Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Existential Terror

  • Published:
The Journal of Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Many of us feel existential terror when contemplating our future nonexistence. I examine several attempts to rationally justify existential terror. The most promising of these appeals to the effects of future nonexistence on the meaningfulness of our lives. I argue that even this justification fails, and therefore existential terror is irrational.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We may wish to make a distinction between objective and subjective criteria for correctness of attitudes. An attitude might be in one way correct or justified if it is based on appropriate evidence, even if it does not fit its object; if something is justifiably believed to be bad but in fact is not bad, then according to a subjective criterion for correctness, it would be correct to have a negative attitude towards that thing. I am presupposing an objective sense of correctness according to which one can have an incorrect attitude towards something even if the attitude is justified by one’s evidence.

  2. But see Bradley (2015) and Draper (2012) for difficulties.

  3. See Nagel’s discussion of Camus (Nagel 1979: 22).

  4. Some argue that the two evaluations are related: that, for example, if your life is meaningful, then it at least has a component of positive well-being. Nevertheless they are distinct modes of evaluation.

  5. See Metz (2013) for a thorough overview of theories of meaningfulness.

  6. See Draper (2012: 310–312), for a recent discussion of the relevance of Lucretian arguments to emotional responses to death.

References

  • Bradley, Ben. 2015. How should we feel about death? Philosophical Papers 44: 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Wayne. 1987. The varieties of fear. Philosophical Studies 51: 287–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Unamuno, Miguel. 1972. The tragic sense of life in men and nations (trans: Anthony Kerrigan). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  • Dougherty, Tom. 2011. On whether to prefer pain to pass. Ethics 121: 521–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Draper, Kai. 2012. Death and rational emotion. In The Oxford handbook of philosophy of death, ed. Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson, 297–316. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, Paul. 2008. The meaning and value of life. In The meaning of life: A reader, ed. E.D. Klemke, and Steven M. Cahn, 114–133. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, Robert. 1980. Fear. The Philosophical Review 89: 560–578.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greene, Preston, and Meghan Sullivan. 2015. Against time bias. Ethics 125: 947–970.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kamm, Frances. 1993. Morality, mortality, volume I: Death and whom to save from it. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lucretius. 1965. On nature (trans: Russel Geer). Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co.

  • Metz, Thaddeus. 2013. Meaning in life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, Thomas. 1979. Mortal questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rorty, Amélie. 1994. Fearing Death. In Language, metaphysics, and death, 2nd ed, ed. John Donnelly, 102–116. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheffler, Samuel. 2013. Death and the afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Richard. 2008. The meaning of life. In The meaning of life: A reader, ed. E.D. Klemke, and Steven M. Cahn, 134–142. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wielenberg, Erik. 2005. Value and virtue in a godless universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wolf, Susan. 2010. Meaning in life and why it matters. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

A very abbreviated preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Immortality Project conference in Riverside, CA in May, 2015. Thanks to those present for their helpful comments. Thanks also to Nathan Ballantyne for very helpful comments on a later draft, and to Kirsten Egerstrom and Travis Timmerman for helpful discussion. Work on this paper was supported by the Immortality Project at the University of California-Riverside, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, Syracuse University, 541 Hall of Languages, Syracuse, NY, 13244, USA

    Ben Bradley

Authors
  1. Ben Bradley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ben Bradley.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bradley, B. Existential Terror. J Ethics 19, 409–418 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-015-9204-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-015-9204-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation