Professor Shelly Kagan:
At the end of last class,
I quoted some words from Kurt
Vonnegut, a kind of deathbed
prayer confession that he'd
written in one of his novels in
which the basic gist of the
prayer is to express gratitude.
Whatever the content of your
life, the fact that at least
you've been able to live at
all--As he put it,
most mud isn't lucky enough to
sit up.
He feels lucky to have been
some of the sitting-up mud.
He loved everything he saw.
When I read that quote,
I did not know that Kurt
Vonnegut had died the night
before.
Immediately after the class
ended, a visitor to the class
brought this fact to my
attention.
So, I can't pass without
commenting on that death,
and just remark that I hope
that to the very end,
Kurt Vonnegut,
who lived until he was 84,
realized how lucky he was to be
some of the sitting-up mud.
The question I want to turn to
now is this.
So, we've been going over the
various facts about the nature
of life and death.
And the question then is,
how should we live,
in light of the fact that we're
going to die?
Previously, we've talked about
what emotional response we
should have to that.
And I've argued,
as I just reminded us,
that although perhaps the most
common reaction is one of fear
or terror at death,
it may in fact be that we
should be grateful and consider
ourselves lucky that we were
able to have had life as
well--life at all.
But how, then,
should we live in light of the
fact that we're going to die?
And the immediate answer that
comes to mind seems almost like
a joke.
I want to say,
well, we should be
careful,
given that we can die,
that we will die.
There used to be a TV show,
a cop show called Hill
Street Blues.
The show began every day with
the sergeant going over the
various crimes and
investigations that were going
to fill up the day's episode.
And he'd always end,
as he sent off his police,
the cops.
He'd end by saying,
"Be careful" or "Be careful out
there."
But the particular kind of care
that I have in mind isn't just
this pure fact,
that if you're not careful,
you won't notice that the car's
coming down the street and
you'll hit by the car and
that'll be the end.
The fact that we're going to
die intuitively seems to require
a particular kind of
care,
because, as we might put it,
you only go around once,
right?
You don't get to do it again.
And so, it seems as though the
fact that we're mortal,
the fact that we've got a
finite lifespan,
requires us to face the fact
that intuitively we can blow it.
We could do it wrong.
Now, the nitpicky part of me
wants to point out that it can't
be mortality,
per se, that has this
implication.
Even if we lived forever,
we could still do it wrong.
After all, whatever it is
you've filled your life with,
with an immortal infinite life,
there's still going to be the
particular pattern of actions
and activities that you engage
in.
And that particular pattern
could still be one that wasn't
the best pattern that was
available to you.
So, the possibility of having
blown it, of having lived the
wrong kind of life,
is a possibility that's going
to be true of us,
whether or not we're mortal.
And yet, for all that,
it seems as though mortality
adds an extra risk,
an extra danger of blowing it.
Look, suppose we lived forever
and just have a kind of
simplistic example.
You might say,
imagine somebody who spends his
eternity counting the
integers--1,2,
3,4, 5,6.
Well, that might not be as
valuable as an eternity spent
doing something else,
let's say, doing more
complicated math.
But still, if you've spent a
million years or a billion years
counting the integers and then
realized that was sort of
pointless,
you could always start over by
doing more interesting,
more deep, more worthwhile
math.
The immortality gives you a
chance of starting over.
It gives you the possibility of
do-overs.
We might then worry that what's
especially bad about death,
the fact that we're mortal,
is that it robs us of the
chance of do-overs.
But of course,
that's not quite right either.
Even if you don't live forever,
you live 80 years or 100 years,
you have the chance to
reappraise your life at the age
of 20 or 30 or 50 and decide you
need to change course.
So, it's not exactly as though
the possibility of do-overs
disappears by death itself,
via death itself.
Still, the thought that death
comes when it does seems to push
us in the direction of thinking
we've still got to be very
careful because,
of course, given that we're
mortal, we have only a limited
period of time in which to do
the do-overs.
There are two kinds of
mistakes, really,
that we might catch ourselves
in.
We might discover,
on the one hand,
that we made some bad choices
in terms of what we were aiming
for.
And on the other hand,
we might find even if we made
the right choices in terms of
our goals,
we flubbed it in terms of
actually accomplishing what we
were trying to accomplish.
And so we literally have to
start over again,
and try again.
So, there's two kinds of care
that we have to take.
We have to be careful in our
aims and we have to be careful
in our execution of our aims,
because we have,
as it were, a rather limited
amount of time to do it over.
Now, again, the nitpicky part
of me wants to say strictly
speaking, it's not the fact that
we are mortal,
per se, that all by itself
means we have to be especially
careful.
After all, suppose there just
weren't all that many things
worth doing.
And suppose they weren't all
that complicated,
all that difficult to do well.
Suppose there were only
five things worth doing.
And even if you couldn't
necessarily do every single one
of them right the first time
out, at most it would take two
or three tries.
And by a try I mean maybe an
hour or two.
Well, that would be a pretty
impoverished world that could
only offer us that much.
But after all,
if that was the way the world
worked and we had a hundred
years, we wouldn't really have
to worry all that much about
being careful.
We'd have plenty of time to aim
for each of the five things
worth having and plenty of time
to get each one of the five
things right.
A hundred years of life would
be more than enough.
We wouldn't have to be careful.
So, it's not just the fact that
we're mortal that requires us to
be careful.
It's the fact that we have a
relatively short span of life
relative to how much there is
worth aiming for,
and how complicated and
difficult it can be to get those
things and get them right.
It's because of the fact that
there's so much to do and doing
it properly that we have to be
careful.
We just don't have enough time
to flail around,
try a little of this,
try a little of that.
Somebody who lives like that
may well find that the things
they aimed for weren't really
the best choices.
You don't have to decide that
these things weren't worth
having at all,
given the relatively short
period of time we've got.
We've got the extra burden of
deciding what are the things
most worth going after.
And we have to face the
prospect, the chance,
that we'll look back and
discover that we didn't make the
best choices there.
We aimed for the wrong things,
not necessarily things that
weren't worth having,
but given the limited number of
things we were going to be able
to fill our lives with,
in that sense,
the wrong choices.
And we may discover as well
that we were not sufficiently
careful, attentive in how we
tried to achieve these things.
Because it's not as
though--although given the way
life is, you've got the chance
for do-overs,
you don't have time for a whole
lot of do-overs.
And so what death forces us to
do is, to be careful.
An analogy that comes to mind
here is an artist who goes--a
musician who goes into a
recording studio.
And look, he can start trying
to record his songs to cut an
album.
And he may only have a certain
number of songs in his
repertoire.
And so if he's got a long
enough period of time,
a month in the recording
studio,
he's got plenty of time,
or she's got plenty of time,
to sing a couple of songs.
Maybe these wouldn't be the
best things to record.
Let's give it a try and we'll
see.
Didn't get it right the first
take.
Let's record it again.
Let's try it a third time.
Let's try it a fourth time.
If you've got enough time,
it's less pressing to get clear
before you start,
or as you're going along,
what are the songs I should try
to record, and can I get it on
one take,
or at most two?
But if instead of having a
month in the recording studio,
you've got only a week in the
studio,
or a day in the studio,
suddenly everything's much more
pressing.
Time is much more precious.
You've got to decide early on
just which are the songs that it
makes sense to record?
And yeah, there are some other
songs, but these seem to be the
better choices.
And when you record them,
you can't be as careless and
inattentive as you try to get
them down.
You've got to try to get it
right the first time,
or at worst,
the second time.
That's, it seems to me,
the situation we find ourselves
in, not just given the fact that
we die,
but, we might say,
given how incredibly rich the
world is, how many things it
offers us,
how many choices we have in
terms of what's worth going
after.
But for many of these things,
given how difficult they are to
accomplish, although we've got
the chance for do-overs,
both in terms of changing our
mind about what we should be
aiming at, and trying again,
for the things we have
aimed at, we've got to be
careful.
The fact about our death
requires paying attention.
It requires care.
Well, having said that,
of course, the immediate
question then,
is all right,
so I'm paying attention.
I'm trying to be careful.
What should I do with my
life?
How shall I--What should I fill
it with?
We've, previously in the class,
talked about the possibility
that being alive,
per se, may have some value.
But above and beyond whatever
stand we take on that,
it's certainly also the case
that part of what adds to the
value of our lives are the
contents of our lives.
And so we need to ask,
well, what kinds of contents
should we try to fill our lives
with?
Now, I won't try to answer that.
To ask the question,
what are the things really
worth going after in life?
is to come up to the edge of
asking, well,
just what is the meaning of
life?
What's really worth going after?
And although that is indeed an
important, perhaps the
important question,
it's the question,
I think, for a different class.
And so having come close to the
edge of that question,
I'm going to now back away from
it.
But still, it seems we might
say, in broad strokes,
there are two different
strategies that we could adopt.
And it's worth at least pausing
to think about these two
strategies.
Strategy number one says given
that you've only got a finite
amount of time--Actually,
the basic underlying thought
behind both strategies is just
this.
We haven't got much time.
Pack as much as you can into
life.
Pack as much as you can in.
But there are two basic
strategies about how do you put
that idea into practice.
And strategy number one says
given the dangers of failure if
you aim too ambitiously,
you should settle for the kinds
of goals that you're virtually
guaranteed that you'll
accomplish.
The pleasures of food,
company, sex,
ice cream.
One of the paper topics asks
you to reflect on the
philosophy, "Eat,
drink, and be merry,
for tomorrow you die."
Well, that's one of the
strategies.
We're going to be dead tomorrow.
And so while we're here,
let's try to pack in as much as
we can, by going for the things
that we've got a very high
chance of actually
accomplishing.
Strategy number two says that's
all well and good.
You've got a pretty high chance
of succeeding at that.
The trouble with strategy
number one is the goods that you
can achieve, the sort of sure
thing goods are small.
They're rather small potatoes,
as things go.
Some of the most valuable goods
in life are things that don't
come so readily,
don't come with guarantees of
achieving them.
You might want to write a
novel, compose a symphony,
or for that matter raise--marry
and raise a family.
Some of these things,
strat--fans of strategy number
two argue, these things are the
most valuable things that life
can offer us.
So that a life filled with
these larger goods is a more
valuable life than a life filled
with the small potatoes goods.
I suppose fans of the "Eat,
drink, and be merry" strategy
don't like to call those "small
potatoes goods,"
but that's the kind of language
that might be offered by fans of
strategy number two.
And it seems to me that as a
claim about which life,
if only you had it,
if you had a guarantee--If God
were going to say,
"Look, which life do you want?
I promise you'll get it.
The life filled with food and
drink or the life filled with
accomplishment?"--perhaps most
of us would say well,
it's the life filled with
accomplishment that's the more
valuable life.
The trouble,
of course, is,
the life with the greater
accomplishments,
the life aiming for greater
accomplishments,
is also a life with a greater
chance of failure.
You aim for writing the great
American novel and ten years
later, you still haven't
finished it.
Twenty years later,
you decide you don't have it in
you to write the great American
novel.
You try to produce a business
and it goes under.
So, what's the right strategy
to take?
I suppose many of us would be
inclined to say,
well, the third strategy.
There's a third strategy that's
the obviously right thing to do,
which is, get the right
mixture.
Aim for a certain number
of--what should we call them?
Large potatoes.
Aim for a certain number of the
large accomplishments,
because if you do manage to get
them, your life will have more
value.
But also throw in a certain
sprinkling of the smaller
things, where you're at least
assured of having gotten
something out of life.
Well, that's all well and good
as well, but it just now brings
us to the next question.
What is the right mixture,
after all?
Well, I'm not going to try to
answer that one either.
But again, those of you who
choose the topic,
the "Eat, drink,
and be merry" question,
basically I'm inviting you,
in that topic,
to reflect on that question.
Here's a different thought.
The entire, as I said,
the underlying thought behind
the go-for-the-big-things,
go-for-the-small-things,
was pack it all in.
The underlying thoughts seem to
be, look, as long as you've got
a life that's got valuable
contents, the more,
the better.
You might say here's common
ground between the two
strategies--the more,
the better.
Now previously,
we've--I've argued that
immortality would not actually
be a good thing.
Eventually rich and incredible
as the world is,
eventually, the goods of life
would run out and immortality
would be dreadful.
But having said that,
that's not to suggest that
we--most of us--come remotely
close to that condition.
For most of us,
it's certainly true that dying
at 30 deprives you of goods that
would have come to you,
if only you'd lived to 40.
And dying at 40 deprives you of
goods that would have come to
you if only you'd lived to 50 or
60 or 80.
So, one thing that we're
inclined to agree is,
other things being equal,
the longer your life,
the better.
So here's a life, 50 years long.
And suppose you live it with a
certain amount of value in your
life, 100 value points,
whatever that is,
whatever the--however our units
of measuring just how good a
life is.
We'd say, look,
better to have a life at that
value, instead of going through
50 years, went for 100 years.
Fair enough.
We might say,
we all agree,
don't we, that quantity of
life's a good thing.
And that does seem plausible.
But at the same time we'll want
to immediately say quantity of
life may matter,
but it's not the only thing
that matters.
Quality of life matters as well.
And again, that point's fairly
uncontroversial.
If you had to choose between
your life of 50 years at 100
value points or 50 years at
whatever that is,
130 value points,
you'd rather have the second
life.
The length of life isn't the
only thing we care about.
The overall quality of your
life is something we care about
as well.
And this, of course,
is another topic that we've
talked about previously.
Just what is it that goes into
making a life better than
another?
So, we now see,
summing it up,
yeah, got to pay attention to
quality, got to pay attention to
quantity or duration.
Of course, the reason I just
corrected myself is because you
might say, if you want to think
about it mathematically,
it all is just a matter of
quantity.
As long as when we measure
quantity, we bear in mind we
need to measure not just the
length of the life,
but the height of the box.
So, the area of the box here is
50 x 100 units,
so whatever that is,
that's 5,000.
I'm going to get another giggle
here, right.
Imagine our little units.
It's a quality,
one unit of quantity--one unit
of quality for a year.
So, it's a quality year unit,
whatever it is,
5,000 units.
Here 6,500.
You might say,
look, we can capture the
thought that the duration of
your life matters,
the quality of your life
matters, by multiplying the two
together.
And without getting hung up on
the numbers, as though there was
any kind of precision here,
the underlying thought's fairly
clear.
The area of the box represents
the overall quality--the overall
quantity that you managed to
cram into your life in your 50
years.
And we could start measuring
different kinds of lives.
We might start worrying about
well, look, suppose I could live
50 years at 130 or I could live,
whatever it is,
100 years at some other number
that's a little bit less.
We might say,
oh, less quality,
but longer quantity,
longer duration,
more valuable life filled in
that last box.
We see how it goes.
But the question we need to ask
is--so, if we've got this more
rich sense of quantity,
where we multiply the duration
of the life times the how good a
life you're having while you've
got it,
does that give adequate place
to what we think is valuable?
Does that give adequate place
to quality in life?
Let me draw some different
boxes, some different possible
lives to choose between.
Suppose you had a nice long
life, 150 years.
Again, just for the sake of
concreteness,
we assign 50 quality points.
So, the area is 7,500.
Let's suppose,
so you can get a feel for this,
let's suppose that the best
life lived on earth so far was
worth a 10.
So this is an incredible life,
to be a 50.
And you get it for 150 years.
A very nice life.
Now, compare it with this life.
Suppose that this life isn't
really all that good in terms of
how well off you are at any
given time.
It's plus one.
Zero would be a life not worth
having, though no worse than
nonexistence.
Negative numbers would be lives
presumably that would be you're
better off dead.
This life is just barely worth
having.
It's plus one.
But it's a very,
very, very long life,
so long that I couldn't draw it
to scale.
That's why we've got the "..."
in the middle.
Suppose it goes on for 30,000
years.
Well, the math here is pretty
easy.
30,000 times one is 30,000 in
terms of the area.
Okay.
So, trying to choose between
these two lives.
Life A or Life B?
In terms of quantity,
our enriched notion of
quantity, where you measure the
length of the life times the
height of the box,
Life B's got more quantity of
what matters--30,000 versus
7,500.
And yet, most of us,
when we think about this
choice, do not find B to be a
preferable life,
even though the quantity
of value--Just suppose we could
measure quantity of whatever the
goods are that we've got crammed
into our life.
Well, this has very,
very, very small amounts
stretched over a very long time.
The quantity's larger,
but Life A seems preferable.
Now, for any--at least,
this may not be true for
everybody, but for those of us
who share that thought,
you might say quantity isn't
all it's about.
Or when we try to take quality
into account,
it wasn't so much that we
couldn't measure it,
it's that if you reduce the
importance of quality into,
fold it into quantity,
so that what it's all about is
the total amount that you're
getting, well the total amount's
bigger in B than A.
If you don't think B's a better
life, that suggests that totals
aren't what it's all about.
Well, what else might we then
choose between with regard to A
and B?
Well, the natural response is
to say, even though Life A is
shorter, it attains a kind of
peak,
a kind of height that isn't
approached anyplace in Life B.
And perhaps,
then, in evaluating lives and
choosing between rival lives,
we can't just look for the
quantity of good,
we have to look at the peaks.
We have to look at the heights.
In choosing between lives,
it's important to think not
just about how much did you pack
in,
total, but what were the
greatest goods that you had or
accomplished in your life?
And perhaps,
then, we should conclude,
quality can trump quantity.
Perhaps with the right quality
in place, quantity becomes of
secondary importance.
Yeah, it might be that if we
could have a longer life where
we achieved great things,
rather than a shorter life
where we achieved great things,
better to have the longer life.
Quantity might matter,
too, as long as we think the
quality's what matters the most.
But a more radical version of
the theory would say,
actually, quality's all
that matters.
The peaks are all that matter.
That, at any rate,
is the position that gets
expressed by Hölderlin in the
poem "To the Parcae," to the
fates.
That was in one of the essays
that I had you read.
But let me read that now.
"To the Parcae."
A single summer grant me,
great powers,
and
a single autumn for fully
ripened song
that, sated with the sweetness
of my
playing, my heart may more
willingly die.
The soul that,
living, did not attain its
divine
right cannot repose in the
nether world.
But once what I am bent on,
what is
holy, my poetry is accomplished:
Be welcome then,
stillness of the shadows'
world!
I shall be satisfied though my
lyre will not
accompany me down there.
Once I
lived like the gods,
and more is not needed
[Kaufmann 1976].
Hölderlin is saying he doesn't
care about quantity at all.
If he can accomplish something
great, if he can ascend to the
heights and do something great
with his poetry,
that's enough.
Once he's lived like the gods,
more is not needed.
So, in thinking about what we
want to do with our lives,
it's not enough to have the
kind of theory that we've begun
to sketch in previous weeks,
where we think about what are
the various things worth having
in a life?--we also have to
address this question of quality
versus quantity.
Is quality only important
insofar as it gets folded into
producing greater quantity?
Or does quality matter in its
own right as something that's
worth going for,
even when it means a smaller
quantity?
And if quality does matter,
does quantity matter as well?
Or is, indeed,
quality all that matters?
Is Hölderlin right when he
says once I've lived like the
gods, more is not needed?
Now, Hölderlin,
I imagine, in thinking about
why that kind of life is the
best kind of life he could
aspire to,
is thinking,
in part, about the lasting
contribution that his poetry
makes.
There's a sense in which,
when we think about having done
things like that,
we feel that we attain a kind
of immortality.
We live on through our works.
And so the next question I want
to turn to in thinking about
strategies of how to live in
light of the fact of,
in terms of facing our
mortality is,
well, maybe a kind of
immortality is worth
going after.
Or maybe, at the very least,
we can take a kind of comfort
in thinking that we have or can
attain a kind of immortality.
I emphasize the word "kind," of
course, because strictly
speaking, if you live on through
your works, it's not as though
you are literally living on.
It's semi-immortality or
quasi-immortality.
I suppose people who don't
believe in it would prefer to
call it pseudo-immortality.
Actually, this reminds me of a
joke.
Here's a Woody Allen joke.
"I don't want to be immortal
through my work;
I want to be immortal through
not dying."
Well, as you know,
previously I've argued that
genuine immortality,
unending life,
would not be a good thing.
But still, many of us aspire to
this kind of semi-immortality.
And actually,
it can take,
I think again,
two broad forms.
Sometimes people want to say
there's a sense in which,
although it's not as though
you're literally living on,
there's something like that
going on, insofar as a part of
you continues.
If I have children,
then literally some of my--in
my case, there's a male--one of
my cells continues.
And then their cells continue
in their children and their
cells continue in their
children.
If you think of an amoeba
splitting and splitting,
and splitting and splitting
again,
part of the original amoeba
could be there for many,
many, many generations.
Some people take comfort in the
thought that,
literally speaking,
a part of them will continue,
if not through cells through my
offspring, perhaps at least my
atoms get recycled,
get used again.
And so I get absorbed into the
universe, but I never disappear.
Some people take comfort in
that thought.
The German philosopher
Schopenhauer thought that this
should reduce somewhat the sting
of death.
He said, "But it will be asked,
‘How is the permanence of
mere dust, of crude matter,
to be regarded as a continuance
of our true inner nature?'"
And he answers, 
Oh!
Do you know this dust then?
Do you know what it is and what
it can do?
Learn to know it before you
despise it.
This matter,
now lying there as dust and
ashes, will soon form into
crystals when dissolved in
water.
It will shine as metal;
it will then emit electric
sparks… It will,
indeed, of its own accord,
form itself into plant and
animal;
and from its mysterious womb it
will develop that life,
about the loss of which you in
your narrowness of mind are so
nervous and anxious.
Well, that's a very moving
passage, but I have to say,
I don't buy it.
I don't find any comfort at all
in the thought that my atoms
will still be around getting
reused into something else.
So, this first kind of
semi-immortality,
where you take comfort in the
thought that literally there are
parts of you that will continue,
this strikes me as a kind of
desperate striving,
desperate reaching for straws.
Perhaps in Schopenhauer's case,
leading him to delude himself
into thinking,
"Oh, it's not so bad that I'm
going to die and going to die
soon.
At least my atoms will still be
around."
It doesn't work for me.
There's a second sort of
approach, though,
where it's not so much that
you're supposed to be comforted
by the thought that your
parts will continue to
last after you,
but that your
accomplishments will
continue to last after you.
Hölderlin writes poetry,
which we're still reading some
200 years later.
You can write a novel which can
be read for 20 or 50 or 100 or
more years.
You might make some
contribution to math or
philosophy or science,
and 50 or 100 years later,
people could still be talking
about that philosophical
argument or that mathematical
result.
You might have other kinds of
accomplishments.
You might build a building that
will last after you.
Stone cutters,
I've read interviews with stone
cutters who take a kind of pride
and comfort in the thought that
long after they're gone,
the buildings that they helped
build will still be there.
You might try to build a
company that will last after you
die.
Or, for that matter,
you might take pleasure and
comfort in the accomplishment of
having raised a family.
Here, not so much the thought
that some of your cells are in
your offspring,
but rather the thought that to
have raised another decent human
being is a nontrivial
accomplishment,
something worth having done
with your life.
And that accomplishment
continues after you're gone.
Well, what should we think
about this second group of
approaches to attaining
semi-immortality?
I've got to say that I'm of two
minds when I think about them.
Unlike the dust and the atoms
stuff, where I just think you're
deluding yourself,
I find myself drawn to this
second set of thoughts.
I find myself tempted by the
thought that there's something
worth doing about producing
something that continues for a
while.
That it's significant.
And even if my life here on
earth is a short one,
if something that I've
accomplished continues,
my life is the better for it.
That's Hölderlin's thought,
I suppose.
And it's a view that appeals to
me.
I suppose it explains,
in part, why I write
philosophy, in the hopes that
the things I write might still
be read 20 years after I die,
or 50 years or,
if I'm so lucky,
100 years after I die.
Well, in certain moods,
perhaps in most moods,
I'm drawn by that thought.
But in other moods,
I've got to confess,
I'm skeptical of it.
I remind myself of Schopenhauer
writing his little passage,
his Ode To Dust,
and I find myself saying,
just like Schopenhauer was so
desperate that he deludes
himself into thinking,
"Oh, it doesn't matter that I'm
about to turn into dust.
Dust is really,
really important," I'm just
deluding myself as well,
when I think there's something
grander,
something significant,
something valuable about having
made an accomplishment,
having achieved something that
continues beyond me.
So in certain moods,
at least, I find myself
thinking that I've just deluded
myself.
But that's only certain moods.
And at least most of the time,
I find myself in agreement with
Hölderlin.
Not necessarily in thinking
quantity doesn't matter at all.
To have written one great work
is all you need and more great
works doesn't add anything--that
strikes me as going too far.
But at least to have done
something significant that
abides, that does seem to me to
add to the value and
significance of my life.
Well, let me mention an entire
different approach.
I'm going to give very,
very short shrift to this last
approach, but it's probably
worth mentioning as well.
The entire assumption of all
the lines of thought that I've
been discussing so far today
have in common the underlying
belief that the way to deal with
the fact that we live and then
we're dead is to try to make the
life that you've got as good as
possible,
as valuable as possible,
to pack as much into it as you
can, even though there's room
for disagreement about what's
the best strategy for doing
that.
The picture is one in which we
say we can't do anything about
the loss of life,
so the right response is to
make the life that we've got as
valuable as it can be,
to see it as valuable as it can
be.
But there's a rather different
approach.
That alternative approach says,
yes, we're going to lose life
and that's horrible.
But it's only horrible insofar
as you think of life as
something that it's bad to lose.
After all, if we were to decide
that life wasn't really a
valuable gift,
if it wasn't really something
worth embracing,
and something that we could
turn into something full of
value, then its loss wouldn't
actually be a loss.
That's a point we've seen
before, right?
The central badness of death is
explained in the depravation
account.
You are deprived of the fact
that you could have had more
life that would have been worth
having overall.
But if life isn't worth having
overall, then its loss is not a
bad thing, but a good thing.
The trick, then,
isn't to make life as valuable
as it could be,
but rather to come to recognize
that on balance,
life isn't positive,
but negative.
I know that what I'm about to
say has a kind of Classics
Illustrated simplicity to
it,
and it's a bit of an
over-exaggeration,
but in gross terms,
we might say the first general
outlook--that life is good and
so the loss of it is bad and so
the answer is make as much of it
as we can while we've got
it--you might say that is,
in broad strokes,
the western outlook.
And in broad strokes,
the notion that life isn't
really as good as we take it to
be,
but is, in fact,
bad overall,
perhaps it's oversimplification
to call it the eastern outlook,
but at least it's an outlook
that gets more expression
typically in eastern thought
than in western thought.
Foremost example of this second
outlook is, I suppose,
Buddhism.
Four noble truths in Buddhism.
The first noble truth is that
life is suffering.
Buddhists believe if you think
hard about the underlying nature
of life, you'll see that
everyplace there is loss.
There is suffering.
There is disease.
There is death.
There is pain.
Sure, there are things that we
want and, if we're lucky,
we get them.
But then we lose them and that
just adds to the suffering and
the pain and the misery.
On balance, life isn't good.
First noble truth,
life is suffering.
And so, armed with this
estimation, what Buddhists try
to do is to free you from
attachment to these goods,
so that when you lose them,
the loss is minimized.
And indeed, Buddhists try to
free you from what they take to
be the illusion of there being a
self.
There is no me to lose anything.
Death is terrifying insofar as
I worry about it being the
dissolution of myself.
If there is no self,
there's nothing to dissolve.
It all makes sense--and I have
tremendous respect for
Buddhism--it all makes sense,
given the thought that life is
suffering.
But for better or for worse,
I'm a child of the west.
I'm a child of the Book of
Genesis, where God looks on the
world and says,
"It's good."
For me, at least,
the strategy of minimize your
loss by viewing the world as
negative, is not one that I can
be at rest with.
For me, life can be good.
And so the choices for me,
and I suppose for most of us,
remain among the strategies
with which I began.
How is it that we can most make
our lives valuable?
What is it that we can do that
will allow us,
with Hölderlin,
to say, "once we lived like the
gods"?
