QUOTE : Epicurus (341–271 BC) tried to show that we have no reason to fear death. Fear of death arises from mistakenly imagining that we will be there after our deaths to mourn our own loss. But when we are alive, death is absent; and when we are dead, we no longer exist to be harmed. So either we are alive, and death isn’t harming us; or we are dead, and then there is nothing to be harmed. Furthermore, he argued, we don’t usually worry about the eternity of our nonexistence before birth, so we shouldn’t worry in the least about the eternity of our non-existence after death. His conclusion was that fear of death is irrational.