University College Birmingham Philosophy Lucretius on Death Essay.
Question Description
For this week’s assignment, we will be reading a section from Lucretius’s famous philosophical poem “De Rerum Natura”: book 3, lines 830-1094. It’s posted under files. This is a different kind of reading assignment from all the other weeks, as it is an historical text very much not written in the form of a contemporary philosophy essay. Nonetheless, it contains lots of interesting philosophical arguments for us to discuss.
Write a 4-5 page paper in response to the following prompt. Your script should be double
spaced, 12pt text.
Lucretius on Death :
What is Lucretius’s opinion of the idea that death is a bad
thing for the person who dies, and that our own death is something that we all
have reason to fear and lament? Critically assess the arguments he offers for
his view (it’s fine to focus on only a part of the case he makes).
Before writing your paper, make sure you make a plan. Also, it may be helpful to review
the “writing a paper” checklist slide that we discussed in the first class (available on the
course site under files/slides and handouts).
University College Birmingham Philosophy Lucretius on Death Essay
