Category: Death and Immortality
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Death: Distinctions, Terminology, Questions
To think clearly about death we need to draw some distinctions, fix some terminology, and catalog the various questions that can arise. Herewith, a modest contribution to that end. 1. Process, event, state. There is first of all the process of dying and that in which it culminates, the event of dying. Both are distinct…
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The Epicurean Death Argument and Nihilism
A reader suggests that the "Epicurean argument leads to nihilism. Why live if death is not an evil to you? (assuming there is no one to grieve you)." In Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus makes the point that death is ". . . of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when…
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The Evil of Death and the Rationality of Fearing It
Is death an evil? Even if it is an evil to the people other than me who love me, or in some way profit from my life, is it an evil to me? A few days ago, defying Philip Larkin, I took the Epicurean position that death cannot be an evil for me and so…
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Philip Larkin Reads “Aubade”
Reading by Larkin. A reading by another, with text. This is a great poem!
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Is It Rational to Fear Death?
Dying is not the same as being dead. 'Death' is ambiguous as between 'dying' and 'being dead.' But I will use 'death' to mean 'being dead.' So the title question comes to this: Is it rational to fear the 'state' of being dead? There are ways of dying such that it is rational to fear…
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Kerouac October Quotation #7: Born to Die
Visions of Cody, p. 12: All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile.
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On Praying for Christopher Hitchens
There is something strange, and perhaps even incoherent, about praying for Christopher Hitchens if the prayers are not for his recovery or for his courageous acceptance of death, but for conversion or a change of heart. Let's think about it. I do not play the lottery; I have good reasons for not playing it; I…
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Can Only the Mortalist Love?
From the mail: A friend of mine (a philosophy professor) and I were discussing issues of immortality, meaning, and love on Facebook. I explained to him that the love I feel for others in some sense 'seeks' immortality, as the depth of the feeling is such that without that belief, love would be almost too…
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On Hitchens and Death
I just caught the last third of an interview of Christopher Hitchens by Charlie Rose. He looks bad, the chemotherapy having done a nasty tonsorial number on him. But his trademark intellectual incandescence appeared undiminished. 'Brilliant' is a word I don't toss around lightly, but Hitch is one to whom it unarguably applies. Public intellectuals of his caliber…
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Does Sincere Belief in an Afterlife Entail Religious Zealotry?
Spencer Case e-mails: Greetings from Afghanistan. I’d very much like to hear your response to a sketch of an argument I’m developing. It goes as follows: 1. Suppose an afterlife is obtainable based on one’s performance in this life. If this afterlife is as I understand it, it must have an infinite value while all…
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Death Bed Reading
What will you have on your death stand? Whose thoughts will occupy your mind in your final moments in the dying of the light, as the breath comes short and the cancer cells conquer organ after organ? Speaking for myself, I'll take Plato over Putnam, Boethius over Butchvarov, Aquinas over Quine, the Psalms over Sartre.…
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A Strange Experience in the Charles Doughty Memorial Suite
I had a strange experience in the late 1980's. Although my main residence at the time was in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, near the bohemian district called Coventry, I was teaching at the University of Dayton and during the school year rented rooms not far from the University. One night, spirited philosophical conversation with a graduate student aroused…
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Analogies, Souls, Harm to Souls, and Murder
Peter Lupu comments: Bill has argued that my murder-argument relies upon a faulty analogy. I have a very general response to this charge: while the murder-argument indeed relies upon an analogy, the analogy upon which it relies is one employed by the soul-theorists themselves. Thus, I contend that if the soul-theorists are entitled to a…
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Philip Larkin on Death
David Rieff, son of Susan Sontag, writes movingly of her mother's love of life and her refusal to accept extinction in Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir (Simon and Shuster, 2008). Her attitude and his is close to the one expressed by Philip Larkin in the following poem which displays Larkin's power…
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Birth and Death
At birth the curtain lifts. Or does it fall? At death the curtain falls. Or does it lift?