- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- Contributors
- Introduction: Philosophy of Death
- When Do Things Die?
- Death and the Disintegration of Personality
- The Person and the Corpse
- Personal Identity and the Survival of Death
- The Evil of Death: What Can Metaphysics Contribute?
- Death and Eternal Recurrence
- Death in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
- When Death Is There, We Are Not: Epicurus on Pleasure and Death
- The Badness of Death and the Goodness of Life
- The Symmetry Problem
- The Timing Problem
- Death, Value, and Desire
- Death and Rational Emotion
- Retroactive Harms and Wrongs
- Immortality
- The Makropulos Case RevisitedReflections on Immortality and Agency
- The Wrongness of Killing and the Badness of Death
- Abortion and Death
- The Morality of Killing in War: Some Traditional and Nontraditional Views
- The Significance of Death for Animals
- Capital Punishment
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter analyzes the view of Greek philosopher Epicurus on the relation between death and pleasure. It explains Epicurus's views about death and their place in his overall ethical theory, and describes how ancient Epicureans conceived of a pleasurable life within the wider context of their ethical thinking. The chapter also discusses some features of Epicurus's hedonism to evaluate the kind of support it offers for his arguments about death.
Keywords: death, pleasure, Epicurus, ethical theory, Epicureans, hedonism
Phillip Mitsis is A. S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization at New York University and Academic Director of the American Institute of Verdi Studies. He has published papers on Greek epic and tragedy, and on the history of ancient and early modern philosophy. His writings on Epicurus include The Pleasures of Invulnerability: Epicurus’ Ethical Theory (1988).
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- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- Contributors
- Introduction: Philosophy of Death
- When Do Things Die?
- Death and the Disintegration of Personality
- The Person and the Corpse
- Personal Identity and the Survival of Death
- The Evil of Death: What Can Metaphysics Contribute?
- Death and Eternal Recurrence
- Death in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
- When Death Is There, We Are Not: Epicurus on Pleasure and Death
- The Badness of Death and the Goodness of Life
- The Symmetry Problem
- The Timing Problem
- Death, Value, and Desire
- Death and Rational Emotion
- Retroactive Harms and Wrongs
- Immortality
- The Makropulos Case RevisitedReflections on Immortality and Agency
- The Wrongness of Killing and the Badness of Death
- Abortion and Death
- The Morality of Killing in War: Some Traditional and Nontraditional Views
- The Significance of Death for Animals
- Capital Punishment
- Index