How bad is death?

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (1):111-127 (2007)
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Abstract

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

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Ben Bradley
Syracuse University

Citations of this work

Døden som et onde.Carl Tollef Solberg - 2019 - Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 54 (3):167-186.
Deprivation and the See-saw of Death.Christopher Wareham - 2009 - South African Journal of Philosophy 28 (2):246-56.
The value of longevity.Greg Bognar - 2020 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 19 (3):229-247.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.
After Virtue.A. MacIntyre - 1981 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 46 (1):169-171.

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