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How Bad Is Death?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ben Bradley*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY13244-1170, USA

Extract

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. The deprivation account might be considered the ‘received view’ concerning the evil of death. But the deprivation account entails that there need be no relationship between the disvalue of someone's death and the quality of the life that preceded it. It is often thought that a person's death is less tragic, or less bad, if she has lived a good life or accomplished great things.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

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