Elements of Epistemology
  Elements of
Epistemology
  Chapter I
Socrates and Plato
  Chapter II
Corpus Aristotelicum
  Chapter III
Laughing and
Weeping Philosophers
  Chapter IV
Skepticism and Stoicism
  Chapter V
Scholastic Epistemology
  Chapter VI
Friar Roger and
Sir Francis Bacons
  Chapter VII
Cosmology
and Epistemology
  Chapter VIII
Classic Protagonists
of Epistemology
  Chapter IX
The Sociologists
  Chapter X
Logical Positivism
and Beyond ...

Laughing and weeping philosophers 

 

Heraclitus (c. 9500 HE; 500 BCE) concern with brevity of human existence earned him the epithet the weeping philosopher. Only about a hundred of Heraclitus aphorisms survive. His most memorable is that

You cannot step into the same river twice,

a favorite of Mikhail Gorbachev. 

Democritus (c. 9600 HE; 400 BCE), the father of the first atomic hypothesis (Gr., atomos, a-not + temmein to cut), was one of the first philosophers to warn about the subjective qualities of our cognitions, scorned numerous superstitions of his times, and asserted that

Belief in an afterlife is a laughable fiction.

For this medieval commentators sometimes described him as the 'laughing philosopher'.  

 

Death is like the Dream Catcher of
the Plains Indians that captures
not only the bad dreams, but all
of them.

 

 Lucretius and Epicurus

Among Democritus followers the most congenial to a skeptical contemporary reader is Lucretius. In his De Rerum Natura Libri Sex (9950 HE; 50 BCE), Lucretius describes the universe as explicable in rational terms and shows the implausibility of religions and superstitions. His arguments about the irrationality of beliefs in God are told with eloquence and clarity.

The preamble to Book Two extols the Epicurean life of detached tranquility, maintaining modest and easily attainable standard of living, while avoiding lofty ambitions, controversies, and disputes. This lifestyle makes life genuinely worth living. Pains should be accepted with equanimity. When experiencing pain, one should concentrate the mind on past pleasures, and, when the pain interminable and severe, on its eventual eclipse by the painless state of death.

The concluding part of Book Three is about the fear of death. To fear a future state of death, Lucretius argues, is to make the conceptual error of assuming yourself being able to lament your own non-existence. Being dead will be no better or worse than it was when you've not yet have been born. This Lucretian symmetry argument is gaining prominence in the recent philosophical literature on death.

Lucretius talks about death as the natural conclusion of life, a counterpart of birth, liberating us from pain, anguish, anxiety, and fear. Albert Einstein asserted the same, saying that the fear of death is irrational, since when you die, no one can ever harm you again. Death is also the ultimate defense against cruelty those in power can inflict upon the others.