‘It was’—that is the name of the will’s gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy.
–Friedrich Nietzsche (1995: 139)
Abstract
In this paper, I explore the connection between certain metaphysical views of time and emotional attitudes concerning one’s own death and mortality. I argue that one metaphysical view of time, B-theory, offers consolation to mortals in the face of death relative to commonsense and another metaphysical view of time, A-theory. Consolation comes from three places. First, B-theory implies that time does not really pass, and as a result one has less reason to worry about one’s time growing short. Second, B-theory entails that there is a real sense in which one’s death does not result in one’s annihilation, and this fact can temper feelings of existential distress. Third, B-theory has the consequence that the benefits one has lost (or will lose) have concrete existence, and this fact can mitigate the emotional significance of the losses of death.
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Notes
In this paper, I ignore the possibility that there might be life after death and the possibility that human life might continue forever.
This explanation jibes with the Buddhist contention that one can reduce existential suffering by adopting the doctrine of non-self and thereby dismantling this egocentric frame of reference (see Siderits 2007: 32–68).
This feeling was felt long before contemporary physics revealed the radical limitations of folk physics. See, for example, Augustine’s discussion of time in his Confessions (2008 XI.17).
These terms were introduced by McTaggart (1908).
This view about objects is not entailed by B-theory (see Sider 2001 for discussion). I consider a variation on this view in footnote 14.
There are a few complications here, which I am going to ignore for ease of exposition. One complication is that we sometimes talk as if we sometimes continue to exist as a corpse for a while after death. This position has been endorsed by some philosophers who do not believe we are essentially persons (e.g. Belshaw 2009). I assume that annihilation and death always coincide, but this assumption is not load-bearing. What matters for my purposes is that (i) one’s personhood, which is what we mainly care about, is always annihilated by death (if not before) and (ii) death is at least closely associated with one’s total annihilation. A second complication is that commonsense may depart from presentism in certain contexts. For instance, popular time travel narratives seem to presuppose that traveling to the past amounts to going to a real place rather than committing suicide. Although I assume that commonsense and presentism align, I will address other A-theoretic views below.
Even if they did not discuss A-theory and B-theory as such, many thinkers have explored the ways in which our commonsense attitudes towards death are dependent upon the presumption that A-properties are objective features of times. For example, Einstein (1972: 538), Hesse (1995: 87–88), and Vonnegut 1969.
See also Leslie (2007: 60–61).
One might object to this by pointing out that at seventy I will probably have more meaningful projects and relationships that will be cut short by my death. This is true, but I may have many such projects and relationships at twenty as well. Moreover, I have many projects and relationships at twenty that I can predict will be cut short by other events: the deaths of others, the vagaries of life, etc. So, on the whole, I do not think we have much more reason to lament our finitude at seventy than at twenty.
McTaggart could intelligibly lament the fact that he only spans fifty-eight years, but this would not be the same as lamenting that his time is growing short. The former is something that he could lament at any age (supposing he knew about it), but the latter is something he would only have reason to lament near the end of his life.
Not all B-theorists think ‘I’ refers to a spacetime worm. Some, like David Velleman, believe that the self and the referent of ‘I’ is a momentary subject, i.e. a temporal part of a spacetime worm that is connected to past and future selves by mental states with first-personal content or modes of presentation (Velleman 1996). These B-theorists should not be worried about time growing short either. As Velleman notes, if I am a momentary subject, then my time is not growing short, for, as he puts it, “I am of the moment.” The future is “bearing down on me” and the past “slipping away” only in the sense that I, the self eternally located at this time, am connected to earlier and later selves by memory and anticipation (Velleman 1996: 18–20; see also Velleman 2020: 16–36). Admittedly, I (the momentary subject) can perhaps intelligibly lament that I am near the end of a spacetime worm rather than the beginning. But this is not a changing fact about me, while the fact that my time is growing short is supposed to be a changing fact about me. Furthermore, my being located near the end of the life of which I am a part has no bearing on how much time I have, because regardless of where I am located, I exist for only a moment. All this suggests that on the assumption that ‘I’ refers to a momentary subject, lamenting one’s location in a spacetime worm is neither roughly equivalent to lamenting that one’s time is growing short nor clearly reasonable.
Differences in spatiotemporal location are associated with countless other sorts of differences, of course. For instance, people visiting Rome in 63 BCE were more likely to bump into Cicero on the street than people visiting in 63 CE (since Cicero was dead by then). But generally these are metaphysically shallow differences, which are analogous to the differences associated with differences in spatial location.
When discussing Le Poidevin’s argument, Natalja Deng argues, as I do, that the comfort B-theory offers vis-à-vis existential distress depends upon viewing time in a quasi-spatial way. But Deng thinks that viewing time in this way is only possible if one posits a dimension that relates to time as time relates to space. Thus, Deng argues that to get the result he wants Le Poidevin must posit a second time dimension at which all first-dimensional times exist, where this second time dimension is related to first-dimension time as first-dimension time is related to space. Only then can Le Poidevin, on his deathbed, take comfort that the events and things in his life are quasi-spatially “out there,” at this second-dimension time, in a sort of “totum simul.” Because this is strange and implausible, Deng is ultimately skeptical about Le Poidevin’s conclusion (Deng 2015). As should be clear, I reject Deng’s requirement. Viewing time in a quasi-spatial way does not require positing a second time dimension. It only requires that we make reference to a tenseless perspective, from which all times can be “seen” as coexisting.
This claim concerning the “conservative dimension” of valuing needs to be properly qualified, as sometimes a thing’s being preserved is inconsistent with its continuing to have value (see Shiffrin 2016: 144 ff.)
Saying exactly why is difficult and is not essential to my project. But I think it has something to do with the feeling that the cared for thing is not unequivocally gone from your life after all. You care for your friend for their own sake, and you are emotionally attuned to the good of your friend like you are to your own good (this is part and parcel of what care theorist Nel Noddings (2013) calls “engrossment,” which she argues is an integral element in the caring relation). Since the pleasure of wine is still present for your friend, still part of your friend’s good, it feels like the pleasure of wine is still part of your good too. We might say that the benefit shapes your emotional attitudes vicariously.
Can Standard B-theory temper distress about the fact that one’s impending death will make one’s lifetime well-being level lower than it otherwise would have been? Not directly, since Standard B-theory gives us no reason to deny that it is better to have more rather than less good in one’s life (all else being equal). But in practice I suspect that distress about this somewhat abstract fact is often associated with and amplified by more specific concerns about the losses of things that contribute to or constitute lifetime well-being, so perhaps Standard B-theory can indirectly make the fact more bearable. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to consider this point.
I assume here that the presentist can make sense of the truth of claims about the past and the future.
This objection is inspired by and adapted from a critique of Le Poidevin made by Burley (2008b). As Burley notes, ever since Prior’s “Thank goodness that’s over” argument (1959), B-theorists have been concerned to show that B-theory does not entail that the majority of our emotional attitudes are irrational or mistaken. The standard B-theoretic line, due to Mellor (1994a; 1994b) and MacBeath (1994), is to say that our emotional attitudes can be rational so long as they are directed at what we reasonably believe to be true. For instance, we can (rationally) be thankful that a migraine is in the past (even though there is no such fact) so long as it seems to us to be in the past.
Cf. Sullivan (2018), who argues that temporal bias is irrational.
Contemplation might affect the Standard B-theorist’s ordinary outlook by, among other things, putting her in an equanimous mood. Moods often persist beyond the events that occasion them, after all. And there does not seem to be anything inherently irrational about this. Thanks to Daniel Telech for this suggestion.
Several authors have taken the indelibility of past evils to be a consequence that counts against views like Standard B-theory according to which (apparently) past times are real. R. T. Mullins (2014) argues that Christian theologians should reject such views because, among other things, the tenseless existence of past evils exaggerates the problem of evil and reduces the plausibility of certain theodicies. Francesco Orilia mentions similar theological considerations, but also argues in a more general way that presentism is morally or emotionally preferable because, among other things, “…whatever comfort we may gain from the thought that joyful past events exist sub specie aeternitatis, this can hardly balance the dismay for the analogous existence of the sorrowful ones: the dismay prevails, even if in the past there had been overall, let us imagine, more joy than sorrow.” (Orilia 2016:232; see also Orilia 2018a, b). These authors emphasize the gloomy aspects of Standard B-theory more than I do. Theological considerations aside, the perspective of Mullins and Orilia is an important counterweight to the tentatively optimistic perspective I have allowed myself to take on here.
Compare this with Nietzsche’s discussion of the eternal recurrence (Nietzsche 2001: 194–195 (§341)).
For instance, one can lament mortality because it frustrates future-directed categorical desires, such as a desire to visit space, write a novel, or meet one’s grandchildren (see Williams 1973). Unfortunately, I do not see how Standard B-theory can in general make this frustration easier to bear. See also note 19.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Thomas Barrett, Natalja Deng, Jeremey Dickinson, Catelynn Kenner, David King, Dan Korman, Daniel Telech, Travis Timmerman, Robert Wallace and three anonymous reviewers for generously commenting on this material. Thanks especially to Sam Zahn; I am glad that some of our temporal parts are indelibly “out there,” in glittering Santa Barbara, discussing this stuff together.
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