I was amazed at how contented and happy our little dog Clinton was right up to his last day. Even the vet remarked that he was always a cheerful and cooperative little guy even as she was giving him only a short time left.
Although the philosopher Epicurus died over 2200 years ago, he no doubt went as a happy man. He lent his name to the idea of living well, epicurean, and he taught that to live happily was to live without fear of pain or death. The only way to leave well is to live well.
The Stoics also taught that the acceptance life’s pain as well as pleasure was essential for the good life. Death comes to all but those who accept this without fear will have an easier time of it. I talked about the current fashion for Stoicism in a previous post. For a quiet read before bedtime I keep a copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the emperor and Stoic philosopher. I’m not too sure about his passing though, because Marcus died of the plague in the midst of a war. The Stoics and the Buddhist share many teachings. The Buddha advises to meditate every morning on the inevitability of your own death. I would rather drink coffee. Socrates was offered a chance of exile or escape from Athens, but he chose to die as he had lived, a life of honor. He takes the hemlock, telling Crito to see that his last debt to Asclepius is paid: A chicken.
So I think it was the Epicureans who got it right. Living at peace with yourself means getting rid of worry and the fear of pain and most of all the fear of death. The epicurean poet Lucretius thought so too. He said that we didn’t suffer a lack of life before we were born and we certainly won’t worry about it after we are gone. Epicurus said the art of living well and the art of dying well are one.
Many people put their hopes in a heavenly afterlife in order to meet the reaper. My Mom was a hundred and one in her last days and a faithful Catholic. She told me God had given her a good life but forgot the button. The button? You know, the one to turn it off. She was content and ready to go. But the doubters and strict heathens can also live and die at peace. I don’t know where my mother got such faith in a heavenly afterlife, but it sure wasn’t from her own mother. My grandmother was a cantankerous old-school Marxist who one day announced at dinner: “oh, the hell with this,” and promptly expired. You die as you lived.
David Hume, the 18th century skeptic and empiricist, died as he had lived, with equanimity and good cheer and not a bit of hope for immortality. His ever loyal friend, the economist Adam Smith, wrote that in his last days Hume spent his time entertaining friends with conversation and card playing. He was of such good nature and cheerfulness as always and, toward the end, his own physician could hardly believe he was dying. Hume said to his doctor that he was “dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.” He did indeed have enemies, mostly the clerical establishment in Scotland and the religious academics who denied him a professorship. Dennis C. Rasmussen tells the story of the remarkable friendship of Adam Smith and David Hume in The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought (Princeton University Press, 2017). Hume initiated the development of philosophical empiricism and religious skepticism that is characteristic of contemporary thought. Smith, the darling of modern day capitalists, started the belief in free markets and helped to found modern sociological and economic studies. The book tells the story of David Boswell’s visit to the dying Hume. Boswell apparently believed that any man confronted with the nearness of death would return to religion and a hope for eternal life. He attempted to urge Hume to forsake his lifelong denial of a human and eternal soul. Hume told him that after he was gone he could no more regret his non-existence than he had regretted his lack of life before he was ever born. The opinionated Boswell went away disgruntled and unhappy, but Hume remained “placid and even cheerful” with a tranquility of mind. Hume was a true epicurean who believed that a good life was being of good cheer, surrounded by friends, as he was to the last.
The Scottish Church tried to excommunicate Hume for his irreligious ideas. For his part, Hume wrote that even some of religion’s virtues were instead actually vices: “celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues.” His life, despite his setbacks and his enemies, was to the very end placid and optimistic. He had described himself as a “man of mild disposition” with an “open, social, and cheerful humour.”
The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.
Two Strikes 