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Saturday, May 29, 2021

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.5


A. To me death seems to be an evil.

 

M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die? 

 

A. To both. 

 

M. It is a misery, then, because an evil?

 

A. Certainly.

 

M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?

 

A. So it appears to me

 

M. Then all are miserable?

 

A. Everyone.

 

M. And, indeed, if you wish to be consistent, all that are already born, or ever shall be, are not only miserable, but always will be so; for should you maintain those only to be miserable, you would not except anyone living, for all must die; but there should be an end of misery in death. But seeing that the dead are miserable, we are born to eternal misery, for they must of consequence be miserable who died a hundred thousand years ago; or rather, all that have ever been born.

 

A. So, indeed, I think.

 

M. Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his chin; and Sisyphus,

 

Who sweats with arduous toil in vain

The steepy summit of the mount to gain?

 

Perhaps, too, you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus; before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you; and where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be able to employ Demosthenes; but you must plead for yourself before a very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look on death as an eternal evil.

 

We often whisper and tiptoe around death, working on the assumption that there could be nothing more terrible. After all, if survival is our strongest instinct, then facing our end would bring out our deepest fears. 

 

There would not only be the pain that comes from actually being destroyed, but also the pain of worrying about eventually being destroyed, the certainty that it will happen combined with the uncertainty about how and when it will happen. That would indeed feel like a looming evil, a misery that can never be avoided. 

 

And, quite understandably, this is where most of us nervously wish to change the subject, though a few might resign themselves to a constant brooding. Neither one will resolve the tension, however, and so everyone still seems to be under a cloud. 

 

I used to think that this sort of nagging discontent was unique to me, but then I observed that others faced it too, as much as they tried to distract themselves. I wondered if it was something odd about my generation, but then I realized that it was surely bound to the very act of being human, wherever self-awareness could be found. 

 

It is, quite literally, an existential problem, and so it is a profoundly philosophical problem. I have speculated if this is a reason why people so readily cast aside philosophy, not because it is obscure and difficult, but rather because it is obvious and immediate. Laugh at it and say it is irrelevant, while knowing on the inside that it fills you with terror and is really at the heart of everything that matters. 

 

I have no right to throw stones. I know how easily I am tempted to run away from something, instead of finding the honesty and courage to face it. 

 

There seems to be no way out, from whatever side I come at it. To be alive is an evil, for it suffers from the anticipation of death. To not yet be alive is also and evil, for it only offers the possibility of this future anxiety. Could death possibly be a reprieve, an escape from such a burden? No, death too is an evil, for it is the annihilation of self. 

 

There is either a “me” that will be miserable if it comes to exist, a “me” that is miserable when it exists, or a “me” that is miserable when it no longer exists.

 

Is it any accident that many cultures so readily employ images of pain, loss, and torment to describe the prospect of death? The myths of the Greeks and Romans are full of them, as Cicero describes, and which of us has not been given vivid descriptions of the fires of Hell? 

 

Yes, I have occasionally been told that a Heaven might be a vaguely nice place, yet I can’t help but find it odd that we dwell so much on the pitchforks and the burning lakes of lava. Fear will stick to us more easily than hope. 

 

For myself, I have found such accounts to be terrifying, and yet I find something else to be far more terrifying: a state of emptiness. I still get the shivers from the descriptions of the underworld in the Odyssey and the Aeneid, where the dead are shades, shadows of their former selves who have nothing to hold to but the memories of their previous lives. 

 

The suffering is not in the presence of something evil, but in the absence of everything good. I imagine the moments of boredom I sometimes feel now, only magnified into a dread of infinite nothingness. 

 

No, this is hardly a pleasant topic, though Cicero will soon explain that I am all twisted up about the act of dying because I don’t rightly understand about the act of living. 

Written in 2/1996

IMAGE: Alexander Litovchenko, Charon Carrying Souls Across the River Styx (1861)



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