For many years, philosophers have tried to distinguish the difference in having courage and having fear. Do the courageous have fear or do they just have a particular way of approaching fear? Death is an important factor that plays into courage because there are many courageous acts that one could take part in that could mean their ultimate demise. Can the courageous fear death or should they even fear death? Every day people are put into situations that can mean life or death. What does it truly mean to be courageous? Is it nearly getting yourselves into situations that bring you to the brink of death or is it not fearing death itself? These are questions that we look to solve every day and philosophers like Aristotle and Lucretius have taken
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In this argument, Lucretius begins to question if death is actually a bad thing. He begins to talk about the time in which no one feared which was the time in which one didn’t exist (before birth) (Warren, 2008). In this time, you did not have to worry about any distress or hardships. He then compares this time to the future nonexistence, which is death. After death, there is no subject to death or pleasure. It is because that we should fear the past and not our future existence because of the different experiences that we went through, and what brought us pain. An example, from Steven Rosenbaum, is a patient is in a hospital, getting ready to have surgery. The doctor tells the patient that the procedure they will be having is one of the most successful surgeries and is the safest procedure (Rosenbaum, 2013). Since the doctor told me them this, and because of having this same surgery in the past, the patient is not fearful of the effects that come with the surgery in the end (Rosenbaum, 2013). The patient remembers how painful the surgery was and has to stay awake during the surgery to collaborate with the doctor, but they give the patient medicine to forget the past few hours of surgery. The person wakes ups, asking their nurse when the surgery will proceed and how long it will last. The nurse remembers the facts, but she cannot put the facts to faces. The nurse tells the patient that they might have been the patient who had their ten-hour operation yesterday or they might be the patient who has their one-hour operation tonight (Rosenbaum, 2013). Knowing this, the patient hopes that their procedure is the one from yesterday, and if it was yesterday that patient would feel relieved. This example is a good interpretation of the symmetry argument, but, as stated by Rosenabum, is a “neutral relative if
In this argument, Lucretius begins to question if death is actually a bad thing. He begins to talk about the time in which no one feared which was the time in which one didn’t exist (before birth) (Warren, 2008). In this time, you did not have to worry about any distress or hardships. He then compares this time to the future nonexistence, which is death. After death, there is no subject to death or pleasure. It is because that we should fear the past and not our future existence because of the different experiences that we went through, and what brought us pain. An example, from Steven Rosenbaum, is a patient is in a hospital, getting ready to have surgery. The doctor tells the patient that the procedure they will be having is one of the most successful surgeries and is the safest procedure (Rosenbaum, 2013). Since the doctor told me them this, and because of having this same surgery in the past, the patient is not fearful of the effects that come with the surgery in the end (Rosenbaum, 2013). The patient remembers how painful the surgery was and has to stay awake during the surgery to collaborate with the doctor, but they give the patient medicine to forget the past few hours of surgery. The person wakes ups, asking their nurse when the surgery will proceed and how long it will last. The nurse remembers the facts, but she cannot put the facts to faces. The nurse tells the patient that they might have been the patient who had their ten-hour operation yesterday or they might be the patient who has their one-hour operation tonight (Rosenbaum, 2013). Knowing this, the patient hopes that their procedure is the one from yesterday, and if it was yesterday that patient would feel relieved. This example is a good interpretation of the symmetry argument, but, as stated by Rosenabum, is a “neutral relative if