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Rationalized Necessity (as the Practical Goal of Memento Mori)

Rationalized Necessity (as the Practical Goal of Memento Mori)

The Stoic state in which the objective necessity of death is fully grasped by rational reason, so that no pathē (passions) arise any longer.

This is not Apatheia (absence of feeling) but the active penetration of the fact of mortality by the Logos. When reason fully accepts that dying is an inevitable feature of nature and does not lie within our control (ouk eph' hēmin), the individual no longer has any basis for Phobos or other pathē. This is a state of conscious inner freedom.