QuestionsShould we fear death?Nothing dies, everything changes its face
Should we fear death?Nothing to fear

Nothing dies, everything changes its face

Giordano Bruno 1548 · 1600The universe is infinite, filled with countless worlds.
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What it claims

The sage does not fear death: like Pythagoras, he only awaits change. "There is nothing that should alarm us."

Why

There is only one immortal substance: dying is just division and recombination; the thing does not die, it changes.

In short

"Nothing dies, everything changes its face" is an argument by Giordano Bruno (The Infinite, dedicatory letter; Cause, dial. V (1584)) on the question "Should we fear death?" (answer: nothing to fear). Its claim: The sage does not fear death: like Pythagoras, he only awaits change. "There is nothing that should alarm us.". According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Infinite, dedicatory letter; Cause, dial. V (1584)
Valid with an implicit premise

Bruno draws from his philosophy a wisdom in the face of death. If a single substance remains beneath all changes, and if dying is only a separation and a new assembly, then nothing that truly is perishes. Like Pythagoras, the sage "does not fear death, but awaits change". This is not the Christian immortality of a person who will be judged: it is the permanence of substance, of matter and soul, through ever new forms. The central passage is in the dedicatory letter of The Infinite, written in his own voice.

P1Nothing diminishes as to substance: there is only one substance, divine and immortal, and every production is only an alteration, the substance remaining the same.
P2What we call dying is only division and gathering: the thing does not die, it changes. Everything, wandering through infinite space, changes its face.
P3What we truly are is this substance that remains: we are in it and it is in us. So there is no death, neither for us nor for any substance.
P4 · implicit premiseIt is unreasonable to fear an event that makes us lose nothing of what we truly are.
Therefore the sage does not fear death: like Pythagoras, he only awaits change. "There is nothing that should alarm us."

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where nothing of what we are is lost, yet fearing death remains reasonable (for instance the pain of dying, or separation from those we love).
Valid with P4, which Bruno does not state: he goes straight from "there is no death" to "nothing should alarm us". Everything rests on P3: that "we" are the substance that remains, not the particular person with a face, a memory and loved ones. An opponent will readily accept P1 and P2 (matter is conserved) and reject P3.
Analogy. A wave that falls does not vanish: its water rejoins the sea and will form other waves. For Bruno, we are the water rather than the wave. The whole question is whether one can take comfort in that when one is the wave. The image is not his; he cites Pythagoras and Ecclesiastes ("nothing new under the sun").

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

John Locke 1694 · attacks premise 3

What makes me the same person is not the same substance but the same consciousness: "as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person". If a substance remains after my death without remembering anything of my life, it is no longer I who survive.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1694, after the author's death (1600).
The debate goes on (our summary) Before his judges Bruno also says he holds the soul of each living being to be immortal, but without saying whether it keeps the memory of its life. The text of The Infinite speaks of a change of "face", which leaves Locke's problem untouched.
A
A common objection attacks premise 4

Even if nothing of what I am is lost, one can fear something other than annihilation: the pain of dying, separation from loved ones, unfinished work. Bruno's serenity answers the fear of nothingness, not these fears.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Bruno in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) In the same letter Bruno says this philosophy frees us "from the anxious pursuit of pleasures and the blind feeling of pains"; but he does not deal directly with the pain of dying or with grief. His own attitude at the stake, reported by a hostile witness, is often cited as putting it into practice.