At the very least, even assuming there’s no reason to worry about your own death, you would probably still care about the deaths of others—at least your friends and family. Given a group of people who mutually value having each other in their lives, death should still be a subject of enormous concern. I don’t grant the premise that we shouldn’t be concerned about death even for ourselves, but I don’t think that premise is enough to justify Epicurus’s attitude here.
Of course, for most of human history, there genuinely wasn’t much of anything that could be done about death, and there’s value in recognizing that death doesn’t render life meaningless, even if it’s a tragedy. But today, when there actually are solutions on the table, this quote sounds more in complacency than acceptance. Upvoted though, because it points to an important cluster of questions that’s worth untangling.
At the very least, even assuming there’s no reason to worry about your own death, you would probably still care about the deaths of others—at least your friends and family. Given a group of people who mutually value having each other in their lives, death should still be a subject of enormous concern. I don’t grant the premise that we shouldn’t be concerned about death even for ourselves, but I don’t think that premise is enough to justify Epicurus’s attitude here.
Of course, for most of human history, there genuinely wasn’t much of anything that could be done about death, and there’s value in recognizing that death doesn’t render life meaningless, even if it’s a tragedy. But today, when there actually are solutions on the table, this quote sounds more in complacency than acceptance. Upvoted though, because it points to an important cluster of questions that’s worth untangling.