In his poem De Rerum Natura, Lucretius describes the nature of things from the perspective of Epicureanism. As well as providing us with reasons not to fear death, Lucretius also gives a fascinating account of how death is involved in much of our daily lives.

A Material World

Lucretius’ work is naturalistic, exploring the nature of the cosmos by observing its composition. Lucretius describes the world in materialist terms. In other words, the cosmos is comprised of matter. Material things are made up of atoms; even the soul is material.

The material soul animates us and awakens our senses. (De Rerum Natura, III:146-49, 160) The foundation of our experience is the soul’s capacity to bring our mind and senses to life. At the point of death, the soul breaks down and disperses, leaving the body. (DRN, III:838-42)

As the soul was our source of animation and sensibility, the loss of the soul becomes the loss of experience. Absent of the senses, we have no means to experience the world.

Death and Change

Lucretius argues that there is no life after death, only oblivion. The soul, no longer joined to the body, cannot support life. When the soul leaves, life ends. However, Lucretius describes a second characterisation of death.

According to Lucretius, death can be a radical change in something. Lucretius argues that when we undergo change (e.g., changing one’s mind), part of us dies. He writes:

The living mind is mortal, since whoever wants to change
The mind or any other substance has to rearrange
The organisation of its structure, or add to the sum,
Or else must take away at least some tiny morsel from
The whole. But what’s immortal does not suffer any new
Arrangement of its members, nor can it be added to,
Neither can even one iota of it flow away.
For anything that does, because of this transformation, stray
Beyond the limits of itself [quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit], then from that moment on
Whatever thing it might have been before is dead and gone [hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante].

DRN, III:511-20

Here, death is not the soul’s dispersal. Rather, death is the result of a considerable rearrangement of something’s structure.

A key aspect of our mortality is transformation. The link between mortality and change is our capacity for structural rearrangements to accommodate transformation. In other words, alterations in the structure of a thing necessitates the originating structure’s death. The old must perish to make way for the new. What does this mean for us and our relationship with death?

A Life of Little Deaths

Death is not limited to the end of life. Spinoza said as much about the unfortunate Spanish poet.¹ Death can be just one transformation in a series of transformations. Another death in a life full of little deaths. Death is a dance of atoms allowing for growth, development, and ingenuity. Every profound change in our lives is predicated by the death, decomposition and reconstitution of our past.

By suggesting this, Lucretius attempts to normalise death as part of the natural order of things. He provides a rational, naturalist explanation for death’s purpose. Knowing this purpose means we can understand its necessity to life and the benefits it brings us. Understanding death in this way means we can begin to accept it as an integral part of growth and development.

References

¹ Spinoza, Ethics, IV P39

Bibliography

Carus, L.T., Stallings, A.E. and Jenkyns, R. (2015) The nature of things. London: Penguin Books.

Further Reading

Mitsis, P. (2012) ‘When death is there, we are not’, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death, pp. 200–217.

Segal, C. (2016) Lucretius on death and anxiety – poetry and philosophy in De rerum natura. Princeton University Press.

Warren, J. (2009) ‘Removing fear’, The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, pp. 234–248.