Professor Shelly Kagan:
--Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich is
surprised to discover that he's
going to die.
It's the sort of thing he's
given lip service to,
no doubt, over the course of
his life.
But when he finally gets ill
and comes up to the fact of his
mortality, that his body is
going to sicken and eventually
die,
the fact of his mortality seems
to shock him,
seems to surprise him.
We might say,
on one level he believes that
he was mortal.
He's believed it all along.
But at another level,
at some deeper level,
it comes as a surprise to him.
He never really believed it.
Now, I take it that we find
Ivan Ilyich a perfectly
believable example.
That is, we think it's
conceivable that somebody could,
at some level,
not really believe they're
going to die.
But I also take it that Tolstoy
means to be putting forward more
than just a claim that there
could be such a person.
"Look how bizarre he is.
Let me describe him for you."
But rather, the suggestion is
meant to be that Ivan Ilyich's
case is rather typical.
Maybe all of us are in his
situation, or at least most of
us are in his situation.
Or, at the very least,
many of us are in his
situation.
That's a stronger claim,
though I think it's not the
sort of claim that's unique to
Tolstoy,
that all of us or most of us or
many of us at the fundamental
level don't really believe that
we're going to die.
You might ask,
what kind of evidence could be
offered for that?
Offering a realistic scenario,
a realistic description of such
a person--Ivan Ilyich--doesn't
give us any reason to think that
most of us or many of us are in
his situation.
So, is there any reason to
think that?
You might ask,
what kind of argument could be
offered for a claim like that?
What we'd be looking for,
I take it, would be some kind
of behavior on our part that
calls out for explanation.
And the best explanation is to
be had--This is how the argument
would go.
The best explanation is to be
had by supposing that those
people who behave this
way--Let's suppose many of us
who behave this way.
The best explanation of that
behavior is to be found by
claiming that at some level,
at some fundamental level,
we don't really believe what we
claim to believe.
We don't really believe what we
give lip service to.
Take somebody who perhaps
suffers from some sort of
compulsion to wash his hands.
We ask him, "Are your hands
dirty?"
He might say,
"No, of course not."
And yet, there he is,
going back to bathroom,
washing his hands again.
You might say,
the only way to explain the
behavior is to say that at some
level,
he really does believe his
hands are dirty,
despite the fact that he says
they're not.
Well, in the same way,
if we could find some behavior
on our part that calls out for
explanation,
that the best possible
explanation would be that at
some level we don't believe
we're going to die,
then we might say,
look, this gives us some reason
to think that we don't really
believe we're going to die,
even though we say we believe
it.
Suppose, for example,
that if you really did believe,
fundamentally,
unconsciously,
all the way down--however we
should put it--if you really did
believe you were going to die,
the horror of that would lead
you to start screaming and just
keep screaming.
Of course, this example reminds
us again of Ivan Ilyich,
who screams and screams and
screams almost till his death.
Well, suppose this was true.
Suppose that if you--Suppose we
believed--we had good reason to
believe--if you really took
seriously the thought that you
were going to die,
you couldn't stop screaming.
But of course,
nobody here is screaming,
from which we can conclude none
of us really do believe,
fundamentally,
deep down, that we're going to
die.
That would be a good argument
if we had good reason to believe
the conditional,
the if-then claim.
If only you really truly
believed you were going to die,
you would scream and scream and
scream.
That's the crucial premise.
And of course,
we don't have any good--as far
as I can see--we don't have any
good reason to believe that
crucial premise.
You might ask though,
is there some other behavior,
something else that should tip
us off,
could tip us off,
as to whether or not we really
do or don't believe that we're
going to die?
Well, here's the best that I
can do.
This strikes me as the most
plausible contender for an
argument like this.
As we know, there are people
who have brushes with death.
They might be,
for example,
in an accident,
and come close to being killed,
but walk away without a
scratch.
Or suffer a heart attack and be
on the operating table for some
number of hours and then,
thanks to cardiac surgery or
what have you,
be resuscitated.
When people have these near
brushes with death,
it's easy to believe that the
fact of their mortality is more
vivid.
It's more before their mind's
eye.
It's something that they now
really truly do believe.
And the interesting point is
many people who have this sort
of experience,
for whom their mortality has
become vivid,
they often say,
"I've got to change my life.
I need to spend less time at
the office and more time with my
family, telling the people that
I love that I love them,
doing the things that are
important to me,
spend less time worrying about
getting ahead,
making money,
getting the plasma TV,"
whatever it is.
Let's suppose that this is true
of all of us,
or at least most of us.
When we find the fact of our
mortality is made vivid,
when we really truly can see
that we're mortal,
then we change our priorities,
stop giving all the time and
attention to trying to get ahead
in the rat race and spend more
time with our loved ones doing
what's important to us.
Suppose that claim were true.
Well, armed with that claim,
we might notice,
well look, of course,
most of us do spend a lot of
time trying to get ahead,
trying to earn a lot of money,
don't spend the bulk of our
time doing the things that we
really truly think are most
important to us,
don't tell our friends,
don't tell our family members
how much they mean to us,
how much we love them.
What are we to make of that
fact?
Well, maybe the explanation is,
although we give lip service to
the claim that we're mortal,
at some more fundamental level,
we don't truly believe it.
The belief's not vivid for us.
We don't believe it all the way
down.
Well, this is an argument--at
least it seems to me--that has
some chance of being right.
I'm not at all convinced that
it is right.
But at least it doesn't seem to
be the sort of argument,
unlike some of the arguments
I've considered last time about
oh,
nobody believes they're going
to die because you can't picture
being dead or what have you.
This argument,
I think, has some possibility
of being right.
It does seem as though people
who have brushes with death
change their behavior in
significant ways.
The fact that we don't behave
in those other ways gives us
some reason to believe that
perhaps at some level we don't
completely or fully or
fundamentally believe we're
going to die.
As I say, I'm not sure whether
that argument's right.
But at least it's an argument
worth taking seriously.
Let me turn now to a different
claim that sometimes gets made
about death.
This is the claim--not that
nobody believes they're going to
die;
that's the one we've been
talking about for the last
lecture or so--but instead,
the claim that everybody dies
alone.
This sounds like one of those
deep insights into the nature of
death.
It's got that kind of air of
profundity about it that
philosophy's thought to have or
aspires to have.
Everyone dies alone.
This is telling us something
deep and important and
interesting about the nature of
death.
Now, as it happens,
this is one I'm going to be
completely dismissive of.
I think, as far as I can see,
that the claim "we all die
alone," however we interpret it,
just ends up being implausible
or false.
I give it such a hard time each
time I teach this class,
that I'm often tempted to just
drop it from the discussion
altogether.
Even though,
if you've done the reading of
the Edwards paper that I
assigned,
you have a series of quotes
from Edwards in which people say
things like, they die alone.
I sometimes come away after
this discussion thinking,
"Why am I wasting our time?
Nobody really believes this,
that we all die alone."
Last year I was virtually ready
to drop it and then,
I kid you not,
that very afternoon,
I came across a quote.
I'll share this with you in a
second.
Somebody saying,
"Oh, we all die alone."
And then I think it was two
days later, a week later,
I came across another quote of
somebody saying,
"Oh, we all die alone."
It made me think,
"Oh, I guess this is a common
enough thought."
So here are the two quotes.
But I think once you start
looking for them,
you find them everyplace.
This first one is from the folk
singer Loudon Wainwright III,
from his song Last Man on
Earth.
"We learn to live together and
then we die alone."
We die alone.
Interesting claim.
It seems to say something
important about the nature of
death.
Here's another quote.
This is from the children's
book, Eldest by
Christopher Paolini,
the sequel, of course,
to the bestseller
Eragon.
"‘How terrible,' said Eragon,
‘to die alone,
separate, even from the one who
is closest to you.'"
The answer given to Eragon,
"Everyone dies alone,
Eragon, whether you are a king
on a battlefield or a lowly
peasant lying in bed among your
family,
no one can accompany you into
the void…" Everyone dies
alone.
As I say, this is a common
enough view.
Two quotes.
I could certainly produce
others.
Everyone dies alone.
The trick--The question we're
going to ask is,
can we find some interpretation
of that claim under which,
first of all it ends up being
true, secondly,
it ends up being a necessary
truth about death?
Suppose everyone happens to die
on Monday, due to some cosmic
coincidence.
It might be sort of
interesting, but it wouldn't
tell us something deep about the
nature of death,
if people could just as easily
die on Tuesday.
If it happened to be that
everybody dies in a room by
themselves, that would be
interesting.
We might wonder what causes it.
But it wouldn't be some deep
insight into the nature of
death.
We're going to get a deep
insight if it's a
necessary truth about
death that everyone dies alone.
So it's got to be true.
It's got to be a necessary
truth.
And, of course,
it's got to be an interesting
claim.
If, when we interpret the claim
"everyone dies alone," that just
ends up being a slightly
pretentious way of saying
everyone dies,
we might say,
oh yeah, that is true and it is
a necessary truth,
but it's not especially
surprising.
It's not some deep surprising
insight into the nature of
death.
We all knew everyone dies.
You take that familiar fact and
you wrap it up in the language
"everyone dies alone."
If that's all you're saying,
you're not saying anything
interesting.
When people say,
"You know, everyone dies
alone," you're supposed to be
gaining some deep insight into
the nature of death.
Finally, "everyone dies alone"
is supposed to say something
special about death.
It better not be that everyone
does everything alone,
because--in whatever the
relevant sense of alone turns
out to be--if everyone does
everything alone,
then of course that might be
interesting.
It might be very important and
insightful, but you're not
saying anything especially
interesting about death when you
say everyone dies alone,
if it's also true that everyone
eats their lunch alone.
So, all this is,
is just, as we begin to ask
ourselves, what could it
possible mean when people say
"everyone dies alone"?
we're looking for something
that's true, necessary,
interesting and,
if not unique to death,
at least not true of
everything.
I put these conditions down
because, of course,
what I want to suggest is
although the sentence "everyone
dies alone,"
the claim that everyone dies
alone, is one of these things
that people say,
they're not really thinking
very hard about what they mean
by it.
Because once you actually push
people, to pin them down,
what do you mean by it,
you end up with something
that's either just not true,
or not interesting,
or not necessary,
or not particularly unique to
death.
Take a possible interpretation.
The most natural,
straightforward,
literal, flat-footed
interpretation.
To say that somebody does
something alone means they do it
not in the presence of others.
Somebody who lives by himself
goes to sleep.
If there's nobody else in the
bedroom, he's sleeping alone.
On that straightforward
interpretation,
to say that everybody dies
alone, what we're saying is that
it's true of each one of us that
he or she dies not in the
presence of others.
If that was true,
it would be sort of surprising,
striking.
We might wonder whether it's a
necessary truth.
But at least there'd be
something interesting there.
But of course, it's not true.
We all know full well that
sometimes people die in the
presence of others.
We read earlier this semester
Plato's Phaedo,
which describes the death scene
of Socrates.
Socrates drinks the hemlock and
dies in the presence of his
friends and disciples.
Socrates does not die alone.
And of course,
we know that there are many,
many other cases in which
people die in the presence of
their friends,
family, loved ones.
It's just not true,
given that interpretation,
to say we all die alone.
So if that's what the claim
means, it's false.
Our challenge is to find some
other interpretation of the
claim.
All right, second possibility.
When people say "everyone dies
alone," they don't mean to be
saying you die,
but not in the presence of
others.
They mean to be saying rather,
even if there are others around
you, even if there are others
with you, dying is something
that you're doing alone.
They aren't dying.
Socrates' friends and disciples
are not dying.
He's the only one dying.
And so everyone dies alone in
that sense.
Well, that's an interesting
claim, if it's true,
but it's not true.
We could certainly have
battlefields in which many
people are dying along with
others.
There is Jones dying,
but he's not dying alone.
There's Smith dying at the same
time right next to him.
If that's what people mean when
they say "everyone dies alone,"
then that's clearly false as
well.
I presume that's not what
people meant either.
But then what was it that they
did mean?
Well, we could do better.
We could say,
look, when Socrates dies,
he's dying alone in the sense
that he's doing it by himself.
He's not doing it in
cooperation with anybody else,
in coordination with anybody
else.
On the battlefield,
even if Smith and Jones are
both dying, it's not like this
is some sort of cooperative,
joint undertaking.
You could be walking down the
sidewalk and Linda could be
walking down the sidewalk and
even though you're both walking
down the sidewalk,
you're not walking down the
sidewalk together.
In contrast,
you can walk down the sidewalk
with somebody.
Say, "Hey, let's go to the
library."
And you walk down the sidewalk
together.
Walking is something you can do
with others, in the sense that
it can be a joint activity,
a joint undertaking.
Perhaps the claim then is that
dying is not something that can
be done in that way as a joint
undertaking.
Even if you're in a room or a
battlefield where people are
dying at the same time as you,
to your left and your right,
dying is not and cannot be
something that is a joint
undertaking.
Well, that might be a proposal
about what people mean when they
say "everybody dies alone."
And if it is,
all I can say is,
again, it just seems to be
false.
Now admittedly,
dying as a joint undertaking is
far rarer than dying alone.
But for all that,
we were looking for some deep
insight into the nature of
death.
Everyone dies alone.
Everyone must die alone.
That's only going to be true if
dying as a joint undertaking is
impossible.
But it's not impossible.
You could have,
for example,
some sort of suicide pact.
There have been cases,
gruesome as they may be,
in which entire groups of
people drink poison together so
as to die not alone,
but die together,
die as part of jointly dying,
dying as a group.
Or you could have,
once told that this sort of
thing happens,
a couple in love who together
jump off the cliff,
committing suicide together,
dying not alone but with each
other as part of a joint
undertaking.
It certainly seems possible.
I take it cases like this
actually do occur.
So if somebody comes along and
says "No, no,
everybody dies alone,
and dying as part of a joint
undertaking is impossible,"
they're just saying something
false.
These joint undertakings are
like, well, you might think of
them analogous to playing
chamber music with a string
quartet.
It's something you're doing
with others.
It's not just a coincidence
that they're doing it at the
same time.
All these people happen to be
playing the violin,
viola, or what have you next to
you.
No, no, we deliberately
coordinated with one another so
as to together produce this
music.
It seems possible in the case
of string quartets.
It seems possible in the case
of joint suicide pacts as well.
Well, a fan of the claim that
we all die alone might come back
and say, "Well,
in the case of the string
quartet, although it's true that
I am playing with others,
somebody could take my part.
Somebody else could play the
second violin part for me.
Whereas, in contrast,
when I die, even if I'm dying
with others, nobody can take my
part."
So perhaps that's what the
claim is meant to be when people
say, "everybody dies alone."
Nobody can die your death for
you.
Nobody can take your part.
Now if that's what they mean,
then--a small observation--they
didn't express themselves very
clearly.
It seems to me rather a long
distance from the thought,
"nobody can die for me,
nobody can take my part," to
the claim, "everybody dies
alone."
That seems a rather misleading,
unhelpful, way of making your
point.
But let's just bracket that
complaint.
It is true that nobody can take
my part?
Certainly people can take my
part in the string quartet.
Is it true that nobody can take
my part in terms of my death?
Not so clear it is true.
I don't know how many of you
have read Tale of Two
Cities.
If not, I'm about to spoil the
plot for you.
Here's at least a strand of the
story.
The hero of the story is in
love with a woman who--alas and
alack--does not love him.
She loves another man.
This other man--alas and
alack--has been condemned to
death during the French
Revolution.
Now as it happens--this is a
novel--as it happens,
our hero looks rather like the
other man.
And so as the other man is
being carted off to the
guillotine to be killed,
our hero takes his place.
Hence, the famous speech,
"Tis a far, far better thing I
do today."
Our hero sacrifices himself so
that the woman he loves can have
the man that she loves.
Well, for our purposes,
the romance isn't crucial.
For our purposes,
the crucial point is to see
that what seems to be going on
there is our hero is taking the
place of somebody else who's
about to die.
Just like somebody could take
my place in the string quartet,
it seems that somebody could
take my place at the guillotine.
In the American Civil War,
there was a draft,
but you could avoid it by
hiring somebody to take your
place, if you were rich enough.
Well, you're in some battle,
or rather, your troop is in
some battle, and people are
being killed left and right.
Well, I suppose it doesn't
strike me as an implausible
thing to say that if everybody
in the troop got killed and you
would have gotten killed had you
been there,
but instead,
the person you hired to take
your place gets killed,
then he took your place.
He substituted for you in the
death.
So again, we don't have any
clear, true interpretation of
the claim that nobody can take
my place, even with regard to
dying.
Well, easy to imagine the fan
of this view coming back yet
again and saying,
"Although it's true that our
hero takes the place of the
other man on the guillotine,
what ends up happening,
of course, is that our hero
dies his own death.
He doesn't take over the death
of the other man.
The death of the other man
doesn't take place until 20,30,
40, whatever it is,
years later.
Nobody can take my place at
my death.
Because, of course,
if they take my place,
they end up living or going
through, rather,
their death not
my death.
My death is something that only
I can undergo.
Now again, that's an
interesting claim if it's true.
At least it seems to be an
interesting claim.
It seems to say something
interesting about death.
Again, I want to just notice
that it's a rather odd thing to
try to express that point in the
language "everyone dies alone."
But just bracket that.
Have we at least found
something interesting,
necessary, unique to death when
we say, "Nobody can die my death
for me.
I am the only one who can
undergo my death"?
Each of us must undergo his own
death and nobody else's death.
Nobody else can undergo their
death for them,
somebody else's death for them.
Well, that does seem to be true
and it seems to be a necessary
truth.
But we're not quite done.
Is it saying something deep and
interesting about the nature of
death?
Is it something that's fairly
unique to the nature of death?
That nobody can die my death
for me.
Actually, I don't think it is.
Consider getting your hair cut
at the barber.
Now of course,
somebody else can take your
slot.
All right, there's somebody who
comes along and says,
"Oh, I need to get to a date.
I'm going to be late.
Would you mind my having your
appointment, using your
appointment?"
"Oh, I'm willing to wait.
It's okay," right?
So you might say,
in some loose sense they've
gotten your haircut.
But of course,
as it ended up,
they didn't really get
your haircut.
They got their haircut.
Think about haircuts.
Nobody can get my
haircut for me.
I'm the only one who can get
my haircut.
If somebody else tries to get
my haircut, they just end up
getting their own
haircut.
Of course, it's not just
special about haircuts.
Talk about getting your kidney
stones removed.
Nobody else can get my
kidney stones removed for me.
I'm the only one who can get my
kidney stones removed for me.
Think about eating lunch.
Nobody can eat my lunch
for me.
If somebody else tries to eat
my lunch, they end up--it
becomes their lunch.
They've eaten their lunch for
themselves.
Nobody can eat my lunch for me
except for me.
If you think about it,
it's true about just about
everything.
Maybe indeed everything.
If you emphasize the word "my"
enough, nobody can do much of
anything for me and still have
it be my such and such.
In short, even though it's true
that nobody can die my death for
me, this isn't some deep insight
into the special nature of
death.
It's just a trivial grammatical
point about the meaning of the
word "my."
All right, remember where we're
at.
We're looking for
interpretations of the claim
"everyone dies alone."
And by now we've gone rather
far afield in the search for an
interpretation of that claim.
But we have not yet been able
to find a claim,
an interpretation,
which is true,
interesting,
fairly special about death,
as opposed to trivially true
about everything,
and giving us some relatively
interesting insight into the
nature of death.
I can't see it for the claim
"everyone dies alone."
At least not if we try to take
these claims fairly literally or
take them to be metaphysical
claims about the nature of
death.
But maybe I've just been
flatfooted here in thinking that
this is some sort of claim about
not being with others,
or things I do by myself.
Maybe the claim "we all die
alone" is intended as a kind of
metaphor.
It's not that we all really do
die alone.
It's that when we die,
it's as though we were
alone.
It's like being alone.
Maybe the claim "we all die
alone" is a psychological claim,
that the psychological state we
are in when we die is similar to
loneliness.
It's similar to the feeling of
being alone that we have in
various situations.
Now, that would be interesting
if it was true.
Is it true that when we die we
all die having this feeling of
loneliness, or perhaps feeling
of alienation?
It's easy enough to imagine
somebody who is surrounded by
other people as he's dying.
And yet, for all that,
feels removed,
distant, alienated from the
others, feels lonely even in the
crowd.
Is that true of all of us?
Remember, we're looking for a
claim that says,
that makes it true,
that everyone dies alone.
Is it true that everyone dies
feeling distant and removed?
Maybe it was true of Ivan
Ilyich.
Ivan Ilyich progressively grows
more and more distant from his
family and friends who,
indeed, remove themselves
psychologically from him.
He faces his death with a
feeling of alienation and being
alone.
It's a metaphor,
but still an important insight
into his psychology.
The question we have to ask is,
"Is that true of everybody?
Is it true that everybody dies
alone in this psychological
sense?"
It doesn't seem to be
true.
First of all,
notice the obvious point that
sometimes people die in their
sleep, unexpectedly.
They weren't ill.
They just die of cardiac arrest
while they're sleeping.
Such a person presumably is not
feeling lonely or alienated
while he dies.
Well, you might say,
"Okay, what we meant was
anybody who's awake while
they're dying,
dies alone."
That's not true either.
You're crossing the street,
talking to your friend,
engaged in lively discussion.
So lively, you don't notice the
truck that's about to hit you.
The truck hits you,
you die, painlessly and
immediately.
Well, were you feeling
alienated and distant during
your final moments?
No, it doesn't seem right
either.
So it certainly doesn't seem
true to say that everybody dies
feeling these psychological
feelings of loneliness.
Well, maybe what we should have
to do is revise the claim yet
again.
Everybody who dies awake,
realizing that they're dying,
facing the fact that they're
dying,
they all, we all of whom that's
true, we all die alone,
as long as we realize we're
dying.
That would take care of the
sleep case.
That would take care of the
truck case.
Is the claim true then?
It would still be interesting
if it was true,
even given those restrictions.
But it doesn't seem true then
either.
Again, just recall Socrates.
Socrates is engaged in
philosophical discussion with
his friends, knows he's about to
die.
He's drunk the hemlock.
He's sitting there saying
goodbye to everybody.
He doesn't seem alienated.
He doesn't seem to be feeling
distant and alone.
It just doesn't seem true that
everybody who knows they're
going to die and is facing their
death feels lonely.
Another example of this is
another philosopher,
David Hume, whom we'll be
reading at the end of the
semester.
We'll be reading his essay on
suicide.
Hume died, had an illness.
He was quite sociable to the
end.
He used to bring people in to
sit around his deathbed talking
about various matters with him.
He was cheerful and pleasant to
the end.
And there's,
as far as I can see,
no reason at all to believe
that he was feeling lonely,
feeling distant,
feeling alienated from the
people who were keeping him
company.
So the psychological reading
doesn't do any better,
as far as I can see.
Well, maybe there's some other
interpretation,
and I invite you to reflect on
the question.
Is it true that we all die
alone?
Is there some way of
understanding that claim where
it's true, a necessary truth,
fairly special and unique,
if not altogether unique,
at least fairly special about
death,
showing us some deep insight
into the nature of death--as
opposed to some trivial insight
about the way the possessive
first person pronoun "my" works?
I can't find it.
So despite the fact that the
claim "we all die alone" is one
of these things that one hears,
I think it's just nonsense.
I think it's people talking
without giving a moment's
thought to what they meant when
they said it.
All right, where are we?
For the first half of the
course, we've been engaged in
metaphysics, broadly speaking.
We've been trying to get clear
about the nature of the person,
what we're composed of,
so that we could then try to
get clearer about the nature of
survival and identity of
persons,
so that we could think about
the nature of death,
metaphysically speaking.
What happens when we die?
And as you know,
I've defended the physicalist
conception, according to which
all we are are just bodies
capable of doing some fancy
tricks,
capable of P-functioning.
And details aside,
death is a matter of the body
breaking, so that it's no longer
able to engage in
P-functioning.
As we saw, depending on the
particular details of which
theory of personal identity you
accept--the body view,
the brain view,
the personality theory of
personal identity--we might have
to say slightly different things
about whether the death of my
body means I no longer exist,
whether we should distinguish
the death of the body,
the death of the person,
and so forth.
But those details aside,
roughly speaking,
the following is true.
When the body breaks,
I cease to exist as a person.
And even if we can hold out the
logical possibility of my being
resurrected--or my continuing to
exist with a different body as
long as it's got my personality,
if you happen to accept the
personality theory--even though
there is the logical possibility
of surviving my death or coming
back to life,
I see no good reason to believe
that those logical possibilities
are actual.
As far as I can see,
when my body dies,
that's it.
As a fan of the body view,
I believe I'll still exist for
a while.
I'll exist as a corpse.
But that's not the kind of
thing about existence that
mattered to me.
In terms of what mattered to
me, what I wanted was not just
that I exist,
but that I be alive,
indeed be a person,
indeed be a person with pretty
much the same personality.
And the truth of the matter is,
when my body dies,
that's all history.
That's where we're at in terms
of the metaphysics.
We could summarize this by
saying, when I die,
I cease to exist.
That's a little bit misleading,
given the view I just sketched
where even though I'm dead I
still exist for a while as a
corpse.
But those issues won't concern
us in what we're about to turn
to.
Let's just suppose that,
for the sake of avoiding those
complications,
that when my body dies,
it gets destroyed.
And so the very same moment
will be the end of my body,
the end of my existence,
the end of my personhood.
Let's suppose that my
personality doesn't get
destroyed any sooner than the
death of my body.
We've got the end of my
existence.
Here I am going along.
The atomizer comes along,
blows me up.
Then simultaneously,
we've got the death of my
person, the death of my body,
the end of what matters to me,
the end of my existence.
Death is the end.
And even though these things
can come across--can come apart
slightly under certain
scenarios,
those details won't matter for
what we're about to turn to.
Well, what are we about to turn
to?
We're about to turn to value
theory.
We spent the first half of the
semester, you might say,
trying to get clear about the
metaphysical facts.
And now that we've done that as
best we can, we want to turn to
the ethical or value questions.
How good or bad is death?
Why is--I take it,
we all believe death is bad.
Why is death bad?
How can death be bad?
So this is the big continental
divide for the course.
The first half of the class was
metaphysics.
Now we turn to value questions.
And the first question we're
going to be focusing on is just
this, the question of the
badness of death.
How and in what ways is
death bad?
I take it, most of us do
believe that death is bad.
That's why we wish--maybe some
of us believe,
but at the very least the rest
of us,
many of us hoped--there were
souls, so that death wouldn't
have to be the end.
If death is the end,
that seems to be horrible.
So we're going to turn to
questions like this.
How and in what ways is death
bad?
And then we're going to turn to
the question,
is it really true that
immortality would be good?
And eventually,
we'll turn to some other value
questions about if death really
is the end, should we be afraid
of death?
I take it that fear of death is
quite common.
But we can actually evaluate
different emotions and think
about whether these emotional
responses are appropriate or
not,
so we can ask whether or not
fear of death is appropriate.
We'll turn eventually to the
question, how should we live in
light of the fact that death is
the end?
And the last question we'll
turn to is, could it ever make
sense to kill ourselves?
So these are the kind of moral
or value questions we'll be
concerned with until the end of
the term.
But the first one is simply,
is death bad,
as we typically take it to be,
and, if so, what is it about it
that makes it bad?
So again, I'm going to suppose
here on out that the
metaphysical view that I've been
sketching is right;
that physicalism is true.
The death of my body is the end
of my existence as a person.
Death is my end.
Well, if that's right,
how can it be bad for me to
die?
After all, once I'm dead,
I don't exist.
If I don't exist,
how can it be bad for me that
I'm dead?
It's easy to see how you might
think, how you might worry about
the badness of death,
if you thought you would
survive your death.
Now, if you believed in a soul,
then you might worry about,
well, gosh what's going to
happen to my soul after I die?
Am I going to make it up to
heaven?
Am I going to go to hell?
You might worry about how badly
off you're going to be once
you're dead.
The question makes perfect
sense.
But it's often seemed to people
that if we really believe that
death is the end--and that's the
assumption that I'm making here
on out--if we really believe
death is the end,
how can death be bad for me?
How could anything be bad for
me once I'm dead?
If I don't exist,
it can't be bad for me.
Well, sometimes in response to
this thought,
people respond by saying,
"Look, death isn't bad for the
person who's dead.
Death is bad for the survivors."
John's death isn't bad for John.
John's death is bad for the
people who loved John and now
have to continue living without
John.
John's death is bad for John's
friends and family.
When somebody dies,
we lose the chance to continue
interacting with the person.
We're no longer able to talk
with them, spend time with them,
watch a movie,
look at the sunset,
have a laugh.
We're no longer able to tell
our troubles with them and get
their advice.
We're no longer able to
interact with them.
All that's gone,
when somebody dies.
And the claim might be,
that's the central bad of
death.
Not what it does for the person
who dies.
It's not bad for the person who
dies.
It's what it does for the rest
of them, the rest of us.
Now, I don't in any way want to
belittle the importance of the
pain and suffering that happen
for the rest of us when somebody
that we care about dies.
Indeed, let me take a moment
and read a poem that emphasizes
this thought,
because this is certainly one
central, very bad thing about
death.
It robs us of our friends--we,
the survivors--it robs us of
our friends and loved ones.
Poem.
The poem is called
Separation, by the German
poet, Friedrich Gottlieb
Klopstock.
This is in one of the essays
you'll be reading later in the
semester by Walter Kaufmann--he
quotes it--Death Without
Dread.
The poem, as I say,
is Separation.
You turned so serious
when the corpse
was carried past us;
are you afraid of death?
"Oh, not of that!"
Of what are you afraid?
"Of dying."
I not even of that.
"Then you're afraid of nothing?"
Alas, I am afraid,
afraid…"Heavens,
of what?"
Of parting from my friends.
And not mine only,
of their parting,
too.
That's why I turned more
serious even
than you did,
deeper in the soul,
when the corpse
was carried past us [Kaufmann
1976]
The poem is called
Separation.
According to Klopstock,
the crucial badness of death is
losing your friends.
When they die, you lose them.
And as I say,
I don't in any way want to
belittle the central badness of
that.
But I don't think it can be at
the core in terms of what's bad
about death.
I don't think that can be the
central fact about why death is
bad.
And to see this,
let me tell you two stories.
Compare them.
Story number one.
Your friend is about to go on
the spaceship which is going to
do the exploration of Jupiter or
whatever.
And they're going to be gone
for years, years and years.
It takes so long that by the
time the spaceship comes back,
100 years will have gone by.
Maybe it's not Jupiter.
It's farther away.
Worse still,
after about 20 minutes after
the ship takes off,
all radio contact between ship
and earth will be destroyed.
It won't be possible,
because of the speed.
It's not going to Jupiter.
It's going to some other
planetary system.
So, all possibility of
communication will be destroyed.
Now, this is horrible.
You're losing your closest
friend.
You will no longer be able to
talk to them,
share the moments,
get their insights and advice.
You'll no longer be able to
tell them about the things that
have been going on.
It's the same kind of
separation that Klopstock was
talking about.
Horrible, and it's sad.
That was story number one.
Story number two,
just like story number one,
the spaceship takes off,
and about 15 minutes later,
it explodes in a horrible
accident and everybody on the
spaceship, including your
friend, is killed.
Now, I take it that story
number two is worse.
Something worse has taken place.
Well, what's the worse thing?
We've got of course the very
same separation we had in story
number one.
I can't communicate in the
future with my friend.
They can't communicate with me.
But we had that already in
story number one.
If there's something worse
about story number two,
and I think it's pretty clear
there is something worse,
it's not the separation.
It's something about the fact
that your friend has died.
Now of course,
this is worse for me,
as somebody who cares about my
friend, that he's died.
But the explanation of what's
bad for me, in his having died,
is the fact that it's bad
for him to have died.
And the badness for him isn't
just a matter of separation,
because that we already had in
number one.
We couldn't communicate with
him.
He couldn't communicate with us.
If we want to get at the
central badness of death,
it seems to me,
we can't focus on the badness
of separation,
the badness for the survivors.
We have to think about how is
it, how could it be true,
that death is bad for the
person that dies?
That's the central badness of
death and that's the one I'm
going to have us focus on.
How could it be true that death
is bad for the person that dies?
That's the question we turn to
next time.
 
