A dilemma for Epicureanism

Philosophical Studies 176 (1):241-257 (2019)
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Abstract

Perhaps death’s badness is an illusion. Epicureans think so and argue that agents cannot be harmed by death when they’re alive nor when they’re dead. I argue that each version of Epicureanism faces a fatal dilemma: it is either committed to a demonstrably false view about the relationship between self-regarding reasons and well-being or it is involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism. I first provide principled reason to think that any viable view about the badness of death must allow that agents have self-regarding reason to avoid death if doing so would increase their total well-being. I then show that Epicurean views which do not preserve this link are subject to reductio arguments and so should be rejected. After that, I show that the Epicurean views which accommodate this desideratum are involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism.

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Travis Timmerman
Seton Hall University

Citations of this work

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Plural harm: plural problems.Erik Carlson, Jens Johansson & Olle Risberg - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (2):553-565.
Dissolving Death’s Time-of-Harm Problem.Travis Timmerman - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2):405-418.

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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.
Verbal Disputes.David J. Chalmers - 2011 - Philosophical Review 120 (4):515-566.
Well-being and death.Ben Bradley - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Death and the Afterlife.Samuel Scheffler - 2013 - New York, NY: Oup Usa. Edited by Niko Kolodny.

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