Online research in philosophy

There is a classic problem which confronts any attempt to assign death a value. On the assumption that death is personal annihilation, death deprives evil of a requisite subject, for no misfortune can befall something which does not exist. Recent efforts to provide a reasonable basis for counting death as a bad thing have centered on an analysis of the loss of life's goods which it brings. So long as the analysis assumes that death is a simple state, loss can be explained only by reference to a realm of possible things which exist after death. An alternative analysis of death is offered in which death is defined as a limit on life. That analysis provides a basis for evaluative judgements about death, while avoiding any commitment to post-mortem existence.

Raising the question -- The cause of evil -- Why evil? -- What it means for evil to be -- Origins -- Genealogy -- Mirrored evil -- The eerie -- The unholy -- The ignoble -- The reality of evil -- Epilogue.

There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all. I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps. The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann. As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of the motivation of perpetrators of radical evil, these two concepts are independent but nonetheless highly complementary. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • banality of evil • Adolf Eichmann • evil • forgiveness • Immanuel Kant • punishment • radical evil.

Abstract   According to the Deprivation Approach, the evil of death is to be explained by the fact that death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had lived longer. But the Deprivation Approach confronts a problem first discussed by Lucretius. Late birth seems to deprive us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had been born earlier. Yet no one is troubled by late birth. So it’s hard to see why we should be troubled by its temporal mirror image, early death. In a 1986 paper, Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer appealed to a version of Derek Parfit’s “Bias toward the Future”; they claimed that early death deprives us of future goods that we care about, while late birth deprives us of past goods that we don’t care about. In this paper I show that the Brueckner–Fischer principle is open to several possible interpretations, but that it does not solve the Lucretius problem no matter how we understand it. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9766-6 Authors Fred Feldman, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

This thesis examines the moral implications of the metaphysical nature of death. I begin with the Epicurean arguments which hold that death is morally irrelevant for the one who dies, and that one should regard it accordingly. I defend the Epicurean claim that death simpliciter can be neither good nor bad from objections which purport to show that the negative features of death are bad for the one who dies. I establish that existence is a necessary condition for a person’s being morally benefited or wronged, and since death is the privation of existence, death cannot be bad for the person who dies. To account for the commonly-held belief that death is an evil, I explain that the prospect of death can be morally relevant to persons while they are alive as death is one of the many states of affairs that may prevent the satisfaction of persons’ desires for the goods of life. I claim that categorical desires ground a disutility by which death can rationally be regarded as an evil to be avoided and feared. I then consider an infinite life as a possible attractive alternative to a finite life. I argue that a life which is invulnerable to death cannot be a desirable human existence, as many of our human values are inseparable from the finite temporal structure of life. I conclude that death simpliciter can be neither good nor bad, but the fact of death has two moral implications for living persons: death as such is instrumentally good (it is a necessary condition by which the value of life is recognized); and our own individual deaths can rationally be regarded as an evil to be avoided.

In this paper I will provide a hylomorphic critique of Jeff McMahan’s “An Alternative to Brain Death.” I will evaluate three puzzles—the dicephalus, the braintransplant, and the split-brain phenomenon—proposed by McMahan which allow him to deny that a human being is identical to an organism. I will contend thatMcMahan’s solution entails counterintuitive consequences that pose problems to organ transplant cases. A Thomistic hylomorphic metaphysics not only avoids these unwelcome consequences and provides solutions to the three puzzles but in doing so allows for an alternative definition of death. Since McMahan has constructed his definition of death around his own metaphysics, alternative metaphysics, in this case a hylomorphic metaphysics, allow for an alternative definition of death.

A popular view about why death is bad for the one who dies is that death deprives its subject of the good things in life. This is the “deprivation account” of the evil of death. There is another view about death that seems incompatible with the deprivation account: the view that a person’s death is less bad if she has lived a good life. In The Ethics of Killing, Jeff McMahan argues that a deprivation account should discount the evil of death for previous gains in life. I argue against discounting evils, and show how a version of the deprivation view can accommodate McMahan’s examples.

In his article 'The Evil of Death' (henceforth: ED) Harry Silverstein argues that a proper refutation of the Epicurean view that death is not an evil requires the adoption of a particular revisionary ontology, which Silverstein, following Quine, calls 'four-dimensionalism'.1 In 'The Evil of Death Revisited' (henceforth: EDR) Silverstein reaffirms his earlier position and responds to several criticisms, including some targeted at his ontology. There remain, however, serious problems with Silverstein's argument, and I shall highlight five major ones below. I conclude that Silverstein has not shown that an appeal to four-dimensionalism facilitates a refutation of Epicurus, although a consideration of some of Silverstein's points helps to indicate the limited scope of the Epicurean thesis.

This article explores the problem of evil from a post-metaphysical position. Distinguishing between good and evil remains no less a pressing task in a world after the "death of God".

What is death? Do people survive death? What do we mean when we say that someone is "dying"? Presenting a clear and engaging discussion of the classic philosophical questions surrounding death, this book studies the great metaphysical and moral problems of death. In the first part, Feldman shows that a definition of life is necessary before death can be defined. After exploring several of the most plausible accounts of the nature of life and demonstrating their failure, he goes on to propose his own conceptual scheme for death and related concepts. In the second part, Feldman turns to ethical and value-theoretical questions about death. Addressing the ancient Epicurean ethical problem about the evil of death, he argues that death can be a great evil for those who die, even if they do not exist after death, because it may deprive them of the goods they would have enjoyed if they had continued to live. Confrontations with the Reaper concludes with a novel consequentialist theory about the morality of killing, applying it to such thorny practical issues as abortion, suicide, and euthanasia.