Abstract
Is it reasonable to fear death? In this chapter I want to consider two ancient Epicurean arguments to the conclusion that it is not. The first maintains that death cannot be an evil for a dead person because that “evil” could have no subject. The second maintains that to fear the prospect of one’s future nonexistence is unreasonable because no one feels it reasonable to find it distressing to contemplate the eternity before his or her coming into existence. In the course of attempting to disarm these two arguments I shall present a positive argument for the reasonableness of fearing death (though I shall note that this argument does not entail that a desire for immortality is also reasonable). Finally I shall conclude with some remarks about the way in which a reasonable fear of death can easily become an unreasonable one and suggest that a concern with this possibility has motivated quite dissimilar positions on this question.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Epicurus: The Extant Remains, trans. Cyril Bailey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), p. 85.
This position is defended in Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), Ch. 6; and in Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions, Ch. 1.
This feature of the Epicurean argument is duly stressed in Harry S. Silverstein, “The Evil of Death” Journal of Philosophy 11 (1980): 401–424. Silverstein’s counter, however, is unsatisfactory. He suggests that my death coexists tunelessly with me and is thus a possible object of my suffering. But Epicurus’ point is that because I won’t be there to be affected by my death when it occurs, my death cannot be reasonably viewed as the occasion of loss to me in the same way as my wife’s death yesterday can be—notwithstanding the fact that both deaths coexist atemporally.
Aristotle, Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1953), p. 45.
Feinberg originally proposed this view in papers reprinted in his Rights, Justice and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), especially pp. 59–68, 173–176. More recently, however, he has modified his position somewhat: see his Harm to Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), Ch. 2.
See André Gombay, “What You Don’t Know Doesn’t Hurt You” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 79 (1978–79): 239–249; Ernest Partridge, “Posthumous Interest and Posthumous Respect” Ethics 91 (1981): 243–264; Barbara Baum Levenbook, “Harming Someone After His Death” Ethics 94 (1984): 407–419; Don Marquis, “Harming the Dead” Ethics 96 (1985): 159–161; and Barbara Baum Levenbook, “Harming the Dead, Once Again” Ethics 96 (1985): 162–164.
Cf. Feinberg, Harm to Others, pp. 89–91.
See George Pitcher, “The Misfortunes of the Dead” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 183–188.
Cf. the historical discussion in Phillipe Ariès, Western Attitides Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974).
Pitcher, p. 188.
In Rights, Justice and the Bounds of Liberty (p. 177) in a discussion of “human vegetables” Feinberg denies this, claiming that capacities to have certain experiences at a particular time are necessary in order to have interests at that time. In Harm to Others he revises this view and abandons the claim that capacities are necessary conditions of interests.
“An Account of My Last Interview with David Hume, Esq.” in David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), p. 77.
Nagel, Mortal Questions, p. 8.
In his Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 175 Derek Parfit suggests that this sort of argument is unsatisfactory because even if it is logically impossible that we might have been born earlier, it is nevertheless possible to regret truths even when it is logically impossible that these truths be false. Hence, for example, the Pythagoreans regretted that the square root of two was not a rational number when they learnt this. This objection, however, is irrelevant. The Epicurean point is that it is not reasonable to regret one’s prenatal nonexistence, not that it is not possible to do so. Nagel’s argument then tries to show why it is irrational to regret one’s past nonexistence; it doesn’t claim that one cannot regret this.
My argument here is indebted to Pavel Tichy’s criticisms of a similar notion of Kripke’s in “Kripke on Necessity A Posteriori” Philosophical Studies 43 (1983): 232–241.
Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 744–745. However Nozick acknowledges that the example comes originally from Derek Parfit, whose own version is now available in his Reasons and Persons, pp. 165–166.
Nozick, p. 745.
Of course, it may still be that, as Parfit suggests (pp. 176–177), it would be better for us not to be biased toward the future in that we would then be happier about aging and the approach of death.
Williams, p. 84.
For a survey of what the major Western philosophers have said about death see Jacques Choron, Death and Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
Benedict de Spinoza, Ethic. 4th ed., trans. W. H. White & A. H. Sterling (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. 235.
For a similar suggestion see Jeffrie G. Murphy, “Rationality and the Fear of Death” The Monist 59 (1976): 187–203
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1987 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Perrett, R.W. (1987). The Fear of Death. In: Death and Immortality. Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3529-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3529-7_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8077-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3529-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive