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David Konstan's A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus, digs in more specifically on the Epicurean tradition. Konstan, a classicist at Brown University, gives us close textual readings of Greek and Latin sources to offer a compelling explanation of the principal Epicurean teaching — that our "fear of death" is the greatest cause of human unhappiness.
It seems obvious that morbid fascination, especially with our own finitude, can make us anxious, fearful, and possibly even paralyzed. Unlike existentialists, who find this an exhilarating wake-up call, Epicureans see the concern with death as a superstitious, religious obsession. As a corrective to our phobias about death, Epicurus pointed out, in his "Letter to Menoeceus," that "when death is, I am not; and when I am, death is not." In other words, we're not really going to encounter this null state of affairs, because we'll be effectively absent. Epicureans were not as concerned about the existential moment of death as they were about the popular religious anxieties surrounding the afterlife.
Konstan does a nice job piecing together the more controversial aspect of this theory of morbid fear. Fear of death does not just cause anxiety and disrupt equanimity. The Epicurean claim is bolder: Fear of death is also tantamount to the desire for immortality, and this causes most other moral and character flaws. Konstan quotes Lucretius's On the Nature of Things: "Greed and the blind passion for positions of power, which drive wretched men to exceed the limits of the law and, as partners and abetters in crime, to struggle day and night with all their might to reach the heights of wealth — these blights on life are nourished in no small part by the fear of death."
From most religious views of the afterlife, all this seems counterintuitive. Fear of eternal damnation and the pursuit of heavenly bliss are considered to be great motivations for temperance and moral rectitude. But Konstan reads the Epicureans as more psychologically sophisticated. Our mistaken conceptions of hell, for example, are based upon hyperbolic projections and imaginings of our earthly disappointments. Frustrated desires in this life become reimagined on an eternal scale, and consequently we become permanently anxious and avaricious. We make the false equations: fulfilled desire = good (and heaven, and immortality), while frustrated desire = bad (and hell, and death). Konstan's reading is tinted by Freudian ideas and perhaps even semiotics, which makes him somewhat controversial. Classical scholarship has been moving away from the heady days of psychoanalytic projections and "subtext readings" of ancient sources, to rediscover the rich surprises of manifest antiquity.
Thankfully, Konstan interprets Epicurus without overinterpreting him. Our association of fulfilled desire with immortality, he argues, leads to panic rather than piety. We become more acquisitive, seeking more satisfactions of our desires — in the forms of wealth and power. Our moral status declines, along with our happiness. As Lily Tomlin once quipped, "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
If we realize, however, that this value association is wrong, then we can free ourselves from the perpetual panic of our craving for immortality. Both Epicureans and Stoics think that it is madness to equate the fulfillment of desire with "the good" or "happiness," since it is in the very nature of desire to fail, overreach, and disappoint.
In addition to overcoming the fear of death, Epicureans subscribe to three other main therapeutic insights (all four of which are referred to as tetrapharmakos). One of these important insights is that we shouldn't worry much about God, because he's so big and awesome that he just doesn't care about us and our foibles. His perfection is just an inspiration to us, but he's not keeping a list of our vices and virtues. Next, we must realize that the good life is actually easy to attain — it requires only that our basic necessities (shelter and sustenance) be in place; all else is a cultivation of attitude. Lastly, Epicureans believe that most suffering is easy to endure. Pain can be brief or chronic, and it can be mild or intense, but it is rarely chronic and intense. One must regularly remind oneself that "this too shall pass."
—Stephen T. Asma
The Chronicle Review
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