Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Death and Immortality

  • Physics and the Immortality of the Soul

    A Scientific American article the critique of which I will leave as an exercise for my readers.

  • Bad to Die Young but Not Bad to Die? An Aporetic Dyad

    Herewith, a rumination on death with Epicurus as presiding shade. The following two propositions are both logically inconsistent and yet very plausible: 1. Being dead is not an evil for anyone at any time.  2. Being dead at a young age is an evil for some. Obviously, the limbs of the dyad cannot both be…

  • Kierkegaard on Immortality

    S. Kierkegaard/J. Climacus, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Swenson and Lowrie tr., Princeton UP, 1941, pp. 154-155, emphasis added): All honor to him who can handle learnedly the learned question of immortality!  But the question of immortality is essentially not a learned question, rather it is a question of inwardness, which the subject by becoming subjective must…

  • Causes of Death of Philosophers

    Here. For example, Rescher died of incoherence while Spinoza died of substance abuse. Miguel de Unamuno expired from a tragic loss of sense. Plantinga perished of necessity, and Augustine by a Hippo. As you can see, some are nasty and one needn't be dead to have a cause of death assigned. Last I checked, Professor…

  • Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

    "Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem…

  • Of Hearse and Haul

    You can't tow a U-Haul with a hearse. 

  • Assignable to the Future

    We assign death to the future.  But the death so assignable is not the one that threatens us.

  • Ubi Amor, Ibi Oculus

    They say that love is blind.  But if love blinds, is it love?  Or is it rather infatuation?  "Where there is love, there is sight."  I found this fine Latin aphorism in Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality (Herder and Herder, 1969, p. 21).  The translation is mine.  Pieper credits Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences…

  • The Consolation of Philosophy

    Dear Sir: I read, or attempt to read, your blog almost every day. Some of your "technical" analysis and commentaries go right over my head, but I try to persevere. Sometimes things click into place – from my point of view. And I found your recent examination of the question Is Death Evil? very helpful.…

  • Is Death Evil?

    So is death evil or not?  What is my answer?  The answer depends on metaphysics. 1. If we are natural beings only, nothing but complex physical systems, continuous with the rest of nature and susceptible in principle of complete explanation by physics and biology, then I cannot see how death in general could be accounted evil. …

  • Death as a Relational Harm?

    Here is some Epicurean reasoning: 1. Death is annihilation. (Materialist assumption)2. A harm is a harm to someone or something: for there to be a harm, there must be a subject of harm. (Conceptual truth)3. Nothing is a subject of a harm at a time at which it does not exist. (Plausible principle)Therefore4. No dead person…

  • Silenian and Epicurean Sources of “Death is Not an Evil”

    Clarity will be served if we distinguish the specifically Epicurean reason for thinking death not an evil from another reason which is actually anti-Epicurean. I'll start with the second reason. A. Death is not an evil because it removes us from a condition which on balance is not good, a condition which on balance is worse…

  • The Dead and the Nonexistent: Meinong Contra Epicurus

    Are there nonexistent objects in the sense in which Meinong thought there are? One reason to think so  derives from the problem of reference to the dead. The problem can be displayed as an aporetic tetrad: 1. A dead person no longer exists.2. What no longer exists does not exist at all.  3. What does not…

  • Life-Death Asymmetry: An Aporetic Triad

    Let us consider a person whose life is going well, and who has a reasonable expectation that it will continue to go well in the near term at least.  For such a person 1. A longer being-alive is better than a shorter being-alive. 2. A longer being-dead is not worse than a shorter being-dead. (Equivalently:…

  • Being Dead and Being Nonexistent, or: How to Cease to Exist without Dying

    In general, being dead and being nonexistent are not the same 'property' for an obvious reason: only that which was once alive can properly be said to be dead, and not everything was once alive.  Nevertheless, it might be thought that, for living things, to be is to be alive, and not to be is…