When they hear the words “most depressing book ever written,” most people probably think of a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky or Émile Zola. While works by these writers are well-known for being depressing, just wait until you hear about a book written by the early third-century BC Greek Cyrenaic philosopher Hegesias of Kyrene. The book was called Death by Starvation or The Death-Persuader. According to the Roman orator Cicero (lived 106 – 43 BC), the entire book was essentially an argument for why everyone should just give up on life and kill themselves.
Summary
The book starts out with a man who decides that he is going to starve himself to death. All his friends come and beg him not to, saying everything they can to try to talk him out of it. The man responds by arguing that happiness is impossible and that it is much better to die than to live. He then proceeds to give a lengthy dissertation on the miseries and torments of life. He enumerates all the various reasons why each person should commit suicide and refutes all his friends’ objections against it.
Background
Hegesias’s book has not survived to the present day, which means it is extremely doubtful that anyone will ever read it again. Everything we know about it comes from what Cicero says about it in his “On Contempt of Death,” the first dialogue in his Tusculan Disputations. There is also a possible indirect mention of the book by the third-century AD Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtios, who states in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers that Hegesias had taught that it was better to die than to live. Diogenes Laërtios does not mention any particular written work in which Hegesias had argued this, however.
Cicero claims that Ptolemy II Philadelphos (ruled 285–246 BC), the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt at the time when Hegesias was alive, forbade Hegesias from teaching in Alexandria on account of him having written Death by Starvation. He also maintains that a large number of people who read his book actually killed themselves because the arguments laid out in it were so convincing.
A rhetorical exercise?
Although Cicero clearly saw Hegesias’s dialogue as a serious work, some scholars have argued that the book may not have been intended quite how Cicero interpreted it. It is entirely possible that the whole thing may have been merely a rhetorical exercise, since Greek Sophists were well-known for writing works making defenses of morally reprehensible things just to prove that it could be done.
About a century before Hegesias’s time, the Sophist Gorgias of Leontinoi (lived c. 485 – c. 380 BC) had written the Encomium of Helen, a defense of Helen of Troy for having caused the Trojan War, and the Defense of Palamedes, a defense of a legendary Greek soldier who was accused by Odysseus of treason during the Trojan War. Gorgias had also written a treatise titled On the Non-Existent, which had argued that it is impossible to prove anything really exists at all, earning him the nickname “Gorgias the Nihilist.”
In a similar vein, an anonymous Sophistic treatise from around the same time as Gorgias known as the Dissoi Logoi (“Double Arguments”) listed arguments for and against various positions, often with disturbing implications of moral relativism. For instance, the treatise at one point argues that sickness is a good thing if you happen to be a doctor, because it means more customers. Likewise, the treatise claims that death is a good thing if you happen to be an undertaker.
Possible evidence to support the hypothesis that Hegesias really meant the dialogue as nothing more than a rhetorical exercise comes from the fact that Hegesias does not appear to have ever actually committed suicide himself. Cicero never mentions anything about him having actually killed himself and, since Cicero mentions Hegesias in the context of discussion over the morality of suicide, we can be virtually certain that Cicero would have mentioned it if he had.
A serious hedonistic tract?
Other scholars, such as Wallace I. Mattson, argue that Hegesias’s Death by Starvation was intended in all seriousness. Mattson argues that, as a Cyrenaic philosopher, Hegesias was a hedonist, meaning he believed that the purpose of life is to seek pleasure and avoid suffering.
While hedonism is usually thought of as a “joyous philosophy,” Mattson points out that it is easy to see how an emphasis on the avoidance of pain could be taken to such an extreme that suicide would be considered not only justified, but preferable to anything else, because it eliminates suffering.
Mattson also points out that Hegesias would have been far from the only philosopher in antiquity to accept that suicide was sometimes moral. The Roman Stoics also believed that suicide was morally justifiable, but only under desperate circumstances. The Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BC – AD 65) was famously forced to commit suicide by slitting his wrists in the bathtub in 65 AD after he was accused of being an involved in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate the emperor Nero (ruled 54 – 68 AD).
ABOVE: The Death of Seneca, painted in 1615 by the Dutch Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens
If Hegesias meant his dialogue to be serious, however, then he would be unique as the only major philosopher known to have not only condoned, but actively encouraged suicide.
Conclusion
In any case, it is now impossible for anyone to determine what Hegesias’s true motives were, since his book has been lost, presumably forever. If what Cicero says about the book really convincing people to commit suicide is true, then perhaps this is for the best.
Sheesh. Someone had issues.
I know you said it’s unknown whether Hegesias killed himself, but do you know about how long before his death he wrote the book? It sounds like it might have been some kind of elaborate suicide note.
We do not actually know when he died. Cicero tells us nothing about his life aside from the fact that he was banned from teaching in Alexandria after writing the book because supposedly some of the people who read it had killed themselves.
thankfully?
f*ck off
Why? Do you wish there was a book that tries to convince everyone who reads it to kill themselves?
Wish I could read it!
I personally find it fascinating that a book like this one once actually existed, but I would not want to actually read it, because it sounds horribly depressing and I do not need more reason to feel disappointed with the world right now.
Such book should be obligatory read for Donald Trump. It could do good.
To be fair, death is beneficial for an undertaker assuming he or she’s got a hold on the regional industry & not murdering them her or himself or even if he did so long he or she didn’t get caught.
Likewise, illness is technically beneficial for a doctor…but here, further caveats exist. For instance, if there’s a plague, he or she’d have to be careful not to contract the illness personally.
We see this strategy from politicians, shrinks, pharmacology or the U.N. & the list goes on.
Depressed? Get a pill…you’re more depressed (i personally take them & i hate it). Things not going well? Blame the statues & tax people more. Things violent? Blame the “colonizers” & reap the resentment (yes, a flip side exists but so’ve warnings or worry). You’re having trouble studying? Create a “diagnosis” called ADHD (w/ which i was diagnosed so i believe i’ve got ground to justify my opinion) & fill him/her full of meth. Dissent? You’re mentally ill so see a therapist who costs out the wazoo.
Cadavers in Britain once upon a time murdered people for anatomy. Whether the sophists were moral or just playing devil’s advocate doesn’t mean they were totally wrong per se.
And Hegesias always fascinated me. Another who did was Anniceris. Fascinating because as you note, normally hedonism’s seen as a “positive thing” as opposed to a “negative thing.” Anniceris is even more along the lines of a Cicero figure himself at least politically…or even Platonic to a degree. i don’t entirely mind the Cyrenics. i absolutely hate the Greek stoics though. Don’t gemme wrong, even Seneca had some good points as did Aurelius but too close to Epicurus or Erasmus for me. Even Plotinus is annoyingly absurd by later on.
i also don’t believe the defense of Helen of Troy so much matters other than allegorically based upon a myth. As far i’m aware, the trojan war’s been proven to’ve happened for real but Helen of Troy?
Alright…so there’s a noneism here: that it didn’t actually occur the way of bardic representation doesn’t mean the point is any less fabulistic or if you will, counter-fabulistic (an inside out fable or something? Antihero but not anti-fable…a devil’s advocate fable? What i mean is it has that structure/theticality)
in this sense i agree that it’s questionable. Though i’d also go further by noting Eris’s golden apple had MUCH MORE to do w/ the the war than Helen herself. Goddess of discord
I guess I’m fairly “pro suicide”. I don’t think it’s cowardly at all, slightly heroic actually. Suicide doesn’t “eliminate suffering”….it eliminates one’s personal suffering, only. If suicide ended ALL suffering then it would definately be something to look into! Philip Mainlander and Mitchell Heisman are two philosophers that killed themselves. Heisman, in an extremely rational method, to approach pure objectivity and also because he said that he would “try anything once”. I think it’s terrible that Hegesias’ book no longer exists. His ideas frighten you… but many of us like reading novel and unpopular ideas. But thank God we have people like you in the world…the kind who assuredly know what’s best and can protect us from scary thoughts. Thanks mommy.
hahaha…. i love this comment
glad to know there’s still interesting people left in the world
“since Greek Sophists were well-known for writing works making defenses of morally reprehensible things just to prove that it could be done.”
So you’re saying they did it for the memes?
Also, it’s entirely possible that he was serious. There are people even today who advocate similar things. The closest would probably be the so called “efilists”. Efil is life spelled backwards. They are even more radical than Hegesias. They want all life in the universe to end, because they perceive it as being irredeemably tainted by suffering.
Also one of them has a youtube channel. He’s called simply “glynos”.
Then there’s people like the VHEMT, who advocate not death but abstinence from procreation, in order to preserve plant and animal species from humans.