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Is It Rational to Fear Death?

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Is It Rational to Fear Death?
Sydney Caron

Topic: Is it rational to fear death? If so, what is the relation (if any) between the badness of death and the rationality of fearing it? If not, explain why many people fear death.

To Fear Death is to Waste Life

When considering whether or not it is rational to fear death, I argue that the fear of death is an irrational fear. In order to support my argument, I will consider three main reasons why people fear death and how the fear of death ties directly to the badness that is believed of death. I will also outline Epicurus’ point of view on death and the reason for my own personal belief that death is not to be feared.

Is it rational to fear death?

Is it rational to fear death? No. A better question is: Is it rational to fear a wasted life and face death with nothing to proudly and happily look back on? Yes. I am currently 20 years old; I already find myself with regrets about the past, dissatisfaction about the present, and anxiety about the future. How is it that this is even possible? I, if God should will it, should live at least 60 more years! Yet, here I am, waiting, worrying and wondering if my life will be of worth at all. Continuously, I find myself doing something or not doing something in hope or fear that it will impact my future either positively or negatively. Eventually, after 20 years of exhausting contemplation, I came to a conclusion; I’ve been waiting to live, planning to live, wanting to live, all while living. I began to look around, watch others, pay attention to the paths they’ve decided to follow, and I again came to a conclusion: It seems as though we as humans spend a large amount of time fearing death, we avoid risks in life, so that in the end, we can make it safely to death. How absurd…So why do people fear death so much so that they sacrifice their life in order to avoid it? In contemplating this, I came up with 3 of many reasons why people fear death:

1) People fear the unknown. Death
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