fear of death
idea · 6 works · 9 mentions · 14 anchored passages
dread of death · danger of death · death · dread of Acheron · dread of Gods · fear of death vexed no one of them · fearing death · fright of death · the terror of death · this fear
in the texts
De Rerum Natura
The irrational anxiety over death and divine retribution that Lucretius diagnoses as the true source of human torment, replacing literal underworld myths.
But grow more heavy after death.
Urges mortality, and each one fears
Can ever be, and feareth lest the same
Letters to Lucilius
The judgment that death is evil, argued by Seneca to be false; only the fear of death, not death itself, is the real harm.
"Shapes terrible to see, and death, and toil":
Why, I beg you, Lucilius, should a man fear toil, a human being fear death?
You will judge death to be the greatest evil, though there is nothing of evil in it save what precedes it, the being afraid.
On Moral Ends
The natural dread of death and dissolution, discussed as evidence that nature shrinks from destruction, observed even in children and animals.
Nor indeed do I speak of the fear of death of those who flee death because they think themselves robbed of the goods of life, or because they dread certain terrors after death, or fear lest they die with pain;
But most of all in this kind the force of nature is plain, since both many endure beggary that they may live, and men worn out by old age are distressed at the approach of death, and bear those things which we see Philoctetes bear in the plays.
Meditations
The fear of death, examined and shown to be groundless through a dilemma about sensation.
He who fears death fears either to lose all sensation or to gain a sensation of another kind.
Apology
The fear of death that Socrates rejects as a form of false knowledge and as incompatible with virtue and his divine mission.
Are you then not ashamed, Socrates, of having followed such a pursuit, that you are now in danger of being put to death as a result?
For no one knows whether death be not even the greatest of all blessings to man, but they fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.
Republic
The dread of death and its terrors, which frightening depictions of Hades are said to instill.
And again if he believes in the reality of the underworld and its terrors, do you think that any man will be fearless of death and in battle will prefer death to defeat and slavery?