Previously:

The Meaning of Life Through Death

What’s the Point of the Bible?

(2/2) What’s the Point of the Bible: Causing Anagnorisis in the Reader

(CONCLUSION) What’s the Point of the Bible: What is Faith?  It’s not What you Think

Breaking the Demonic Spell: A Twofold Interpretation of Sin in Christian Origins

Holiday Post Series: Divine/Demonic Possession and the Heart of Christianity

(Part 2) Divine/Demonic Possession and the Heart of Christianity

(Part 1 on Romans 2): The Models of Salvation in Romans

(Romans 3) The Modes of Salvation in Romans

Conclusion: Salvation in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Death is such a wonderful topic in Philosophy, like in Plato’s dialogues or Heidegger’s Being and Time.  Of course, most people live their lives “as though” the next moment won’t be denied, though it could be.  The most helpful example of Philosophy and Death I can think of is the spectrum of stances toward death one might take embodied in the ancient notions of Carpe Diem at one pole, and Memento Mori at the other pole. In ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, “carpe diem” (“seize the day”), originating from Horace’s Odes around 23 BCE, represents a stance toward death that emphasizes embracing life’s fleeting pleasures and living fully in the present, given mortality’s inevitability and the uncertainty of tomorrow. This approach aligns with Epicurean influences, urging one to pluck the ripe moments of existence without excessive worry about the future.  By contrast, “memento mori” (“remember that you must die”) embodies an opposing perspective, rooted in Stoic thinkers like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as earlier philosophers such as Plato, who viewed philosophy itself as a preparation for death.  This stance uses the constant awareness of death not to indulge in earthly allure but to cultivate virtue, humility, introspection, and restraint—curbing excesses, focusing on moral living, and sometimes preparing for an afterlife or judgment, as seen in Roman triumphal traditions where a servant reminded victorious generals of their mortality to temper hubris.  While the two concepts can overlap or complement each other in motivating purposeful action, they are frequently framed as antithetical: “carpe diem” as empowering and savoring, versus “memento mori” as humbling and resistant to life’s temptations.  For example, as a secular activist I write on Historical Christianity and so with the apostle Paul we get the idea/claim that if the dead are not raised we might as well be gluttons and drunks for tomorrow we die (1 Corinthians 15:32) – Paul being from the birthplace of the stoic enlightenment. 

I think the notion of death and possibility are so important.  Out of a causality of freedom we unconsciously legislate a stance toward death as the spectrum between carpe diem on the one pole and memento mori on the other I mentioned above that “makes possible” operating in the human condition.  It’s like with Kant that we unconsciously legislate that I morally accompany all my actions, unlike brute animals and certain mentally challenged individuals who are not attached to and responsible for their actions in the way we are.  Schelling notes Evil is our most distinctive human possibility because only humans have the possibility/capacity of sinking below brute animals in terms of depravity.  This unconscious self legislation make moral dispositions possible.  Likewise, Kant notes the Will and Understanding (the faculty of rules) unconsciously self legislates the rule of irreversibility of experience (since as Hume notes we don’t sense irreversibility, just B following A) making causal experiences possible either positively (physical change of ball hits ball), comparatively greater (temporary change of state like boiling water), and superlatively (cooking egg that can’t  be uncooked).