Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶74–78 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
From “On the Contempt of Death”
Translation by C. D. Yonge (1853)
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶74–78
M. What occasion have you, then, for my assistance? Am I superior to Plato in eloquence? Turn over carefully his book that treats of the soul; you will have there all that you can want. A. I have, indeed, done that, and often. But, I know not how it comes to pass, I agree with it while I am reading it, but when I have laid down the book and begin to reflect with myself on the immortality of the soul, all that agreement vanishes. M. How comes that? Do you admit this: that souls either exist after death, or else that they also perish at the moment of death? A. I agree to that. And if they do exist, I admit that they are happy; but if they perish, I cannot suppose them to be unhappy, because, in fact, they have no existence at all. You drove me to that concession but just now. M. How, then, can you, or why do you, assert that you think that death is an evil, when it either makes us happy, in the case of the soul continuing to exist, or, at all events, not unhappy, in the case of our becoming destitute of all sensation?
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶74–78, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/tusculan-disputations/1.74
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesPhilosophical conviction can fade once the book is closed, but the argument is simple: either the soul survives and is happy, or it ends and feels nothing, so there is no version of death that is miserable. Fear of death cannot survive both options.
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
- Fear and anxiety
- Judgements and impressions
- Fear of death
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