Don't Fancy Dying? Cicero Has Ideas
Getting ok with nonexistence.
I’m probably the wrong person to write about death anxiety. And for judging Cicero’s method for defusing it, for that matter.
The prospect of nonexistence never bothered me, and when I almost died in a flash flood, no unexpected dread popped up. I worried a bit about the pain of drowning as I treaded quickly-rising water that day, but as much as I enjoy life and want to live, I was calm at the prospect of it all being over.
It’s actually the opposite — I think death is the greatest enhancer of life. Thus my memento mori poster and practice of contextualizing life with the inevitability of its end.
I long assumed only people who feared divine punishment for sins would be anxious about death, but over the years I’ve spoken to several people who dread nonexistence. They go out of their way to avoid thinking about it.
I have trouble wrapping my head around their fears, to be honest. Which is why I almost didn’t write this companion essay for book one of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (We’re doing a readalong. Join us!). Maybe I don’t understand the fear enough.
But this is an important topic that affects how people live. Death anxiety is a shackle that keeps us controllable and less likely to do what’s right. We should free ourselves from it if we can.
“‘Rehearse for death’: he who says this is telling us to rehearse our freedom. One who has learned death has unlearned slavery…” — Seneca, Letters, 26.10
And Cicero’s interlocutor, “A”, who’s convinced that death is a great evil, strikes me as modern in most respects. He doesn’t fear Tartarus and an eternity of torment, as the old Greco-Roman myths described. He finds the idea absurd, but does sign on to the possibility of gods. He also hopes the soul might survive the death of the body.
And yet still A thinks the dead are miserable and that death is something to be worried about, just as many feel today (41% of Britons fear death1, and 28% of Americans2, in one set of polls).
Cicero works to show A that death is no evil, and, in fact, is actually good. His argument for the negative claim (not evil) is strikingly nondogmatic, as we’d expect from an Academic Skeptic. He surveys the beliefs of numerous philosophical schools and reasons that no matter which one you choose, there’s nothing to be worried about.
His argument branches to account for different beliefs:
If the soul dies with the body, no one/nothing remains to experience the theoretical evil of death. To be harmed, you must exist. The dead don’t, so they can’t be harmed, deprived of good things, or left despondent. Thus, there’s nothing to worry about.
If the soul is immortal, then death is in fact a boon, and an eternal life of bliss awaits.
Undergirding both branches is the idea that philosophy prepares us for death. A person who keeps bodily pleasures in their proper place and doesn’t dance for fame and fortune is already halfway to separation with these things. So death merely completes what philosophy begins. It takes the sting out of loss in advance.
Cicero does a good job exploring these paths, and I won’t rehash each sub-argument. But I will point out where I think he’s missing some things.
Exposure:
There is an assumption running through this chapter: people who fear death can be reasoned out of it.
I suspect death anxiety is like a phobia we know isn’t rational. Elevator phobics can have elevator safety explained repeatedly, and it probably helps, but most will still be terrified when the doors chime. What sufferers need is exposure, so a good therapist walks clients in sight of an elevator and talks to them as emotions bubble up. On another day they approach the doors. On the third day they touch the call button. Then they step across the threshold and let the doors close. Finally, they take a ride.
And indeed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’s exposure approach to death anxiety — based on the older Stoic philosophical approach — showed the most improvement of all therapies tested in a large meta-analysis. CBT brought about a very large g= -1.7 reduction in death anxiety3. The exposure was based on thinking about death and related subjects rather than physical exposure to corpses, morgues, etc. Patients gradually confronted death-related thoughts, scenarios, and stimuli that brought on panic.
Nearly two millennia ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca told us that this was the way to go. Because death isn’t a future event and a sudden severance with life but a condition of each moment. “We do not suddenly fall on death, but advance toward it by slight degrees; we die each day,” Seneca wrote (Letter 24.20). The loss of yesterdays and old friends, the observance of physical decline, and the vanished moments we can’t return to are little deaths that prepare us as we consider them.
Cicero gets the job done rhetorically. It’s logical. But he doesn’t dwell on the practice and so weakens the work.
Afterlife Arguments:
I have no set opinion on the afterlife, but if I wanted Cicero to convince me there was one, I’d walk away disappointed. He scoffs at afterlife punishments in part because there’s no evidence for it. Yet he turns to metaphysics and appeals to the authority of a similar nature to argue for the immortality of the soul and an eternal paradise.
It’s ironic, because in De Natura Deorum 1.10 Cicero himself criticizes the Pythagoreans for this:
“I am not accustomed to approve that which we hear of the Pythagoreans—it is said that when they made an assertion in a discussion, and were asked why they said so, they would answer: 'He himself said it' (Ipse dixit); and this 'he' was Pythagoras."
Maybe he deems death anxiety harmful and the hope of an afterlife helpful for his purposes, so he goes with it. But the argument is more suited for a rhetorician than a philosopher. Particularly in the original Latin, these passages are stirring. In his defense, these ipse dixit arguments are support, not proof. Cicero can’t logically convince us an afterlife in the same way he dismisses the myths of underworld torements. He’s exploring possible hopes and is willing to cite the conjectures of well-respected thinkers like Plato.
Another shoddy argument: believe in an afterlife because the great heroes of the past must have too. They willingly died for Rome, and who does that unless they believe they’ll go on to another life?
But not all men who die in battle expect to die, and many who do are shielding something more precious than their lives. They might die for virtue, vanity, loved ones, or a thousand other things. If anything is judged more important than one more breath, a trade may take place. We shouldn’t conclude they believed anything in particular about souls.
It’s Never Too Soon To Die…Or Is It?
Modern people may have the hardest time swallowing Cicero’s assertion that we can never die too soon. It was a common argument of the era, and embraced by other schools, including the Stoics.
Dying early, Cicero says, might be a stroke of luck because it spares us from tragedies, failures, and prevents self-disgrace in the final acts of life. He gives several examples of men who “lived too long,” and so fell from the heights they achieved. We only call death “untimely” because we consider the years “lost.” But Cicero says we should instead view these lost years as evils avoided.
Ironically, Cicero makes this argument in this book written in 63 B.C. when he’d already lived too long by his own standards.
Cicero’s life was a good one. He worked hard, sharpened his skills, helped his country in numerous capacities, and achieved well-deserved fame and influence. His peak was 63 B.C., when as consul he crushed the Catiline conspiracy and saved the republic from a coup. But he didn’t die there, but kept living for twenty more years.
He let his ego get the best of him and was mocked for demanding ever more honors and recognition. In Ad Familiares 5.12, Cicero wrote what might be the most cringeworthy letter in Roman history, addressed to the historian Lucceius. He asked him to write a special history book about his consulship. “…praise those actions of mine in warmer terms than you perhaps feel, and in that respect to neglect the laws of history….yield to your affection for me a little more than truth shall justify.”
Because no poets glorified Cicero with an epic, Cicero wrote an epic poem about himself. It is not the stuff of Homer, shall we say. It survives only in fragments, and those lines would be funny if they weren’t delusionally pathetic.
But it only gets worse: he lost his old influence with the people and senate, saw the Roman Republic he’d devoted his life to destroyed by Julius Caesar, sank into debt, which led him to further mistakes, and then he lost his beloved daughter Tullia in childbirth, which nearly broke him.
So far, it seems like Cicero was right. Maybe death would have been preferable to all this hubris and loss. Except…
Cicero wasn’t just floundering after his consulship, but thinking. It was the most productive period of his incredibly fertile mind. Almost every famous Cicero book — including Tusculan Disputations — was produced during this period, written over long days and nights when the disgraced statesman had exiled himself to his library.
His letters written during this period — when rediscovered by Petrarch in 1345 — helped spark the Renaissance. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison used Cicero’s De Officiis and De Republica as the primary sources for their claims about natural law and mixed government that appear in The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The wave of Republicans that arose in the 18th and 19th centuries would have looked very different without Cicero’s ideas, if they arose at all.
But Cicero didn’t die in disgrace. His peak was long behind him, but his finest hour was yet to come. When Brutus murdered Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., the 62-year-old Cicero was ready. He’d kept out of the limelight for years, and the Roman People had begun to forget his follies and look back on his leadership fondly.
With a dagger stained with Caesar’s blood still in his hand, Brutus called out — “Cicero, restore the republic!” Without opening his mouth, Cicero was once again become Rome’s arch protector.
Throngs of cheering people welcomed him back to the streets, and soon he was leading the senate again, rallying popular support for the republican restoration. He fearlessly denounced Caesar’s deputy, Mark Anthony, and raised a new senatorial army to fight him. The battle was won, and Cicero would likely have gotten his restored republic if a series of freak battlefield deaths hadn’t stripped the senatorial army of its loyal commanders, leaving Caesar’s young heir, Octavian, with the most influence. Octavion and Mark Anthony allied and turned against Cicero’s faction, and the old statesman was chased down and killed.
This is a loss, but one worthy of Cicero. Had he died in 63 BCE, he’d be nothing more than a forgotten footnote. Because he lived long enough to shame himself, to think and write, and to make one last stand for the right cause, he became a teacher of eternity. I’m not sure even Cicero could complain about a 1,900-year legacy as an ideological father of republics.
So once again, I think Cicero was mistaken. We can’t know what opportunities for redemption will arise, and what wonderful ironies will become apparent. Fate may hand us a second act. And even when we fail to live up to our ideals, they may echo through eternity to inspire another generation.
This is exactly the point I explored in “Welcome To The Hypocrisy Famine.”
Thanks for reading Socratic State of Mind.
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Britons and death fears Yougov poll.
Chapman Poll of American fears.
Menzies RE, et al. The effects of psychosocial interventions on death anxiety: A meta-analysis and systematic review of randomised controlled trials. J Anxiety Disord. 2018 Oct;59:64-73.
Man I love your analysis of books, philosophers, and ideas. Great stuff brother