The fear of death is one of humanity’s most base and natural of instincts. It helps us motivate ourselves to be out of harm’s way and seek to find pleasures to distract ourselves from death. In Book 4, Lucretius makes the distinction in the poem to Venus, that her ability to allow the instinct reproduction to happen, is necessary for life to continue. The continuation of life in this context is natural and good and I would say the same thing for the fear of death. What I mean by good, is the Epicurean definition of good whereby the purpose is to avoid pain and seek pleasure. For instance if someone gets hurt by making an unreasonable jump across the cliff, then fear of death did not facilitate their judgement and caused pain. I do believe that …show more content…
I see the merit to not fearing death because it promotes a life of discovery and initiative. It gives people the necessary freedom to pursue the pleasures in life without the guilt that might be attached to it. There is no fear of the afterlife, no eternal damnation or god that will impose divine judgement on their own behalf. It allows people to become happier and focus on what really matter, however there is a limit to how far this can be taken. Without the proper moderation or complete lack of having the fear of death can bring about immense physical pain and the stunted development of mental acuity. WIthout any life teachings to learn from, people would never grow and live in a world of children in mind. Too much fear of death and you have people become Sisyphus where their desire to control what they fear turns against them. Controlling every aspect of one’s destiny will create enough stress on the mind to make their life a personal hell. It no longer becomes the matter of devils trying to make hell terrible, the one that fears death too much will do it for them and become stagnant, frightful beings. I side with the idea that death is something to fear, without it would be a place of chaos and a corruption of the human