PHIL 839 Stoics, Epicureans, & Skeptics
Recent research has highlighted the importance of Philosophy as Medicine of the Soul. In the Phaedo Plato attempts to cure the fear of death as well as to show how we should live by arguing for the immateriality and immortality of the soul. The Epicureans too desired to dispel this fear, but by means of arguments for the materiality and mortality of the soul. As for the Stoic Epictetus he claims that "death is nothing terrible;...what is terrible is the judgment that death is terrible" and that soul is material. A careful reading of the Phaedo and of Lucretius' On the Nature of the Universe followed by some reading of the Stoics will help us to understand the various philosophical underpinnings for curing the fear of death as well as the nature of passions and their relation to mind.