QuestionsShould we fear death?Life is not short, we waste it
Should we fear death?Nothing to fear

Life is not short, we waste it

Seneca c. 4 BC · c. 65It is not that we have little time, but that we waste much.
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What it claims

Life is not short: we are the ones who make it short. It depends on us to have a long enough life, and not to fear death as an interruption.

Why

Life is long enough if used well, but most people scatter it; a life well used is complete.

In short

"Life is not short, we waste it" is an argument by Seneca (On the Shortness of Life, 1-3, 7, 11; Letters 1) on the question "Should we fear death?" (answer: nothing to fear). Its claim: Life is not short: we are the ones who make it short. It depends on us to have a long enough life, and not to fear death as an interruption. 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 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

On the Shortness of Life, 1-3, 7, 11; Letters 1
Valid with an implicit premise

Almost everyone complains that life is too short: we die just as we were starting to live. Seneca turns the complaint around. Nature gives us enough time; we are the ones who let it slip away in business, ambition, pleasure and other people's demands. Whoever takes back possession of their time has a long enough life, and can see death coming without hesitating.

P1Life is long enough to accomplish the greatest things, if the whole of it is used well.
P2Most people do not use it: it goes on business, ambition, pleasure, services rendered to others. No one keeps themselves for themselves.
P3A life well used is complete: fortune can add to it, it cannot take anything away. So the wise person will go to meet death with a steady step.
P4 · implicit premiseUsing our time well depends on us: if we truly want to, we can take back possession of our hours.
Therefore life is not short: we are the ones who make it short. It depends on us to have a long enough life, and not to fear death as an interruption.

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 someone who wants to use their time well but cannot (a slave, a sick person, someone working from morning to night to survive): their life stays short, and the conclusion fails.
Valid with P4. P1 says that a life well used is long enough, P3 that a long enough life has no reason to dread its end. But to conclude that all this depends on us, using one's time well must be within our power (P4). Seneca assumes it everywhere ("set yourself free for your own sake", he writes to Lucilius), without proving it. This is the point of attack: does everyone have a choice over their time? P2 is not needed for the logic: it is the diagnosis, which explains why life seems short to almost everyone.
Analogy. Two students have the same week to prepare for an exam. One says "a week is too short". The other worked an hour a day, without screens, and had time to review everything. The week was the same length for both: what was short was the use made of it.

Objections

3

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

Aristotle (according to Seneca) 330 BC · attacks premise 1

Nature is unfair to us: she gives some animals five or ten times our lifespan, while man, born for such great things, stops far sooner. Hippocrates already said it: "life is short, art is long".

Sénèque replies
Sénèque
Why complain of nature? She has been generous: life is long, if you know how to use it.
The debate goes on (our summary) Seneca attributes the complaint to Aristotle; Cicero credits it to Theophrastus, his pupil. On the substance, the answer does not settle everything: some works (a science, a language, a discovery) really need more than one life. Seneca allows for this later (chapters 14-15): those who read the philosophers "annex every age to their own".
Aristotle (Politics, book VII) 330 BC · attacks premise 4

To become virtuous, one needs leisure. That is why craftsmen, merchants and farmers cannot be full citizens: their work takes all their time. Using one's life well is therefore not a choice open to everyone: others must work for you.

Sénèque replies
Sénèque What he writes to Lucilius, without naming Aristotle (Letters 17)
Armies have endured hunger and lived on roots to win a kingdom, and one that will be someone else's: will anyone hesitate to endure poverty to free the mind from madness? So one should not first lay up enough to live on: one may reach philosophy even without provisions for the journey.
The debate goes on (our summary) The answer is about money, not time. Lucilius, to whom Seneca writes, is a well-off senior official, and Seneca himself is one of the richest men in Rome. A slave who serves at table all night (Seneca describes this in letter 47) has neither the money nor the hours. The Stoic would answer that the essential thing, judging well what happens, remains possible at every moment, even in servitude, as the former slave Epictetus shows.
Bernard Williams ("The Makropulos Case", 1973) 1973 · attacks premise 3

We have projects that give us reasons to live: a child to raise, a work to finish, people to love. A death that cuts them off is a real evil, even for someone who has used their time well. Williams mainly targets Epicurus and Lucretius; applied to Seneca, his argument gives this: a life from which "nothing can be taken" would be a life that no longer holds on to anything.

Sénèque replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Sénèque Anticipated answer (On the Shortness of Life, 7)
Whoever puts all their time to use and orders each day as if it were the last neither longs for nor fears tomorrow. Let fortune decide the rest: their life is already safe. Something can be added to it, nothing taken away.
The debate goes on (our summary) This is exactly the disagreement: for Seneca, the wise person does not depend on tomorrow; for Williams, no longer expecting anything from tomorrow means losing what makes one want to live. Seneca's text answers on the substance, but it accepts the price that Williams refuses to pay. In the same passage Seneca adds that for this wise person everything is already known and enjoyed to satiety: Williams too thinks death is no evil once all categorical desires are exhausted; the disagreement is whether that state is desirable.
What today's voices say
Defend it
Ryan HolidayHe cites Seneca: death is not only ahead of us, 'the time that's passed is owned by death'; we guard money but waste time, which cannot be renewed.