Rejoice! For God is dead; life is meaningless; and we all inevitably die. So says Albert Camus in his classic literary essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. As an existentialist, Camus sets out to uncover the absurdity of existence in a universe devoid of any sort of divinely ordained meaning. Primarily, he wonders what’s to stop us from falling into suicidal despair if our lives are cosmically meaningless, hurtling towards a death that is both “inevitable and despicable” (395).

For Camus, however, it is the very struggle to make meaning in the face of the “unreasonable silence of the world” that constitutes a life worth living and one well-lived. Acknowledging the absurdity of existence, he claims, “drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.” Knowing that death is the only guarantee in life, man can fully and joyfully accept the responsibility and freedom that comes with being “master of his days” (395).

To illustrate this point, Camus compares the human condition to that of the mythological Greek hero Sisyphus. For defying the gods, Sisyphus is condemned to the pits of Tartarus, an infernal realm of torture located in the farthests depths of Hades. His unending punishment, as you may already be aware, is to push a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll back down upon reaching the top.

Rather than interpret this myth as tragic, however, Camus imagines a Sisyphus who has fully comprehended the extent of his existence, made peace with the meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a hill, and, in so doing, found purpose and joy in the life he has to live. As Camus eloquently concludes his essay:

Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile … The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (395)

No doubt, there’s a certain appeal to Camus’s interpretation of this ancient Greek myth. Who hasn’t, at one time or another, felt as if he were Sisyphus? And yet, for all its sincerity, the essay seems to raise more questions than it settles. There’s the quite obvious point that, unlike Sisyphus, most humans do not live in isolation from one another. We are social creatures who make meaning and find joy in historical and social contexts greater than our individual selves. Without community, family, or friends, it’s hard to imagine Sisyphus happy as Camus insists we must.

Moreover, Sisyphus’s fate, being commanded by the gods, is not cosmically meaningless but divinely ordained. Throughout the essay, then, there’s an inherent tension between Camus’s assumed atheism and his deployment of a myth whose narrative structure is dependent upon the existence of gods. The essay, therefore, far from settles questions about the theological significance of our own existence and finitude.

Finally, there’s the ultimate matter of death, which is a constant presence in our lives in a way wholly foreign to Sisyphus. His torture endures for all eternity. If Sisyphus, despite his fate, can reason his way to a happy, meaningful life, as Camus imagines he can, he can live securely in the knowledge that his blissful existence can never be taken from him. Us mere mortals, on the other hand, face a conclusion that differs from Sisyphus’s.

The inevitability of death has a way of forcing our hand, making us ponder the kinds of questions that Camus’s essay raises. Does God exist? Is there an ultimate purpose to human existence? Is there life, in some form or manner, after death? And, how should we live out our short mortal existence in light of the answers to these age-old questions?

Back in March, Front Porch Republic contributor Frank DeVito took up these considerations in an essay titled Staring into the Abyss. “Facing such questions,” he expounds in true Kierkegaardian fashion, “should be like standing at the edge of a precipice, before an abyss so deep and dark that one cannot see the bottom.” Throughout the essay, DeVito gives considerable attention to how a non-believer might make sense of all this. By non-believer, he means individuals we would broadly describe as materialist atheists. DeVito wonders how “one can truly embrace life, find meaning, and thrive if the ultimate end is nothingness.” He concludes that “[b]elief in God, in a spiritual reality, in the existence of an immaterial soul, and therefore of life after bodily death is both the better, healthier belief for human living and the more reasonable one.”

While I don’t necessarily agree with DeVito’s ultimate conclusion, I do wholeheartedly embrace the spirit of his essay, namely that “[m]an must face the reality of his own existence and his ultimate fate. To stare into the abyss of eternity, to examine and grasp the meaning of life, is a necessity.” As someone who might be categorically described as a non-believer, I’d like to offer some illumination on three questions that Devito raises. First, why abandon faith in God and an afterlife? Second, if there truly are no eternal consequences to our actions, why not pursue a life of unabashed hedonism? And finally, what is the appropriate emotional response towards death, and do non-believers really find their answers to this question satisfying?

The point here is not necessarily to debate or critique DeVito’s views. Though, there’ll certainly be moments where we disagree, as already made clear. Rather, my hope is to open an honest and respectful dialogue between two individuals with differing views on these deepest of human inquiries, to stare into the abyss not in solitude, as was Sisyphus’s fate, but in human companionship and with a shared sense of intellectual and ethical purpose.

The Christian God might exist. And if he does, there’ll be (literal!) hell to pay for the non-believer. So, why not play it safe? Just believe.

This argument, known as Pascal’s Wager, was deployed in 1670 by the French polymath Blaise Pascal from whom the argument gets its name. It’s a compelling line of thought, and one which DeVito, himself, mobilizes in response to the proliferation of non-belief in contemporary society:

It seems reasonable that man, with his infinite longings and natural dread of non-existence, should want to believe. One would think that Pascal’s Wager would lead more people to prefer belief to unbelief: If God and eternity are real, belief or unbelief have profound, eternal consequences. If God and eternity are not real, it makes no difference what one believes in the end. Why doesn’t modern man default towards belief rather than unbelief?

I can’t claim to speak for all non-believers. However, I would like to draw upon my own personal experience, not to refute the existence of God, but rather, to illustrate why one might choose not to believe.

I wasn’t always a non-believer. I was born, baptized, and confirmed a Lutheran, the tradition of my maternal ancestors in which my great-grandfather was a pastor. Sundays and holidays were spent in creaky, highly varnished church pews and, in my younger years, the cold plastic chairs and fluorescent lighting of Sunday school basement rooms. I took to heart the beliefs and lessons I learned at church. I believed in the literal existence of God as described in the Bible as well as Heaven and Hell and was moved by the teachings of Jesus Christ, whose ethics no doubt still inform my own sense of morality to this day.

Moreover, as a youth, I was also exposed to Catholicism, my paternal grandmother being a devout Catholic and her sister a nun at the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. I have many fond memories of taking my grandma to mass and going on family road trips to visit the nuns in Indiana, inhabiting their sacred spaces, replete with grand architecture, animated stained glass, and a level of socioeconomic diversity one rarely sees in a Lutheran church.

As many here I think will attest, there’s an ineffable, perhaps even mystical, weight to Catholicism that satisfies the spiritual and aesthetic longings of us mere mortals. Perhaps it’s the deep historicity of experiencing a tradition that dates back over two millennia. Or maybe it’s the veneration of the saints and blessed Virgin Mary, a practice that seems to fill the void left asunder after our European ancestors abandoned their indigenous pantheons of gods. Who can say for sure? Maybe there’s truly something divine at work in Catholicism. Non-believer as I am today, I’m not closed off to the possibility. At the very least, one should take seriously the tradition that inspired the profuse imagination of J. R. R. Tolkien!

The supreme irony of this all is that it was at a Jesuit university where I eventually lost my faith. It was the fall semester of 2005, and I, like all the incoming freshmen, was required to take a course on Christian theology. I can’t say much theology was taught, but we did get a fairly thorough overview of the early history of Christianity, learning about the Gnostic traditions, the canonization of the Bible, and the political maneuverings that went into establishing the early Church. Placing my religion within a broader historical context was jarring, to say the least. In retrospect, it reminds me of the brief period in graduate school where I entertained the idea of doing research on stand-up comedy. Held up to a critical eye, comedy simply becomes less funny, religion less sacred.

I don’t think this need be the default reaction. Certainly the Jesuits are known for their ability to appreciate and adapt to the histories and backgrounds of other cultures, to say nothing of their contributions to the advancement of science. Alas, the mind of an eighteen-year-old is often prone to hasty reactions and viscerally repelled by nuance and contradiction—at least mine was. And so I did what any immature youth would do in this scenario; I flat out rejected the traditions of my upbringing.

It was, in many ways, an intellectually exciting period of my life. I minored in religious studies, exploring the history and philosophy of the world’s great traditions—no doubt, in the hope of filling the void left by my departure from Christianity. I waded in the waters, with varying but fleeting degrees of commitment, of several traditions: Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Neopaganism, and Atheopaganism (yes, that’s a thing).

In the end, however, I’ve settled upon a fairly secular, scientific, and philosophically informed view of the cosmos and human existence. Human beings, I’ve come to hold, are likely nothing more than biological and chemical processes whose existence is the result of a long chain of organic and inorganic evolution. Cosmically, our lives are meaningless outside of the meaning and significance we ascribe to them ourselves as individuals and social groups. This life is the only one we have, and it’s very likely that eternal nothingness awaits us after we die.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself an outright atheist. I’m open to the possibility that God does exist. However, I find it more likely that God as described in the Bible, to say nothing of the more ancient pantheons that predated Christianity, is nothing more than a metaphor for some grand, ineffable divinity that pervades all existence. This “God,” if it does exist, might be something more akin to the Chinese concept of Tao, Aristotle’s Prime Mover, or, if we’d like to stay within the realm of Christian theology, Paul Tillich’s “Ground of Being.”

Nor would I say that I’m a fully committed materialist. I’m also open to the possibility that a spiritual realm exists beyond our mundane sense of perception. This realm may or may not be composed of matter. Science has, again and again, illuminated the profound mystery and beauty of our cosmos, so who’s to say what else is awaiting our discovery? In this regard, I might be more accurately described as a “skeptical naturalist.” However, there’s a certain rebellious appeal to DeVito’s idea of the “non-believer,” so let’s stick with that.

Now, all this may explain how I lost my faith. But it still doesn’t answer Pascal’s question: why wager my soul (if such a thing can be said to exist) against the possible existence of a god who might punish me for all eternity after my death? A hefty question, indeed, given my overall reverence towards Christianity and healthy sense of skepticism towards my own secular beliefs, to say nothing of my general aversion towards gambling.

It’s important to note that Pascal was operating in an historical context in which the only serious wager would have been between Christianity and non-belief. However, in our contemporary age, informed by an expansive sense of history and globalized awareness of other traditions and cultures, the options are nearly infinite. Placing Pascal’s Wager in this context, the inquiring non-believer comes to a line of argument that has many more factors to consider before one can place their wager. First, there’s the sheer diversity of belief of known religious traditions, both living and dead, throughout the past 10,000 or so years of recorded human existence (to avoid further complexity, we’ll set aside the innumerable unknown traditions throughout the past 300,000 years of modern homo sapien existence). Today’s non-believer, then, needs to consider the veridical likelihood of each tradition and the consequences inherent in non-adherence to each.

If ever there were a Sisyphean task! To make a truly informed decision on matters of religion, then, the non-believer would need an infinite amount of time to consider his options, which would continue to expand exponentially with the passage of time and further evolution of human culture. Just as he’d come to a final decision, some new belief or modification of an old belief would make its way onto the scene of human thought—the boulder would roll back down the hill, so to speak. We begin to see why Kierkegaard concludes that matters of religious belief cannot be rationalized but, in the end, must be taken on faith.

Perhaps one day, I too will take that Kierkegardian leap of faith back to the Church. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. Though I suspect, skeptic that I am, my reasons would be more pragmatic in nature. For, outside of metaphysical considerations, there are plenty of valid reasons why a non-believer might return: the duty to honor and carry on the traditions of my ancestors; the desire to reinfuse my holidays, which I still continue to observe, with a renewed sense of spiritual and historical significance; the very real human need for community with a shared set of beliefs and ethics. I can sometimes even imagine myself returning, albeit as a man “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape,” as the avowed convert C. S. Lewis exclaimed (295). Yes, perhaps that day will come, but, as St. Augustine infamously put it: sed noli modo—just not yet!

If God is dead, then everything is permitted. This notion is a central theme in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It’s a fair enough concern. If religion has historically been the bedrock of our morality, then what happens to our collective ethics when we do away with it? Without belief in transcendent moral principles and a god who will reward or punish our actions for all eternity in the afterlife, why not do whatever we please with our finitude?

DeVito ponders this quandary throughout his essay as well:

If the materialist non-believer is correct, if we all return to non-existence after bodily death, then we only have a short life to live, and it doesn’t really matter what we think or what we do between now and the moment of death. Therefore, it is quite dangerous that so many people default to materialist atheism, to non-belief. The benefits are minimal—some freedom to engage in hedonism in this short life, perhaps. But the potential consequences are eternal.

Like DeVito, I think there’s much to commend about religion, particularly as an institution with the potential to resist hedonism writ large and specifically contemporary consumer capitalism. But does it necessarily follow that religion—and specifically Christianity—is a necessary precondition to resisting the endless pleasures served up on the platter of our modern age? I would argue no, that the probability of eternal non-existence or the absence of divine judgment don’t necessarily lead one to a life of hedonistic worship at the altar of consumer capitalism (and neither does religion inoculate one from hedonism, but that’s a separate matter beyond the purview of this essay). For the modern non-believer, the responsibility to live a good and moral life can be felt just as strongly as any devout Christian. I certainly have no desire to live a hedonistic lifestyle.

Now, one could argue that this last attitude is just a remnant of my Christian upbringing, some latent sense of morality that’s manifested despite my more modern metaphysical beliefs. I’ll concede there might be some truth to that. If we turn towards other philosophical traditions that predated Christianity, however, we can begin to see that religious belief is not a necessary precondition to rejecting a hedonistic lifestyle. The ancient Epicureans, in particular, offer an interesting and prescient case in point, and it’s towards their philosophy I’ll turn, not for the purpose of winning over converts but, rather, to demonstrate there’s historical precedent to my argument.

Founded in 3rd century BC Athens, the Epicureans followed the teachings of Epicurus of Samos, from whom the school gets its name. They posited a materialist worldview that all but denied the existence of the gods and firmly rejected the possibility of an afterlife. Like many ancient schools of thought, their metaphysical beliefs were intricately tied to their ethics, which encouraged the pursuit of a radically simple lifestyle that rejected the unbridled pursuit of traditional pleasures. For nearly half a millenia, Epicureanism thrived as a philosophy in both classical Greece and Rome, contending with other major schools like Stoicism, Platonism, and Peripateticism (Aristotelianism), only giving way to the latter two along with the burgeoning Christian religion by the late 3rd century AD.

Since the Enlightenment, however, there’s been a steady and growing interest in Epicureanism. From Thomas Jefferson and David Hume to Jeremy Bentham and even Karl Marx, the teachings of Epicurus have served as an inspiration to some of the greatest statesmen and thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Moreover, since the 1970s, there’s been an explosion in academic research on Epicureanism, and, more recently, interest has trickled out beyond the ivory tower, as evidenced by the publication of many books in the genre of popular philosophy that present Epicurean ideas as solutions to modern problems (on the latter, see: Stephanie Mills’s Epicurean Simplicity (2002), Daniel Klein’s Travels with Epicurus (2012), Hiram Crespo’s Tending the Epicurean Garden (2014), John Sellars’s The Pocket Epicurean (2021), and, most recently, Emily A. Austin’s Living for Pleasure (2023)).

A quick glance at the Epicurean worldview is telling as to why they might generate renewed interest in recent decades. Influenced by the earlier work of Democritus, the Epicureans were, first and foremost, fierce materialists. They subscribed to a view of nature that posited that everything was made of atoms, tiny, indestructible building blocks of existence not unlike a simplified view of our own concept of atoms today.

As such, the ancient Epicureans, like many of us today, sought natural, as opposed to supernatural, explanations to the phenomena of the world. In his epic poem On the Nature of Things, the Roman Epicurean Lucretius provides an eloquent and non-providential description of the origins of the material world:

When after all our world is made by nature,
Of her own, by chance, by the rush and collision of atoms,
Jumbled any which way, in the dark, to no result,
But at last tossed into combinations which
Became the origin of mighty things,
Of the earth and sky and all that live.
(Lucretius 2.1060-1065)

Moreover, while not atheists in our contemporary understanding of that word, the Epicureans, contrary to popular Greek and Roman beliefs, contended that the gods did not intervene in human affairs. “[T]he impious man is not he who denies the gods of the many,” notes Epicurus, “but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many” (Letter to Menoeceus, 178). According to the Epicureans, Homeric beliefs about supernatural, wrathful beings living on Mount Olympus and in constant need of appropriation were not in accordance with nature. For the Epicureans, the gods were, like all beings, composed of atoms. More importantly, however, they did not take an interest in human affairs. In this regard, we might consider the Epicureans to be atheists in the most literal sense of the term, in that they were without God (or gods in their case).

While their natural explanations were often wrong and their theology was an absolute mess, it’s, nonetheless, easy to see Epicureanism as an ancient precursor to our modern worldview in which science has supplanted religion as the dominant explanatory force in society. Had that been all the Epicureans promoted, however, it’s likely they’d have become no more than a footnote in the history of science. The true appeal of Epicureanism is that it offers a secular alternative to two of the fundamental questions traditionally answered by religion. Namely: how to live a good life and what to make of death. It’s towards the former line of inquiry that I’ll now turn.

The very first Epicureans met at the garden property of Epicurus, where, in addition to discussing philosophy, they dined at a large table and, overall, enjoyed the company of like-minded friends. If we’re to believe the Roman Stoic Seneca, writing three-and-a-half centuries later, there was a carved inscription in the garden which read: “Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure” (147). As this inscription reveals, the Epicureans were, technically, hedonists, that is they located pleasure as the highest (and only) good worthy of human pursuit. Epicurus notes:

And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good. (Letter to Menoeceus, 179)

Because of this association, to say nothing of their radical beliefs about the gods and death, many competing philosophies and later, medieval Christian apologists mischaracterized the Epicureans as advocating the wanton pursuit of pleasure. Indeed, in our own day, the term “epicure” is used to describe someone who takes pleasure in the consumption of fine food and drink.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The ancient Epicureans were a far cry from the elevated, bohemian foodies of today. As Seneca further informs us, upon entering Epicurus’s garden property:

The care-taker of that abode, a kindly host, will be ready for you; he will welcome you with barley-meal and serve you water also in abundance, with these words: “Have you not been well entertained?” “This garden,” he says, “does not whet your appetite; it quenches it. Nor does it make you more thirsty with every drink; it slakes the thirst by a natural cure, a cure that demands no fee. This is the ‘pleasure’ in which I have grown old.” (147)

Indeed, the Epicurean diet says much about their unique and radical relationship to pleasure, and it is a consistent talking point of ancient writers. In his classic work, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius notes how “Epicurus himself remarked in his letters that he was satisfied with just water and plain bread. ‘Send me a small pot of cheese,’ he wrote, ‘so that I can have a costly meal whenever I like.’ This was the man who gave it as his opinion that pleasure is life’s goal” (83). Likewise, Epicurus counsels:

[B]read and water produce the highest pleasure, when one who needs them puts them to his lips. To grow accustomed therefore to a simple and not luxurious diet gives us health to the full, and makes a man alert for the needful enjoyments of life … For it is not continuous drinkings and revellings, nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life. (179-80)

As demonstrated by their culinary tastes, the Epicureans saw that many traditionally hedonistic pursuits have deleterious consequences on our overall health and happiness. All pleasures are fleeting and many are followed by a never-ending desire for more.

For the Epicureans, then, the highest pleasure was the simple absence of pain and fear. Epicurus notes:

For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other things by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body. (179)

This, however, does not mean that we should always avoid pain. As Epicurus contends, “[M]any pains [are] better than [some] pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time” (179). For instance, it might initially be quite psychologically painful to adhere to a simpler, healthier diet. In the end, however, making such a transition will lead one to a life that is far more pleasant than continuously indulging in the “luxuries of the wealthy table” (180).

The Epicureans, then, engaged in a deliberate and rational pursuit of pleasure, carefully weighing the consequences of their desires against the possible outcomes of their choices. Placing traditional hedonistic pleasures in this perspective, reveals to the Epicureans the true sources of genuine happiness, namely living a virtuous life of humility and simplicity, cultivating deep and long-lasting friendships, and pursuing the study of nature and philosophy.

On this latter point, it’s important to note that the Epicureans believed their atomistic metaphysics would alleviate the biggest fears of human existence and, thus, increase the overall pleasure of one’s life. “A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe but suspects the truth of some mythical story,” Epicurus holds. “So that without natural science it is not possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed” (Leading Doctrines, 181). This stance, no doubt, influenced their beliefs about the gods, but it also played a major role in coloring the Epicurean view of that final subject to which we must all inevitably turn: death.

“Death is nothing to us.” No phrase more succinctly summarizes the Epicurean view on human finitude. It’s repeated throughout their ancient texts and serves as a kind of mantra to dispel the natural fear of our own end. It is, in fact, the second of the forty leading doctrines laid out by the founding members of the Epicurean school (180). But what exactly did the Epicureans mean by this turn of phrase, and why, given their love for the simple pleasures of life and disbelief in an afterlife, was it so comforting to them?

As materialists, the Epicureans believed the soul, like the rest of the body, was composed of atoms, which, upon death, would disperse and return to the universe. While the body might slowly decay, the Epicureans held that the soul experienced immediate annihilation upon the moment of death. In the absence of a soul, all that remained was a decaying body, devoid of life, personhood, and, most importantly for the Epicureans, sensation. As such, there was no hope of an afterlife because there was no agent to experience such an existence.

Given his naturalistic understanding of human existence, Epicurus concludes, “So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more” (Letter to Menoeceus, 179). Lucretius, too, puts this sentiment to poetic verse:

Death, then, is nothing to us, no concern
Once we grant that the soul will also die.
Just as we felt no pain in the ages past
...
So too, when we no longer are, when our
Union of body and souls is put asunder,
Hardly shall anything then, when we are not,
Happen to us at all and stir the senes
(3.827-829 and 3.835-838)

This view of death, however, is more than just a scientific or philosophical claim. Sure, we can believe that upon death we cease to exist, but why not live in a state of perpetual fear over our inevitable end while we’re still alive? For Epicurus, it’s quite simple: the very hope for eternal life, rooted in our fears of nonexistence, detracts from our overall enjoyment of this life and, therefore, ought to be dispelled. As Epicurus counseled one of his students:

Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consist in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensations. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality (178)

The Epicurean view on death, then, fits nicely into DeVito’s overall survey of materialist atheist responses. In his essay, DeVito places the reactions of non-believers to death into two camps:

One can calmly state that non-existence does not hurt, that we were once non-existent and there was no fear then. Or one can say that if there is no God, no providence, no meaning to life, then there is no reason to want to cling to this meaningless life anyway.

The first rationale, as seen in Lucretius, is thoroughly Epicurean. The second, with some modification, loosely aligns with Epicureanism as well. We might, for instance, adjust DeVito’s second argument to read something like: Since the gods do not dole out punishments after death, then there is no reason to fear death; as such, one should live their life in a rational and virtuous manner so as to maximize the pleasure derived from it and avoid excessive physical and psychological pain.

DeVito holds that such views on death might allow the non-believer to “cope and function” but not to “truly embrace life, find meaning, and thrive.” For the Epicureans, however, the entire point of alleviating our fear of death was to live the fullest, most meaningful life one could before calmly accepting death whenever it should come for us. As another Roman Epicurean, Philodemus of Gadara, writes in his treatise On Death: “Because of their having enjoyed everything, and because of the complete lack of perception that they know will engulf them, they breathe their last in such calm as if they had never turned their attention away from death for a moment” (39.15-25).

Like DeVito, I find it plausible that some individuals “are able to face eternal death and non-existence with tranquility.” This is clearly the point of Epicureanism, to say nothing of other philosophical schools like Stoicism and Existentialism. But does it necessarily follow that we should dispel this fear and anxiety? Is there anything wrong with a healthy dose of either in response to death? Is this not, as DeVito so eloquently puts it, “part of what it is to be human, to possess consciousness, life, reason”?

Let’s not forget, too, that death is more than an individual experience; it’s profoundly social. Even if we could rationalize away the natural fear of our own non-existence, we’d still have to contend with the fact that some of our friends and family will die before us, possibly in ways that are quite tragic. Just as we all will inevitably die, so too will we reach a stage in life where the death of others is a near-constant presence.

All of a sudden the idea of heaven is looking pretty damn appealing! DeVito confesses, however, that belief in an eternal afterlife for us and our friends and family is not enough to dispel his fear of death, noting that “[e]ven blessed eternal life, where pain and suffering are wiped away, is quite frightening.” Perhaps it’s best, then, for all of us, regardless of our beliefs, to simply accept the fear of death as natural. It need not lord over our every thought and action, but neither should we abuse reason or faith to downplay its significance.

Far from settling these philosophical and theological matters, however, I’d like to conclude with a more radical proposal: namely, that our beliefs are not always as important as the people with whom we believe. We seem to have grown accustomed in this country to the conviction that we should cling tightly to our beliefs and loosely to our friends, family, and community. I propose that we do the opposite, tending to the latter first, and letting our beliefs unfold and evolve from there.

We can’t know for certain whether God exists; whether our lives are in accord with some universal or divinely ordained ethical ideal; or what happens to us after we die. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not only does it push us towards a life of faith or philosophy (depending on our natural inclinations), but, at its best, it encourages us to take solace in the people and the places we love.

This, I contend, is the true benefit of Christianity and religion in general; not the certainty of its convictions, but rather the promise of an embodied and tight-knit community with which to belong and navigate the pleasures and challenges of human existence. The ancient Epicureans had this as well; but, theirs is no longer a living tradition. At best, Epicureanism today can offer a philosophically informed lifestyle choice but not a secular alternative to religious community.

The important question, then, is not whether we can have atheism without apathy or a materialist physics without hedonistic materialism. We can. Rather, I wonder, can we have atomism without atomization? Can we, believer and non-believer alike, break the spell of our age, which would have all of us, like Camus’s Sisyphus, cast into solitude, pushing a boulder up a hill and convincing ourselves–and ourselves alone–that we’re happy as we watch it roll back down? God, I hope so!

Works Cited

Austin, Emily A. Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Camus, Albert. “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.” Ethics: History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Peter Markie, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 387-396. Translated by Justin O’Brien.

Crespo, Hiram. Tending the Epicurean Garden. Humanist Press, 2014.

DeVito, Frank. Staring into the Abyss. Front Porch Republic, March 28, 2024.

Epicurus. “Leading Doctrines.” Ethics: History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Peter Karki, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 180-183. Translated by Cyril Bailey (1926).

––. “Letter to Menoeceus.” Ethics: History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Peter Karki, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 178-180. Translated by Cyril Bailey (1926).

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Image Credit: Titian , “Sisyphus” (1548/1549), via Wikipedia