Thursday, May 4, 2017

Non Fui, Fui, Non Sum, Non Curo



Certain ancient Romans had the words of the title to this post inscribed on their funeral monuments (above is one example, using slightly different wording).  They may be translated as:  "I was not; I was; I am not; I care not."


This epitaph is attributed to Epicurus.  Being a Greek born in the 4th century BCE, it's unlikely that he ever spoke or wrote these Latin words, but likely enough that he did so in the Greek of the time.  It seems an Epicurean sentiment.  Lucretius and others have praised Epicurus for ridding mankind of the fear of death which arises from certain religious beliefs--those which maintain that, on death, unbelievers or those violating particular standards will suffer eternal torment in particular.  Epicureanism and Stoicism were the most popular philosophical positions in the Roman Empire, from what we know.
 
There's a certain admirable brevity in this blithe statement.  If indeed nothing awaits us after death, if we are in fact nothing then, it's clear that we would not care about anything at all.  Someone must exist in order to care about being dead.  We didn't exist before we were born, and so had no cares then.  We recall nothing before we existed.  Why should it be different after death? Indeed, it seems odd to even speak of ourselves as entities which existed before our birth or will after our deaths.  It's not clear to me it makes any sense to do so.  If we were or will be anything, we won't be what we are now, i.e. people who can be spoken of as people.

Other surviving "tombstones" from the Roman era urge those who stop to read them to enjoy life, eat and drink well, while they can.  The implied assertion, if it's not expressly stated, is that we have only one life and it should be lived as pleasantly as possible.  These statements also have an Epicurean ring to them.

These are not sentiments commonly expressed by or on behalf of the dead these days, and have not been common for quite some times, with some exceptions.  Since the advent of Christianity, the tendency is to express hope in everlasting life in a vaguely defined heaven, among its vaguely defined residents, doing vaguely described things which seem to relate primarily to worshipping and contemplating God (also vaguely described).

Just how much comfort did the ancients derive, and can we derive, by accepting the apparent position of Epicurus that we will feel, think, do, and experience nothing at all when we die?  Is the thought that we will simply be gone, soon enough, all that comforting?  Perhaps it's better to be gone than to roast in hell for eternity.  But the end of ourselves wouldn't seem to be something most of us would find satisfying.  Some may well find the idea that they will stop existing frightening, in fact.  Contra Lucretius, some may insist that religious belief can liberate us from the fear of nothingness, of dissipation, which is all we're promised by Epicurus.

Perhaps the cessation of their lives (and of themselves) didn't disturb the ancients as it seems to disturb us.  It has seemed to disturb us for quite some time, in fact, judging from views held by a number of well known persons after what's called the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, when belief in the God of Christianity became increasingly difficult for them to maintain.  I think of Nihilism, Existentialism (or what they're commonly thought to consist of) and those who wonder what the meaning of life really is or whether it has any meaning.

 Romanticism seems to have encouraged the glorification of self, and that would seem to make the belief that the self will vanish in a short period of time rather daunting.


Do we love ourselves more, now, than we did in the ancient past?  Is that self-love responsible for our proclivity to despair of life given the indifference of the universe, and yet fear death?

The Stoic view of death is different from the Epicurean, different from the Christian, and different from the modern.  Marcus Aurelius calls out the distinction between the Epicurean and Stoic view of the universe generally with some frequency.  Either the universe is simply the random result of atoms and the void, or the universe is divine, providential, infused with reason.  We as parts of the universe partake of the divine, and having the capacity for reason may by using it act in accordance with the divine plan.  On death, we remain part of the universe, though we may dissipate, and so continue to participate in the divine universe though our individual personalities may not survive or may survive for a period of time only, not for the life of the universe.  There are claims made that the later Stoics tended more towards the view that our personalities survive and that God was more personal than believed by the earlier Stoics.

For me, the Stoic view is one that doesn't incite despair or fear but instead inspires an acceptance of the universe, our fate, and our eternal place in a living reality.
 
 
 


4 comments:

  1. Undefined Certainty.November 20, 2021 at 7:15 PM

    Excellent. Thank you.

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  2. Quote: "Since the advent of Christianity, the tendency is to express hope in everlasting life in a vaguely defined heaven, among its vaguely defined residents, doing vaguely described things which seem to relate primarily to worshipping and contemplating God (also vaguely described)."

    Hmm. If there is anything "vague" about the afterlife for Christians it is because there is only so much to work with in what we regard as revealed by God. We stick with what we need to know for the most part: we have an understanding of the coming "new creation" as somehow both in continuity AND discontinuity with the present "old creation." We believe this on the basis of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: his "glorified" body post-Resurrection is clearly understood to be HIS body (empty tomb), but obviously it is very DIFFERENT (not spatially limited).

    If the imagery of worship, etc. is used -- as in the Revelation of John, for instance -- it need not be taken entirely literally, but more as an image of what life in the new creation will be LIKE. For ancient Israel, their ritual worship was their means for being in relationship with their God, just as it was for many ancient religions, even if perhaps the Israelites had a very distinct understanding of their God and their relationship to him. As for contemplation, that concept of the Christian afterlife has to do with the fulfillment of the intellect, "seeing all truth," so to speak. If humans have a natural desire for truth, Christians believe that desire will be fulfilled in knowledge of God. Thomas Aquinas would be a good one to look at, maybe here: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2003.htm#article8. (BTW: Aquinas loves Cicero. He's one of the most quoted writers in the whole Summa Theologiae.)

    That this is all Christians can say about the matter is to be expected, yes? We are allowed to speculate (indeed dream!) because there is only limited revealed data accepted in faith. And yet theologians and philosophers -- even drawing upon the findings of the natural sciences! -- have a great deal of fun with this speculation: How can the "glorified" body be the same and different from what we experience as "body"? How can there be continuity between two apparently different but connected worlds? What does it mean for God to transcend all of this yet be intimately involved in its coming to be at all times? Is there "time" in heaven?

    By analogy, is quantum mechanics "vague" because it reaches the limits of our comprehension? No, it's just the nature of the subject matter, into which we have inherently limited insight, it seems. Some might take that as an indication that QT doesn't represent reality properly. But that has to be proven empirically, not assumed, the underlying assumption being that the nature of reality must be reducible to description by deterministic equations.

    As for "heaven's residents" I need only point you to the moral tradition of Christianity, which is anything but vague. That's why people tend not to like it! Far too confining for many. Much easier to decide whether you are "good" than to accept an external measure of such. Pascal's Wager makes it clear what the reasonable choice might be when faced with the options of whether to act as though God exists or not. Not a bad place to start!

    Anyways, Stoicism is definitely a better option than Epicureanism. Many of the early Christians had great esteem for Stoicism and almost none for Epicureanism. Paul the Apostle seems to have been influenced by Stoic thought in some ways.

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    1. It's said Tarsus was a center of Stoicism in ancient times, so it may have influenced Paul. Vagueness may be a necessary quality of the Christian conception of the afterlife. But I recall that when I was in Catholic elementary school the depictions of the afterlife of sinners was fairly specific and concrete. We were treated to cheerful little films showing Hell and Purgatory as vast fields of flame from which agonized faces protruded. I can't recall if Heaven was ever shown, but assume there were clouds and happy people accompanied by Jesus. Maybe this is a failure of imagination. We're far more familiar with pain than bliss. But there are problems with the Resurrection of the Dead that no amount of explication can resolve, if only because our bodies aren't our bodies if the "bodies" aren't our bodies, so to speak. They're something else, and therefore are not resurrected.

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