Dying is not the same as being dead. 'Death' is ambiguous as between 'dying' and 'being dead.' But I will use 'death' to mean 'being dead.' So the title question comes to this: Is it rational to fear the 'state' of being dead? There are ways of dying such that it is rational to fear them. But that is not my question.
The fear of death torments some. It appears to have tormented Philip Larkin as witness his poem "Aubade" reproduced here. The fear of death gets a grip on me sometimes, but then it dissipates in the light of clear analysis.
When I fear death, what am I fearing? Presumably what I am fearing is self-loss, my losing of my very self and the state of being lost to myself. My losing, not anyone else's. The loss of my self to me is what I fear, not the loss of my self to others.
But this raises the question whether it is possible that I suffer the loss of myself. If not, then the fear of death is groundless.
Either death is the annihilation of the self or it isn't. Either way, the self cannot be lost to itself.
If physical death is the annihilation of the self, then the moment of death is the moment of my utter cessation. After that moment I cannot lack anything either consciously or unconsciously. That which does not exist can neither possess anything nor lack anything nor be threatened with dispossession. The point is quite general: both having and lacking presuppose the existence of a subject of possession/nonpossession. That which does not exist, therefore, cannot gain or lose anything, have or lack anything.
It follows that if physical death is the annihilation of the self, then after death I cannot be in a state in which I experience the loss or lack of my self — or the loss or lack of anything.
If, on the other hand, physical death is not the annihilation of the self, and one survives bodily death, then too there can be no experience of self-loss for the self is not lost — precisely because it survives.
I conclude that the fear of death, the fear of being dead, is irrational. I can reasonably fear being bereft of house and home, wife and friend, but not of being nothing. The very phrase 'being nothing' signals the irrationality. Perhaps I can fear the process of becoming nothing — if nothing is what I become — but not of being nothing. For as long as I am merely becoming nothing, then I am something.
If, on the other hand, I survive my bodily death, then I can fear the state I will find myself in post mortem. I like to think that we are now in the shadowlands, and that yonder, on the other side, will be clarity and light. We will learn there what we cannot learn here. But what if the post mortem state is one even more confused and indeterminate and shadowy? That's an awful thought, and one that makes materialism attractive: if I can be certain that I won't survive, then I can be sure that there is an ultimate escape from the horror of existence and that I need fear no surprises. (But you are a fool if you think you can be certain of any such thing.)
But although I can reasonably worry about the state I will find myself in post mortem, what I cannot reasonably worry about it is being nothing. For if I survive then I am not nothing, and if I do not then I lack the primary requisite for experiencing anything, namely, existence.
Epicurus vindicatus est.
Looks like old Larkin was in dire need of some of my logotherapy (to hijack Viktor Frankl's term). But he's dead and so beyond the reach of my cognitive therapy. Not to mention that trying to reason with a poet or any literary type is a fool's errand. They are not equipped for that sort of thing — which is why they are poets and literary types in the first place.
Yes, there are exceptions.
