Response from Jyl Gentzler on June 16, 2006

I think that there are two explanations for why we fear death: (1) animals who fear death are more likely to survive and reproduce than animals who do not, and so, it’s likely that our fear of death is basic and innate, and (2) many of us value our lives: we enjoy and value the activities and experiences that constitute our lives, we enjoy our relationships, we want to be around to share the joys and lessen the pain of our loved ones, and we simply want to know how things turn out. Of course, if our life is painful, empty, and worthless, if we care about nothing that depends on our efforts, and if we don’t anticipate that things will improve soon, or soon enough, then life can be a burden and we can fear its continuation more than its end. Fortunately, I think, life is rarely like that.

Response from Peter S. Fosl on August 6, 2006

Epicureans thought that the fear of death was something irrational that we'd be better of without and that once we understood how the natural universe operates we'd largely become free from. Along the lines of Epicurean thought, David Hume is said to have remarked along these lines when someone asked whether or not he feared his apprpoaching death (paraphrasing): "No more so than I regret not having been born earlier." Why fear not existing or nothingness? One might be sad or angry about being taken from one's projects, but why be afraid? Rather than soothing us, Epicureans thought that religious stories about the afterlife disturb people.

For myself, I have found some peace in Epicurean reflections. But I suspect it that Jyl Gentzler is onto something in her evollutionary-biological explanation. Then, of course, much of what people fear isn't so much being dead as the process of dying. Existentialists have also suggested that what many call the fear of death is actually anxiety in the face of death, an anxiety produced when the consciousness of death snaps us out of our everyday immersions and makes us see in crystaline clarity that our lives are finite and composed by nothing more than our utterly free choices.