Why Do We Fear Death?

The Greek philosopher Epicurus argued death is nothing to us. It does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more. Epicurus was an atomist. He believed that at death the human body is dissolved into the atoms into which it is composed. Philosophers have taken him to be saying something stronger than merely, ‘Don't worry, there is no place such as Hades that you go to when you die.’ There is no subject who undergoes the transition from life to death. According to Wittgenstein, death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

You can argue the point. If life is good, then death deprives me of something good, which is bad. But in what sense does that concern me? I won't be around to miss anything. Yes, but surely if I am told I am going to die tonight, then I miss the things I was looking forward to enjoying tomorrow now.

I actually think we need something a bit stronger than Epicurean atomism, if we want to show that all such 'fears' for a future reality where I am absent are irrational. Wittgenstein argued that the fear of death is irrational because there is no "I" that exists from day to day, or hour to hour.

In the light of the illusory of personal identity, I would therefore distinguish practical fear and metaphysical fear. Practical fears are for things that we experience, that we go through, that are part of our lives. Those things are real. So the process of dying is very real, is very much something to fear. Metaphysical fear, such as the fear of death as such, the sheer absence of "I" from the world, concerns something unreal and is therefore irrational.