ABSTRACT
For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. This chapter discusses two arguments that are at least suggested or inspired by the passage, whether or not they are what Epicurus actually had in mind. Proponents of either argument could use his words to express the basic idea behind it. The two arguments purport to show that, contrary to common sense and the vast majority of philosophers, death doesn’t harm, isn’t bad for, the one who dies. Everyone agrees that the process of dying can be painful, and therefore harmful, for the person undergoing it. What Epicureans deny, and anti-Epicureans affirm, is that the event of death, which puts an end to the process of dying, and more generally to the person’s life, can harm her. One of the arguments, the Timing Argument, figures prominently in the contemporary literature on the evil of death.
