Alucard
Wizard
- Feb 8, 2019
- 606
(Translated with google trad)
Epicure II, Letter to Ménécée on serenity in the face of the human condition (in French, in French)
Epicurus II to Ménécée, Hi.
When you are young, you should not believe that it is too early to learn to die, and when you are old, you must not give up learning to die. Because it is never too early or too late to work for true serenity. Now whoever says that the time to learn to die has not yet arrived or has passed for him, looks like a Man who would say that the time to no longer be afraid of dying has not yet come for him or that she is no longer. The young man and the old man must therefore learn to die both, the latter to rejuvenate in contact with the serenity that provides the certainty of dying gently, by remembering the pleasant days of the past; that one to fully enjoy his youth without the fear of dying in pain disturbing the celebration of his life. Therefore, we must meditate on the means that can allow us to die smoothly since, when these means are ours, dying is not frightening, while, when we miss them, we risk dying in long pains.
So stick to the humanist teachings that I have never stopped giving you and that I will repeat to you; put them into practice and meditate on them, convinced that these are the principles necessary for living well while respecting others. Start by convincing yourself that a human being is a worthy being, whatever their biological, psychological or social characteristics. Indeed, you will not really enter philosophy until you rigorously distinguish the verb to be from the verb to have. Genes, skin color, manual and intellectual skills, psychic strengths and weaknesses, profession and social class… all of this is to have, not to be: human being cannot be defined by these things. The human being is consciousness, and nothing else. Never assign degrees to dignity; but still look at it as universal, intrinsic to humanity. Because all human beings are equally worthy, this is why the legitimacy of the condemnation of acts which flout human dignity is obvious. But alas, Ménécée, in the year that I write to you, in 2020, this universal dignity, however formally recognized in Human Rights, is not respected: racism, sexism, classism and other forms of discrimination testify to this. Likewise, humans are forced to live, since the state and society do not provide painless suicide methods that would allow them to die peacefully when they choose. This injustice, less noticed by the multitude, is however just as scandalous from an ethical point of view. If having control over your body and your life is a human right, then no one can legitimately prevent human beings from smoothly leaving life when they want to. We are biologically programmed to live, but that does not mean that we have a moral duty to live: to pretend that biology takes the place of morality is to reason like the Marquis de Sade. Human rights, on the contrary, must serve to fight against natural injustices. The state and society could allow human beings to have concrete control over their bodies and their lives, which would be ethically legitimate and necessary, but they do not do so, which is an affront to their dignity. To do something out of fear of the consequences if you don't do it is to do it out of compulsion. To live for fear of dying in pain or of missing one's suicide is therefore to live by coercion, and not by personal decision. However, between "living by personal decision" and "living by coercion", there is the same difference as between a love story and a rape: willingly in the first case, by force in the second. To be forced to live, in other words not to have one's life, is to suffer an existential rape, which prevents us from gaining lucid serenity and enjoying an existence worthy of our dignity. But the multitude, unable to let go of what is at home and in their eyes the essence of justice, accepts to be forced to live and regards the establishment of a painless suicide right as absurd.
Epicure II, Letter to Ménécée on serenity in the face of the human condition (in French, in French)
Epicurus II to Ménécée, Hi.
When you are young, you should not believe that it is too early to learn to die, and when you are old, you must not give up learning to die. Because it is never too early or too late to work for true serenity. Now whoever says that the time to learn to die has not yet arrived or has passed for him, looks like a Man who would say that the time to no longer be afraid of dying has not yet come for him or that she is no longer. The young man and the old man must therefore learn to die both, the latter to rejuvenate in contact with the serenity that provides the certainty of dying gently, by remembering the pleasant days of the past; that one to fully enjoy his youth without the fear of dying in pain disturbing the celebration of his life. Therefore, we must meditate on the means that can allow us to die smoothly since, when these means are ours, dying is not frightening, while, when we miss them, we risk dying in long pains.
So stick to the humanist teachings that I have never stopped giving you and that I will repeat to you; put them into practice and meditate on them, convinced that these are the principles necessary for living well while respecting others. Start by convincing yourself that a human being is a worthy being, whatever their biological, psychological or social characteristics. Indeed, you will not really enter philosophy until you rigorously distinguish the verb to be from the verb to have. Genes, skin color, manual and intellectual skills, psychic strengths and weaknesses, profession and social class… all of this is to have, not to be: human being cannot be defined by these things. The human being is consciousness, and nothing else. Never assign degrees to dignity; but still look at it as universal, intrinsic to humanity. Because all human beings are equally worthy, this is why the legitimacy of the condemnation of acts which flout human dignity is obvious. But alas, Ménécée, in the year that I write to you, in 2020, this universal dignity, however formally recognized in Human Rights, is not respected: racism, sexism, classism and other forms of discrimination testify to this. Likewise, humans are forced to live, since the state and society do not provide painless suicide methods that would allow them to die peacefully when they choose. This injustice, less noticed by the multitude, is however just as scandalous from an ethical point of view. If having control over your body and your life is a human right, then no one can legitimately prevent human beings from smoothly leaving life when they want to. We are biologically programmed to live, but that does not mean that we have a moral duty to live: to pretend that biology takes the place of morality is to reason like the Marquis de Sade. Human rights, on the contrary, must serve to fight against natural injustices. The state and society could allow human beings to have concrete control over their bodies and their lives, which would be ethically legitimate and necessary, but they do not do so, which is an affront to their dignity. To do something out of fear of the consequences if you don't do it is to do it out of compulsion. To live for fear of dying in pain or of missing one's suicide is therefore to live by coercion, and not by personal decision. However, between "living by personal decision" and "living by coercion", there is the same difference as between a love story and a rape: willingly in the first case, by force in the second. To be forced to live, in other words not to have one's life, is to suffer an existential rape, which prevents us from gaining lucid serenity and enjoying an existence worthy of our dignity. But the multitude, unable to let go of what is at home and in their eyes the essence of justice, accepts to be forced to live and regards the establishment of a painless suicide right as absurd.
Épicure II, Lettre à Ménécée sur la sérénité face à la condition humaine (en Français, in French)
Épicure II à Ménécée, Salut. Quand on est jeune, il ne faut pas croire qu'il est trop tôt pour apprendre à mourir, et quand on est vieux, il ne faut pas renoncer à apprendre à mourir. Car jamais il n'est trop tôt ou trop tard pour travailler à la vraie sérénité. Or celui qui dirait que l'heure...
apeacefuldeathisahumanright.unblog.fr
