ABSTRACT
'The Lucretian argument’ urges us to see that there is nothing intrinsically terrifying about nonexistence. Just as we look back with indifference on the indefinitely long period in the past in which we did not exist, so, Lucretius contends, we ought to contemplate with the same detachment and indifference the period after which we will have ceased to exist. If nonexistence was not so bad before, it will not be any worse later. What troubles us about death, on the reasonable assumption that it involves future nonexistence, is that, for at least some of that time during which we will not exist, we could be experiencing the goods of life, but will not be. Contemporary philosophers have therefore reformulated Lucretius’s challenge in a way that makes it more powerful. If we are unconcerned about the loss of that good life, perhaps we should be equally unconcerned about the loss of good life in the future through death.
