Death
idea · 18 works · 27 mentions · 52 anchored passages
also in the atlas: Death the deity · Death the event
death · dissolution · dying · the end · a timely death · being dead · concerning death · death in battle · death's No-more · departure
in the texts
Letters to Lucilius
Mortality and its proper contemplation, a recurring philosophical concern.
Death comes to you;
from the day you were born, you are being led to death.
" Do you not see from what trifling causes it is held in contempt?
Tusculan Disputations
The central topic of Book 1: whether death is an evil, and its true nature.
— That would be arrogant;
— Death seems to me to be an evil.
and yet wretched for this very reason, that they are nothing.
Meditations
The end of life, treated as natural, not to be feared, and subject to philosophical analysis
Concerning death:
"Life is reaped like a ripe ear of corn;
"Then such a man will not think death a thing to dread?
Poems
Death as an idea and subject of meditation, invoked through Sherlock's treatise and rejected in favor of living.
For whilst he teaches us to die, He cheats us of our living.
But if thus bless'd I may not live, And pity you deny, To me at least your Sherlock give, 'Tis I must learn to die.
To die's a lesson we shall know Too soon without a master; Then let us only study now How may we live the faster.
Nicomachean Ethics
The most terrible and final evil, whose noblest form (death in battle) constitutes the proper test of courage.
Now the most terrible thing of all is death;
for instance we do not call a man courageous for facing death by drowning or disease.
And this conclusion is borne out by the principle on which public honors are bestowed in republics and under monarchies.
Atharvaveda (Paippalāda)
Personified concept of Death, whose limbs are the subject of a riddle question.
I ask thee directly of the Puruṣa — how many are the limbs of Death?
On Moral Ends
The prospect of dying, treated as a major source of human anxiety that Epicurean wisdom and physics are said to dispel.
he disregards death;
There is added also death, which, like the rock over Tantalus, forever hangs above;
And when the nature of all things is known, we are relieved of superstition, freed from the fear of death, not troubled by ignorance of things — out of which itself dreadful terrors often arise.
De Rerum Natura
The cessation of sensation through the dissolution of body and soul; central object of Epicurean consolation in this passage.
Here in this life.
Therefore death to us
but in this life is fear
Apology
The philosophical concept of death, examined as either dreamless unconsciousness or migration of the soul
For the state of death is one of two things:
But you also, judges, must regard death hopefully and must bear in mind this one truth, that no evil can come to a good man either in life or after death, and God does not neglect him.
Phaedo
Defined in the dialogue as the state in which body and soul exist separately from each other.
We believe, do we not, that death is the separation of the soul from the body, and that the state of being dead is the state in which the body is separated from the soul and exists alone by itself and the soul is separated from the body and exists alone by itself?
Rigveda
A metaphor for death and burial, described as a 'house made of clay'.
May I not go, O King Varuṇa, into the house made of clay.
Consolation to Marcia
Death, treated philosophically as neither good nor evil, as a release from suffering, and as always occurring at its rightly appointed time.
A boundary is fixed for each;
nor are his modest ears lashed by any revilings;
No one dies too soon, because he was not going to live longer than he did live.
Consolation to Polybius
The universal end of life, reframed throughout the letter as natural, inevitable, and ultimately a form of rest or release.
There is, believe me, great good fortune in the very necessity of dying.
Whole kingdoms with their kings, and peoples with their rulers, have borne their doom;
for those sailing on this sea, so stormy and exposed to every tempest, there is no harbour but death.
On Providence
The end of life, treated throughout as swift, easy, and freely available, and therefore not to be feared as an evil.
Despise death:
For this reason, of all the things I willed to be necessary for you, I have made nothing easier than dying.
That very thing which is called dying, in which the soul departs from the body, is too brief for so great a swiftness to be felt.
On the Happy Life
Mortality, treated as a matter for equanimous indifference by the aspiring sage.
"I will look upon death and upon a comedy with the same countenance.
Antigone
The inevitable mortal end and legal penalty around which Antigone's honor, Creon's threats, and the choral reflections turn.
Antigone:
Death it is who will end these bridals for me.
But my life has long been in Death’s hands so that I might serve the dead.
De Carnis Resurrectione
Death, personified as an enemy whose sting and power are abolished through the resurrection of the flesh.
For above too he says that the last enemy, death, is made void.
For if the reign of death works nothing but the dissolution of the flesh, accordingly life, contrary to death, must work the contrary — that is, the reintegration of the flesh — that, as death had devoured by prevailing, so too the mortal devoured by immortality may be able to hear, "Where, O death, is your sting?
Manusmṛti
Personified death, whose power over righteous Brāhmaṇas and the faults that provoke it are the subject of the chapter 5 dialogue.
"Listen, by what fault death desires to slay Brāhmaṇas.
"O Lord, for Brāhmaṇas who thus follow their own Dharma as prescribed, how does death have power over these knowers of the Veda and the sacred treatises?
Through neglect of the study of the Vedas, through abandonment of proper conduct, through laziness, and through the fault of eating forbidden food, death desires to slay Brāhmaṇas.