What is this dread—this fear? What old woman is there so weak as to fear these things, which you, forsooth, had you not been acquainted with natural philosophy, would stand in awe of?
“The hallow’d roofs of Acheron, the dread
Of Orcus, the pale regions of the dead.”
And does it become a philosopher to boast that he is not afraid of these things, and that he has discovered them to be false? And from this we may perceive how acute these men were by nature, who, if they had been left without any instruction, would have believed in these things.
But now they have certainly made a very fine acquisition in learning that when the day of their death arrives, they will perish entirely. And if that really is the case—for I say nothing either way—what is there agreeable or glorious in it?
Not that I see any reason why the opinion of Pythagoras and Plato may not be true; but even although Plato were to have assigned no reason for his opinion (observe how much I esteem the man), the weight of his authority would have borne me down; but he has brought so many reasons, that he appears to me to have endeavored to convince others, and certainly to have convinced himself.
As Cicero discusses how the philosophers approach death, I can’t help but turn to my own experiences with how the people around me consider the soul. Perhaps I am straying too far from the topic, but these are the thoughts that first come to me with this section.
Remember, of course, that Cicero intends to show that either possibility, the presence of an afterlife or the complete cessation of life, can be good, and need never be an evil. A belief in the underworld, with all the mythology attached to it, may seem primitive and superstitious to some of the philosophers, though we can only wonder what better options they offer.
So I should not be worried about a future suffering, since there will be no future “me” at all? Couldn’t that prospect be just as depressing, as the Auditor had originally suggested?
I am always wary of hasty generalizations, such that I am fond of that old corny joke: there are two kinds of people, those who believe that there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t.
Yet I have still found, amidst the great diversity of folks I come across, a nagging pattern. Two sorts of people have been pulling at me for my whole life, from one side or another, and I can feel pressured by their demands. In this corner are those who insist that I must constantly think about the next life, and in that corner are those who claim there can be no other life than this one.
These convictions are usually tied to deeper beliefs, though the part I see the most is that they latch onto a hope, a longing to be satisfied, and the only difference is in whether they expect their reward somewhere down the road or right here and now. They can become quite stubborn about their views, yet I notice that both groups desperately want to be gratified, and they disagree only on when this should happen.
And along with those hopes there are also corresponding fears, that it might not work out as originally planned. Those who are planning for a promise of something still to come can succumb to restlessness, and those who are betting on the present can suspect that it isn’t all it was cracked up to be. The first type is worried that there may not be more to this life after all, and the second type is worried that there may actually be to be more to this life than they had thought.
Now I understand that the purists don’t consider Cicero a “hardcore” Stoic, but I have the sense that he clearly comprehends a Stoic principle that most of us will completely overlook. We are very busy looking at what comes to us, whether immediately or later, and so we forget that life isn’t about what we receive, at whatever time. Life is ultimately about what how we choose to act, and anything else is entirely relative to that measure.
“But what about the pleasure and the contentment? When do I get that?”
I would suggest that we get the pleasure and the contentment precisely when we don’t seek it for its own sake, and instead discover it as a consequence of living well. As Socrates taught, it is pleasurable because it is good, not good because it is pleasurable.
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