Opening page…
Should you fear death?
Lucretius pointed out that nobody minds the billions of years before they were born. The years after you die will be just like them.
Your answer
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A little context
Most of the time death is a rumor, something that happens to other people and to you only in principle. Then, some night at three in the morning, it isn't. The fear arrives whole, and no argument seems able to reach it.
Nearby questions
- Is it right to bring a child into a world like this?A child can't agree to being born, and inherits whatever the world becomes. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a harm; most parents would call it the best thing they ever gave.
- If you had to choose, would you take a happy life or a meaningful one?Raising children, caring for the dying, making something difficult: the things people call most meaningful are often not the ones that make them happiest day to day.
- Does life have a meaning?The universe will not notice when you are gone, and in a million years nothing you did will show. Camus thought you could still be happy.
- Is the work Chippus were given worth doing?A task can be worth doing for what it makes, for whom it serves, or for what it does to whoever does it.
- Would you want to live forever?Bernard Williams argued that an endless life would end in boredom, because you would outlive every reason you had to go on. Others think there would always be another book, another friend, another morning.
