Should We Fear Death?

Epicurus and Redditors say that we shouldn’t fear death - for it cannot harm us, given that, when we’re dead, we no longer exist.  In order to be harmed, we must exist.  But if death is the cessation of our existence, then we cannot be harmed by it.  

There’s a few points we can make in response to this:  First - death isn’t the cessation of existence. It’s the deprivation of our bodies from our souls and our ability to commune with our loved ones and to help them along.  It’s thus an immense damage to us.  

Second, even if death were a cessation, it’d still harm us - it just wouldn’t harm us at the moment of death or posterior to our death.  We’d be harmed by it while alive, for death means that our existence only extends finitely into the future, and that’s a harm for us, for we should continue to exist into the future.  And note that this is a harm for us while we still exist, even if death ceases our existence in the future.

WLC quote: “We are rightly afraid to die because by dying we lose everything, even our own selves. It’s just wrongheaded to imagine a person after he dies and to say that death can’t hurt him because he doesn’t exist. We don’t fear that after we cease to exist, we might somehow be harmed by death. Rather what we fear is ceasing to exist!”