Death as Natural Transition
Death is not an evil but a natural transition — the return of one's elements to nature and the completion of a rational life.
Marcus Aurelius viewed death as the return of borrowed elements to nature. The body was borrowed from nature; at death it returns. If one has lived virtuously, there is nothing to regret. If one has not, death cannot remedy that. In either case, death itself is not an evil — only living badly is.
Death is nothing to us. When death is, I am not; when I am, death is not.
Stoic death acceptance influenced Epicurean death philosophy, later adapted by Renaissance humanists and modern existentialist thinkers.
Letter to Menoeceus
Written about in
- What Stoicism says about death
Death returns borrowed elements to nature, so the thing itself is not an evil — only living badly is. The library records this one with a line from Epicurus, and the two rival schools did agree on that much.