Politeia

Democritus, the Epicureans, and Seneca were deeply interested in the topic of the fear of death. They believed that this passion is generated by many wrong beliefs about its harmfulness that must be removed in order to help individuals lead a blissful mortal life. But all three also affirmed that, in some extreme cases, the fear of dying leads humans to paradoxically search for the very death they are trying to flee. Indeed, they argued that the fear of death sometimes results in self-destruction or suicide, and sometimes in a bad and unhappy form of life that is a state close to death, a condition comparable to «a long time in dying» (Democritus), of the sleepwalker (the Epicureans), or of a “half-life” (Seneca). In this paper, I try, on the one hand, to explain what this movement of the “escape-chase” of death is, and on the other, to recognize both the similarities and the differences between the three moralists.

Stoic scholarship over the past several decades has identified the centrality of phantasiai or impressions for their accounts of action, determinism, and overall moral theory.ii While not disputing the importance of impressions, I do think that there are important unresolved issues surrounding their interpretation. In this paper, I shall identify two of those problems. Though I shall hint at a possible solution to one of the problems, my goal is not to placate but to agitate, for (as I argue in my conclusion) these problems ought to be disquieting to those interested in understanding Stoicism.

From the ideas of Aristotle, De Saussure and Wittgenstein, philosopher Herbert McCabe elaborated an original anthropology. 'Meaning' means: the role played by a part towards the whole. Senses are bodily organs and sensations allow an animal to get fragments of the external world which become 'meaningful' for the behaviour of the whole animal Besides sensations, humans are ‘linguistic animals’ because through words they are able to 'communicate', that is, to share a peculiar kind of meanings: concepts. Whereas, sense-images are stored physically in our brain and cannot be shared, even though we can relate to sense-images by words (speech coincides with thought). However, concepts do not belong to the individual human being qua individual, but to an interpersonal entity: the language system. Therefore, on the one hand, to store images is a sense-power and an operation of the brain, whereas the brain (quite paradoxically!) is not in itself the organ of thought. On the other hand, concepts do not exist on their own.