Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶38–43 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
From “On the Contempt of Death”
Translation by C. D. Yonge (1853)
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶38–43
M. You have returned to the same point, for to be miserable implies an existence. But you just now denied that the dead had any existence. If, then, they have not, they can be nothing; and if so, they are not even miserable. A. Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very circumstance, not to exist after having existed, to be very miserable. M. What, more so than not to have existed at all? Therefore, those who are not yet born are miserable because they are not; and we ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before we were born. But I do not remember that I was miserable before I was born, and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you recollect of yourself before you were born. A. You are pleasant: as if I had said that those men are miserable who are not born, and not that they are so who are dead. M. You say, then, that they are so? A. Yes. I say that because they no longer exist after having existed, they are miserable.
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶38–43, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/tusculan-disputations/1.38
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesBeing miserable requires someone who exists to feel it, so people who no longer exist after death cannot be unhappy. The speaker presses a worried friend to see that not existing after death is no worse than not existing before birth, which nobody remembers as suffering.
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
- Fear and anxiety
- Judgements and impressions
- Fear of death
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