Death is nothing to us;
for that which has been dissolved
experiences no sensations,
and that which has no sensation
is nothing to us.—Epicurus
If there are no souls or selves in the metaphysically robust sense, then strictly speaking, there is no death—for death is the termination of something that never existed.92
Theorem 8.1 (No Death Without Self). If there is no self, then strictly speaking, no self dies.
Proof. Death is the cessation of a self. If there is no self, there is nothing to cease. What we call “death” is the disintegration of a physical organism and the cessation of associated physical and mental processes, but if these processes never constituted a self in the metaphysically robust sense, then no self ceases when they stop. The word “death” applies only at the conventional level, not the ultimate level. ◻
What does occur at “death” is the disintegration of the body—or, in the terminology of the Milinda Pañha, the “chariot.” The parts that were conventionally designated as a person—body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness—disperse. The matter remains (conservation of mass-energy); the form dissolves.93
Epicurus reasoned that since death is the cessation of all experience, and since an experience is required for something to be bad for me, death cannot be bad for me.94
Theorem 8.2 (Epicurus’s Argument). Death is not bad for the one who dies.
Proof. “While I exist, death is not present; when death is present, I no longer exist. The two never meet, and therefore death is nothing to me.”
More formally:
For death to be bad for me, there must be a subject (me) who experiences or is affected by the badness.
After death, there is no subject (the self has ceased, or never existed robustly to begin with).
Therefore, there is no subject for whom death is bad.
Therefore, death is not bad for me.
◻
Lucretius extended the argument with his famous “symmetry argument”: just as we do not regard the eternity before our birth as an evil, so we should not regard the eternity after our death as an evil. Both are periods of non-existence, and if one does not trouble us, neither should the other.95
Yet we do fear death—intensely, viscerally, irrationally.96 This fear requires explanation. The answer lies not in philosophy but in evolutionary biology.
Theorem 8.3 (Evolutionary Origin of Death-Fear). Death-fear is a product of natural selection, not a response to genuine danger.
Proof. Natural selection operates on reproductive success. Consider a population with genetic variation affecting death-fear:
Type A: Individuals with strong death-fear. They flee predators, avoid dangerous situations, and take precautions against threats.
Type B: Individuals with weak or no death-fear. They are more likely to be killed by predators, accidents, and hazards before reproducing.
Over many generations, Type A individuals out-reproduce Type B individuals. The genes underlying death-fear spread through the population, while genes producing indifference to death are eliminated along with their bearers.
Therefore, we fear death because our ancestors who did not fear death are no longer among our ancestors. The fear is a biological adaptation, not a rational response to the actual badness of death (which, as shown, is zero). ◻
Corollary 8.4. We do not fear death because death is bad; rather, we believe death is bad because we fear it. The fear came first, installed by evolution; the philosophical rationalization came after, constructed by minds shaped to prioritize survival.