Death is a powerful teacher NewPhilosopher
Yet, despite urging others to do
so, I could never bring myself to have
a conversation about death with my
father, even before his dementia made
such a conversation impossible. I could
say that my relationship with him
throughout my life was strong and
open enough that we never needed
to use oblivion as a foil to remind
us of our love. But that would be
disingenuous. Rather, I feared the
pain he might feel reflecting on
his own mortality – or worse, mine- and so denied him the opportu-
nity to share any anxieties, or even
a lack thereof. So I learnt the very
lesson I had taught, that these conver-
sations are important precisely because
there’s a point beyond which you can
never have them.
The other class I taught was on
Epicurus, the famously misunderstood
Greek philosopher, and his views on
why we should not fear death. Despite
the misleading name of numerous
food and wine magazines, Epicurus
rejected the idea that happiness was
to be found in indulgent experiences.
Indeed, his preferred diet of bread and
water would likely make for a rather
dull cover feature. Instead, Epicurus
argued that genuine happiness (de-
noted by that wonderfully rich Greek
word eudaimonia) was to be found in
an absence of negative experiences
rather than piling on more fleeting
positive ones. “By pleasure we mean
the absence of pain in the body and of
trouble in the soul,” he wrote.
And one of the greatest troubles
of the soul was our misplaced fear of
death. The Roman poet Lucretius,
who wrote a sprawling homage to the
philosophy of Epicurus, wrote that
“as children in blank darkness trem-
ble and start at everything, so we in
broad daylight are oppressed at times
by fears as baseless as those horrors
which children imagine coming upon
them in the dark. This dread and dark-
ness of the mind cannot be dispelled
by the sunbeams, the shining shafts ofday, but only by an understanding of
the outward form and inner workings
of nature.”
Epicurus told us that inner work-
ings of nature reveal we are just collec-
tions of atoms given temporary con-
sciousness, and that this consciousness
dissipates with our dying breath. And
when our consciousness is extinguished,
so too is our ability to experience any
suffering. So it’s simply a mistake to
imagine lying in deathly repose regret-
ting all those things we didn’t get to do
in life or complaining about the cold.
Likewise, it’s folly to dread death.
Death is nothing to us, he said, be-
cause “when we are, death is not come,
and when death is come, we are not”.
If we can liberate ourselves from our
fear of death, we free ourselves to live,
“for life has no terrors for him who has
thoroughly apprehended that there are
no terrors for him in ceasing to live”.
But it’s one thing to free ourselves
of our own mortal terrors, and another
entirely to face the mortality of a loved
one. Even though I had embraced Ep-
icurus’s beliefs about death, there was
still a lot to grieve. When Dad was
dying, I grieved for his suffering, butnow that he’s dead I don’t grieve for
his loss but for mine.
Fanny Wright, the 19th century
Scottish feminist and abolition-
ist, imagined what words Epicurus
might use to describe such grief: “Ah!
my sons, here indeed is a pain – a
pain that cuts into the soul. There
are masters that will tell you oth-
erwise; who will tell you that it
is unworthy of a man to mourn
even here. But such, my sons,
speak not the truth of experience
or philosophy, but the subtleties
of sophistry and pride. He who
feels not the loss, hath never felt
the possession. He who knows not
the grief, hath never known the joy.”
What Epicurus didn’t discuss was
what remains of someone after their
death. My father’s presence was never
only contained with his skin. He left
an impression on the world, and quite
a large one at that, with him having
been a successful musician in Eng-
land, the US, and Australia (he was
named Queen Elizabeth’s favourite
singer in 1952). And he left a more
direct impression on those around
him, not least on me.
To the degree that he changed me,
to the degree that I still think about
what he would say, to the degree that
he made me who I am, then his im-
pression lives on. This is no platitude
meant to soften the blow of his eter-
nal absence. I will never hold his hand
again. But his voice still guides me,
and through me, others.
If I could add to what Cicero and
Montaigne wrote, I’d say that death
is the ultimate test of philosophy. I
found mine wanting. But death itself
is also a powerful teacher. And one
thing it taught me is that we grieve in
proportion to our love.What Epicurus
didn’t discuss was
what remains of
someone after
their death.