Contempt of Death
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 4 anchored passages
contempt of death · despise death · the fear of death
in the texts
Letters to Lucilius
The Stoic doctrine that fear of death is irrational and must be overcome to live and die well.
despise death.
only let us cease to dread death.
"Cease to hope that the decrees of the gods can be bent by prayer.
Apologeticum
The praised philosophical virtue of disregarding death, permitted to pagans for worldly causes but denied to Christians suffering for God.
to which neither desperate presumption nor desperate persuasion is imputed in the contempt of death and of every kind of atrocity;
Zeno of Elea, when asked by Dionysius what philosophy could offer, having answered, "Contempt of death," and being exposed unmoved to the tyrant's scourges, sealed his sentence to the death.