When one is young, one should not believe that it is too early to learn how to die, and when one is old, one should not give up learning how to die. For it is never too early or too late to work towards true serenity. Now he who would say that the hour to learn to die has not yet come or has passed for him, resembles a Man who would say that the hour to no longer be afraid to die has not yet come for him or has passed. The young man and the old man must therefore learn to die both, this one to rejuvenate in contact with the serenity that comes from the certainty of dying gently, remembering the pleasant days of the past; this one to enjoy his youth to the full without the fear of dying in pain disturbing the feast of his life. Therefore, it is necessary to meditate on the means that can enable us to die gently, for when these means are ours, there is nothing frightening about dying, while when they are lacking, we risk dying in long pain.
Therefore, cling to the humanistic teachings that I have not ceased to give you and that I am going to repeat to you; put them into practice and meditate on them, convinced that these are the necessary principles to live well while respecting one's fellow men. Begin by convincing yourself that a human being is a dignified being, whatever his biological, psychological or social characteristics. Indeed, you will only truly enter into philosophy when you rigorously distinguish the verb to be from the verb to have. Genes, skin colour, manual and intellectual skills, psychological strengths and weaknesses, occupation and social class... it is all about having and not being: a human being is not defined by these things. The human being is consciousness and nothing else. Never attribute degrees to dignity; but always regard it as universal, intrinsic to humanity. For all human beings are equally dignified, which is why the legitimacy of condemning acts that violate human dignity is obvious. But alas, Menecée, in the year I am writing to you, in 2020, this universal dignity, although formally recognized in Human Rights, is not respected: racism, sexism, classism and other forms of discrimination bear witness to this. In the same way, human beings are forced to live, since the State and society do not provide them with painless methods of suicide that would allow them to die peacefully when they decide to do so. This injustice, less noticed by the multitude, is nevertheless just as scandalous from an ethical point of view. If disposing of one's body and one's life is a human right, then no one can legitimately prevent a human being from gently exiting life when he wants to. We are biologically programmed to live, but this does not mean that we have a moral duty to live: to claim that biology takes the place of morality is to reason like the Marquis de Sade. Human rights, on the contrary, must be used to fight natural injustices. The State and society could allow human beings to dispose concretely of their bodies and lives, which would be ethically legitimate and necessary, but they do not do so, which is an attack on their dignity. To do something out of fear of the consequences if one does not do it is to do it by coercion. To live out of fear of dying in pain or of missing one's suicide is therefore to live by compulsion, not by personal decision. Now, between "living by personal decision" and "living by compulsion", there is the same difference as between a love affair and rape: by choice in the first case, by force in the second. To be forced to live, in other words not to have one's life at one's disposal, is to suffer an existential rape, which prevents us from attaining lucid serenity and enjoying an existence in accordance with our dignity. But the multitude, unable to let go of what is theirs and what they consider to be justice, accept being forced to live and see as absurd the establishment of a right to painless suicide.
On death, my ancestor Epicurus said the essential, so I will content myself with repeating his wise thoughts to you. "Get used to thinking that death means nothing to us. For all good and all evil lies in sensation: and death is the deprivation of all sensibility. Therefore, the knowledge of the truth that death means nothing to us makes us capable of enjoying this mortal life, not by adding to it the prospect of infinite duration, but by taking away from us the desire for immortality. "It is therefore vain to say that death is to be feared, not because it will be painful when it is realized, but because it is painful to wait for it. It would indeed be a futile and pointless fear.
