The Symmetry Argument: Lucretius Against the Fear of Death

Abstract

It is somehow popular among philosophers these days think that anxiety is a reasonable emotion. The fear of death, however, in whatever of the many forms it takes, can be a debilitating and, sometimes, incapacitating emotion, and one would thus expect philosophers have raised more questions about this popular dogma than they have.' It is unclear how account for the prevailing commitment the rationality of anxiety. I suspect that it may be due partly a widespread reception of the currently favored Aristotelian views that death is the most terrible of all and that to fear some things is even right and noble' It may also be due misconceptions or confused conceptions of what the fear of is. Whatever the source of its popularity, contemporary philosophers have assiduously supported the rationality of fearing death.3 Philosophers have not always, or even very often, been attracted the idea that fearing is reasonable. Long ago, Hellenistic philosophers took a less tolerant attitude toward anxiety. Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans all dispensed different doctrinal antidotes and intellectual potions against the fear of death. Lucretius joined his master, Epicurus, in the campaign against the fear of death, and offered what has perenially been regarded as a powerful weapon against anxiety. He gave us his famous and now much-discussed symmetry argument.4 He seems have

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