The Value of the World and of Oneself by Mor Segev

Author:Mor Segev
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

4.4. Death as an Evil

Aristotle’s view of death as an evil to be avoided rather than a good to be welcomed can again be helpfully compared to Plato’s view in the Phaedo. There, Socrates maintains that, unlike the philosopher, all other people (πάντες οἱ ἄλλοι) regard death as a great evil, and so, when they face death, they do so out of fear of a greater evil, which makes them, paradoxically, “courageous by fearing and alarm” (68d). Aristotle agrees with that assessment. In Eudemian Ethics III.1, he says that a person who “endures . . . death” (ὑπομένει . . . τὸν θάνατον) because of either pleasure or the avoidance of greater pains cannot be justly called brave (1229b32–1230a4). In Nicomachean Ethics III.7, similarly, he argues that it is cowardly to die “fleeing poverty, or erotic love, or something painful” (τι λυπηρὸν), because fleeing “painful things” (τὰ ἐπίπονα) is “soft,” and a person facing death in such a way does not do so because it is fine, but rather acts thus “escaping an evil” (φεύγων κακόν) (1116a12–15).

However, there is also a significant point of divergence between Aristotle and the Socrates of the Phaedo. Socrates contrasts those who prefer death over a burdensome life to the philosopher, who believes that “he will encounter wisdom (φρονήσει) clearly nowhere else but there [sc. in Hades],” and hence would not be fearful of death (68b). Philosophers, then, are primarily courageous (68c), and Socrates, following suit, claims to be “neither angered nor vexed” by the prospect of leaving life, believing that he “will encounter there, no less than here, both good leaders and good companions” (69d–e). For Socrates, those who prefer death fearing a burdensome life are not wrong for preferring death. They are wrong for preferring death for the wrong reasons. The philosopher, who still prefers death, would face it courageously because of recognizing it as a good. Indeed, philosophers “desire death” (θανατῶσι) (64b8), expecting it to afford them the “greatest goods” (μέγιστα . . . ἀγαθὰ) (63e8–64a2).

If it is not directly in response to Phaedo 63e–64a that Aristotle says, in Nicomachean Ethics III.9, 1117b9–15, that the courageous person would be overly pained by death, since that person assesses living as “most of all valuable” (μάλιστα . . . ἄξιον), and that death would deprive the virtuous and happy person of “the greatest goods” (μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν), it may as well have been. In saying so, Aristotle reverses Socrates’s position. He argues that the virtuous and happy person—and hence necessarily also the philosopher, who for Aristotle is the most virtuous and perfectly happy person (cf. Nicomachean Ethics X.7)—has most to gain by staying alive and should not welcome death.47 This is what we would expect him to think, in light of our discussion so far. Because for Aristotle, as we have seen, though the human intellect persists eternally and operates posthumously in a purer and superior way to any instance of thinking occurring during a human life, the immortality of the intellect does not afford personal immortality.

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