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  • What are you afraid of? Spiders? Public speaking? The dentist? Calculus?

  • What about death?

  • How you feel about death has probably been shaped by your beliefs about whether or not there’s an afterlife

  • and if there is, what it’s like.

  • The ancient Egyptians believed that, at death, your heart would be weighed against a feather,

  • to determine if it was fit to enter the underworld.

  • A heart heavy with misdeeds would be fed to a demon

  • Christians may envision Saint Peter, waiting at the pearly gates to welcome you into heaven,

  • unless your name doesn’t make his list.

  • Imagine not only being turned away from the coolest club in town, but banished to the eternal torments of hell.

  • As we learned in our discussions about the philosophy of religion, when the stakes are eternal,

  • it’s only reasonable to get a little nervous about what’s basically the Ultimate Final Exam.

  • But if it makes you feel any better, many philosophers have believed, and still believe,

  • that death is nothing to fear.

  • [Theme Music]

  • In 399 BCE, Socrates was sentenced to death for, among other things,

  • refusing to acknowledge the official deities of Athens,

  • radicalizing youth, and generally honking off the people in charge.

  • But even when he faced his own imminent death, he remained calm and unafraid.

  • He was a philosopher, after all. And fear was no match for his ability to argue.

  • Socrates didn’t think we could know if there’s an afterlife or not,

  • but he thought there were really only two possibilities.

  • And as far as he was concerned, neither of them was anything to be afraid of.

  • Here’s his argument:

  • Either death is a dreamless sleep or death is a passage to another life

  • Dreamless sleeps are nice, not scary (Socrates said he could use the rest)

  • And a passage to another life sounds good, too,

  • because hell get to hang out with cool people from the past who have already died

  • Therefore, either way, death is nothing to fear

  • Socratesidea of the afterlife was Hades, which he seems to have pictured as being a lot like Athens,

  • except that no one had any physical bodiesonly disembodied minds.

  • And frankly he thought that sounded awesome, because bodies can be a real pain;

  • they just need to be fed, and require rest. Just, so much upkeep.

  • So, in the afterlife, Socrates imagined he’d get to have endless philosophical conversations,

  • and continue learning new things, with the greatest thinkers of the past.

  • And they wouldn’t have to take a break to eat or sleep or pee!

  • Now, Socrates recognized that, although his favorite activity, philosophizing, didn’t require a body, some things do.

  • And if all of your favorite pastimes are physical, you might find the afterlife disappointing.

  • That’s why Socrates recommended spending your life looking after your mind,

  • cultivating that part of you that youll get to keep foreverif there’s an afterlife.

  • If you do that, when the time comes for you to die, youll actually see death as a benefit,

  • because you won’t be troubled by bodily things, while your mind will be in top form.

  • But what if there isn’t an afterlife?

  • What about thatdreamless sleepthat Socrates spoke about?

  • Isn’t total annihilation of the self, like, the scariest thing there is?

  • Ancient Stoic philosopher Epicurus didn’t think so.

  • He lived about a hundred years after Socrates, and he rejected belief in an afterlife altogether.

  • Instead, he said were just our bodies, and nothing more.

  • But still, he still didn’t find death scary.

  • Here’s his argument: death is the cessation of sensation.

  • Good and evil only make sense in terms of sensation.

  • So, Death is neither good nor evil.

  • Epicurus was convinced that things are only evil, or bad, if they feel bad.

  • And he didn’t mean only physical feelings.

  • Anyone who’s ever had a broken heart will tell you that it’s a lot more painful, and harder to heal, than a broken leg.

  • But a broken heart is still a sensationyou need a body to experience itso as a materialist

  • someone who believed that You equal Your Bodydeath just meant nonexistence.

  • And there was nothing scary about that, because, well,

  • there won’t be any you to have any feelings about not existing!

  • Epicurus argued that fearing nonexistence is not only stupid, but it gets in the way of enjoying life.

  • You are alive, and experiencing sensations, now.

  • So, he said, make those sensations as great as possible,

  • and don’t worry about when those sensations are going to stop! YOLO!

  • To help you understand Epicurus and his attitudes about death a little better,

  • let’s head over to the Thought Bubble for some Flash Philosophy.

  • Think about a hangover. If you haven’t had one, imagine what they might be like.

  • Hangovers aren’t bad for you before you get one, right?

  • In fact, the thing that comes before the hangover is often quite pleasant, what with all the laughing,

  • and feeling uninhibited, and working up the courage to talk to that cutie from your calculus class.

  • No, the hangover is only bad while it’s happening.

  • And true, it might be bad after it’s over, like, if it kept you from doing well on your calculus exam the next morning,

  • because you were too busy trying not to barf in front of said cutie.

  • But the point is, if something is bad for you, it’s generally bad for you at a particular time, the way a hangover is.

  • But Epicurus said that death can’t be bad for you at any time.

  • Because once it arrives, youre gone!

  • The thing that eventually kills you? Yeah, that’s gonna be bad for you, before your death.

  • But that’s not death.

  • When you think about it, you and Death are never present at the same time.

  • And if there’s no you when death is present, then there is no time in which death is bad for you.

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble!

  • So, things like hangovers and charley horses and movie spoilers are bad, because youre there to experience them.

  • But as far as Epicurus was concerned, life was like a night of drinking before the hangover that is death,

  • whichinevitable as it isyou will never actually experience.

  • Now, the 21st century has its own perspectives on death.

  • And one might be best described as a kind of philosophical FOMO.

  • Contemporary American philosopher Thomas Nagel points out that some people dread death

  • because theyll miss out on things that they want to experience.

  • If you died right now, you’d never get to finish the video game youre in the middle of,

  • or read the next George RR Martin book, or see humans land on Mars.

  • Which would suck, yeah.

  • But think about it like this: Cool stuff was going on way before you were born. And you missed it!

  • I’m gonna make some assumptions about your age here

  • and say that you weren’t listening when Orson Welles terrified the nation with the War of the Worlds.

  • You didn’t march on Washington. You totally missed Woodstock.

  • So, Nagel asks: If you don’t feel some sort of deep sense of loss at what you missed before you were alive,

  • why should you feel loss at what youll miss after you die?

  • Now, Nagel does point out that, if we believe that life is essentially good,

  • then there is something to mourn when a life is cut short.

  • Since humans can live, on average, for about 80 years,

  • someone dying at the age of 20 is a tragedy, because that person missed out on 60 possible years of good times.

  • But we should pause here to talk about what you really value about life,

  • because that will also have an impact on what you think about death in general,

  • or about the death of a particular person.

  • If you say that life is just always, inherently, good, then youre said to place a high value on the sanctity of life.

  • It doesn’t matter what the content of that life looks like, or what the person is like.

  • The fact that theyre alive is just good. So, losing it would not be good.

  • But, if you think that quality of life is what’s important,

  • then youre going to want to distinguish between lives that are full of good experiences, and those that aren’t.

  • If you value quality of life, you don’t think that there’s something inherently valuable about merely being alive.

  • So in these terms, some deaths might actually be positive or valuable

  • like, if they bring about an end to a terrible, painful existence.

  • Now, of course, it might make sense to be afraid of dying itself,

  • because the process of dying can be painful and drawn out and involve saying a lot of difficult good-byes.

  • But maybe Socrates and Epicurus have convinced you that fearing your own death is absurd.

  • Well then what about the death of others? Is it equally silly to fear the death of the people you love?

  • Probably so, say some philosophers, because what youre fearing isn’t actually death;

  • what youre afraid of is being left behind, alone, when a loved one dies.

  • And this is a good place to hear from ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi.

  • He lived about the same time as Epicurus, and believed that there’s no reason to fear the death of your loved ones.

  • He asked, why would you fear the inevitable?

  • We know death is going to happen, to everyone, and we also know that it’s a part of the life cycle.

  • And we don’t see any other part of that cycle as being bad.

  • Wouldn’t it be silly, he said, if we mourned the loss of our babies when they became toddlers,

  • or our children when they became teens?

  • We celebrate every other life milestone, with birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, and graduations,

  • to mark the passage of time and the changes that have come.

  • Sure, your parents might shed some tears when they pack you off to college,

  • but they also knew that that day was going to come

  • when you would move away from them and onto your own life.

  • So death, according to Zhuangzi, is just one more changewhy treat it differently?

  • Instead, he said, you should celebrate the death of a loved one

  • just as you celebrated every other life change that they experienced.

  • You should think of their death as a going away party for a grand journey.

  • In his view, mourning can actually seem selfish.

  • When it’s time for the people you love to move on, Zhuangzi said,

  • the last thing you should do is hold them closer.

  • Today we talked about death.

  • We considered philosophical responsesfrom Socrates, Epicurus, and Zhuangzi,

  • about whether it’s logical to fear your own death, or the deaths of your loved ones.

  • And we talked about Thomas Nagel, death, and Fear of Missing Out.

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  • Crash Course Philosophy is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.

  • You can head over to their channel to check out amazing shows like

  • Brain Craft, PBS Game/Show, and Gross Science.

  • This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio

  • with the help of all of these awesome people and our equally fantastic graphics team is Thought Cafe.

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