The objection of impotent revolt
Revolting against death changes nothing about death, and spoils the one thing that remains: the present.
Objects to
- Revolt presupposes an adversary that can be swayed. But death is not an injustice a court could overturn: it is a law of nature, as deaf to our anger as the rain or old age.
- To rise up against the inevitable is to wage a battle lost in advance. said it: it is not things that trouble us but our judgments about them; to demand that nature be other than it is condemns us to suffer.
- Worse: by fixing on death as an enemy, we let it devour every present moment. The rebel suffers twice, from having to die and from his rage at having to die, when wisdom would be to consent in order to live.
Therefore So revolt may be no more than a sterile agitation: it does not push death back by a single hour, and it robs the present of the serenity that alone depends on us.
Deepenings
"A free man thinks of nothing less than of death"
- writes that "a free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life."
- To be free is not to defeat death but to stop placing it at the center: understanding that it follows from the order of things disarms revolt without denying anything of life.
Possible resolutions of the objection
Challenges
Problem