)
My understanding is that fear of death was present in Ancient Greece, but not because they thought it was non-existence. It was because they thought they'd be condemned to live eternally in the gloomy Underworld. Epicurean writing against fear of death was not saying 'stop being afraid of ceasing to exist' but rather 'you can stop being afraid of existing forever in gloom, BECAUSE the good news is that you will cease to exist'.
It was that idea of annihilation that was radical and new from the Epicureans.
This has nothing to do with Heidegger, btw.
Indeed, those ancients I refer to in this thread had nothing to do with what Heiddeger wrote about in his essay, it wouldn't have occured to them. That's my point.
Stoicism is a tributary to Christianity by way of Plotinus. The Stoic deity was called the Logos. They thought it was made of hot air. It seems odd that physicalists could have a deity.
If it is, well....
Just about everything was a tributary to Christianity. The early Christians were adept at assimilating pagan philosophies and religions, and the result was, I think, an awkward and sometimes embarrassing hodgepodge.
The Stoic pneuma, which I think is what you refer to, was in varying degrees a part of everything and in its purest form comparable to what some call a soul. The Stoics thought there could be no void and so pneuma was corporeal and defined as a kind of vital heat or fire given the limited physics of the time. It was the organizing force of the universe. The Stoic God was immanent and not a creator of the universe but its ruling constituent.
Oh, I forgot--fol de rol.
Then you could just say: "This is what I was inspired to think about when I read Heidegger."
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Exactly. It's the reason a Stoic would say we can use logic to understand the world. I went looking for the contemporary equivalent to that. Some people believe we adhere to logic because we're evolved to do so. I think Kant is a better answer.
I appreciate the suggestion. As I said, I certainly may have misunderstood him, and by misunderstanding him wrote the OP as I did and not otherwise. But regardless we're stuck with it as is--quod scripsi, scripsi.
I think the folks who wrote that meant to say that since they were dead, their illness couldn't be cured. It's really all about a sense of inferiority regarding their healthcare. Roman healthcare was essentially a list of massage techniques, some potions, and maybe a prayer or two. Their sense of unease about it was probably related to their overall sense of cultural vacuousness in comparison to Greeks.
I wrote it! :party: