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Death, and Life1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Dorothy L. Grover
Dorothy L. Grover*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Chicago, IL60680, U.S.A.
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Extract

Most of us, were we faced with a life threatening situation, would try to avoid it; we do not want to die. Yet Lucretius has argued that death can be ‘nothing to us,’ for when death has occurred we don't exist: we can't suffer something if we don't exist.

If death can be a misfortune, what is the misfortune suffered, and who suffers it? The misfortune must be suffered by the person who dies, before death has occurred, otherwise – as Lucretius points out – there is no subject to suffer the misfortune. But what kind of misfortune can the misfortune of death be, that a person can suffer it before he or she dies? This question provides the focus of the paper.

Our attitudes towards death and life are determined in part by beliefs we have about a variety of things, for example, whether or not there is a life after death. As I shall assume that life ceases at death the attitudes towards death for which I seek explanations will not be universally endorsed; nor are the attitudes towards life, in terms of which the explanations will be given, universally endorsed. My project is not to defend a set of attitudes but to show that the set of attitudes towards life that I consider provide an explanation of a set of attitudes that some people have towards death.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 711 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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Footnotes

1

There are many friends and colleagues to whom I owe thanks for stimulating discussions of the issues raised in this paper, and for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Special thanks are due to David Copp, Edwin Curley, Gerald Dworkin, Ken Grover, Gene Hendrix, Richard Kraut, Penelope Maddy, and Irving Thalberg, and to the referees.

References

2 In ‘Harming Someone after his Death,’ Ethics 94 (1984) 407-19, Barbara Baum Levenbook argues that death is a harm because of losses suffered at the time of death. The subject loses certain functions, for example, the loss of experiencing. Levenbook takes death to occur at the first instant at which a person ceases to exist. She argues a person can be subject to a loss when she no longer exists. Even if Levenbook were right about this, Levenbook's proposal does not, in its present form, provide an answer to Lucretius’ charge that death is nothing to us; we need to know why we should care about losses which may be suffered, at a later time, and when we no longer exist.

3 The phrase ‘quality of life’ is vague, but I think clear enough at an intuitive level to serve the purpose I want.

4 I am not able to present a theory of misfortune. That is a task beyond the scope of this paper. So the suggestion that a person suffers a misfortune if some event (perhaps an event not brought about by the subject) improverishes the quality of that person's life, provides no more than the sketch of a suggestion. I think the idea is sufficiently clear for the rest of the discussion to proceed, however.

5 Nagel, Thomas ‘Death,’ Nous 4 (1970) 73–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted with revisions in Nagel, T. Mortal Questions (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press 1979Google Scholar)

6 Williams, Bernard ‘The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,’ in Williams, B. Problems of Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1973) 82–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Feinberg, Joel ‘Harm and Self-Interest,’ in Hacker, P.M.S. and Hax, J. eds., Law, Morality, and Society: Essays in Honour of H. A. L. Hart (New York: Oxford University Press 1979) 285–308Google Scholar

8 I am not making an assumption in this discussion that death is always a misfortune for the person who dies.

9 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; see Cooper, John ‘Friendship and the Good in Aristotle,’ Philosophical Review 86 (1977) 219–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Nagel also struggles with the problem of identifying the subject of the misfortune suffered through death. For a good discussion of the difficulties facing Nagel's approach – especially the difficulty Nagel has in identifying the subject of misfortune – see furley, David ‘Nothing to Us?’ in Schofield, M. and Striker, G. eds., Nomzs of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986) 75–91Google Scholar

11 It is not clear what other writers have in mind by ‘better’; for this discussion I am taking ‘better’ to mean ‘better quality of life.’

12 I borrow the phrase ‘interesting and worthwhile’ from Cooper's 1977 stimulating paper on Aristotle on friendship and selfknowledge. The Aristotelian assumption – that the quality of people's lives is most enhanced if they know not only that what they are doing they find interesting and worthwhile, but that it is so – gains some plausibility in extreme cases: compare the quality of life of a Hitler who finds what he is doing interesting and worthwhile with that of a Schweitzer who finds what he does interesting and worthwhile. (The thesis also seems more plausible when we use a phrase like ‘quality of life’ rather than ‘happy.’)

13 I assume that the quality of a person's life can be more or less enhanced. Contributing to the decision that this is an appropriate assumption to make is the fact that people find activities more or less interesting and worthwhile; that certain combinations of activities are found to be more or less interesting and worthwhile; and that there might be grounds for thinking that we sometimes have– what might be best expressed as– only degrees of knowledge. I leave open the question whether we should require for the most enhanced quality of life that people have knowledge of the particular activities they are engaged with, and will be engaged with (e.g., that the person will become a farmer on the family's farm in Iowa), or whether knowledge presented under a more general description (e.g., that the person will have an outdoors career s/he will find interesting and worthwhile) suffices for the quality of people's lives to be enhanced. I think it's likely that contributing to the enhancement of the quality of people's lives will be knowledge presented in each of these ways (in so far as this distinction can be made, for it is a bit vague), will have its place: while it would seem that generally we need to know more about tomorrow than that we will be active with something interesting and worthwhile– where this is the only description we have of tomorrow– there will sometimes be circumstances (e.g., after a debilitating injury or stroke) where a person's life can be enhanced through anticipation of activities presented only under general descriptions.

14 There is no algorithm for determining the quality of a person's life. I assume the contributing factors to what is interesting and of value, and what people find interesting and of value, are many and varied. The list will include not just people's attitudes and values, but also how they feel, what opportunities they have had, the reasonableness of their judgments and decisions, the good fortune of their friends and family, etc. Also what we find interesting and worthwhile will change with time and circumstance.

15 I am not arguing that all activity must cease at death. Reformers, writers, etc., can initiate things that they hope will effect changes or responses in the distant future. These are issues I address in greater detail in a paper on posthumous harm.

16 I do not claim any uniqueness for death in this regard. Senility, illness, poverty, or an accident, can seriously curtail a person's ability to do things that are interesting and worthwhile, and so affect what knowledge people can have of the value and interest of what they are doing.

17 Readers who think that the quality of a person's life is adversely affected only if the subject suffers experientially will not be sympathetic to this account of the misfortune suffered through death, for I do not require that when death is a misfortune the victim feel bad. It is compatible with my account that people who die without knowledge that their death is imminent feel perfectly happy until the time of death.

18 Furley's account of the ‘fear of death’ seems to be similar in at least one respect to the account I have presented here, for– if I understand him correctly– he thinks anticipation has a significant role to play. He says, for example, ‘To eliminate the fear of death it would be necessary to be in a state in which future possibilities were of no concern’; he points out that this is not going to in general be possible if, like Epicurus, one recognizes ‘the strength of pleasures of the mind, including anticipatory pleasures …’ (Furley, David ‘Nothing to Us?’ in Schofield, M. and Striker, G. eds., Norms of Nature [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986) 75–91)Google Scholar.

19 Williams’ account of categorical desires is not adequate as it stands for it is doubtful that the connections between desires, reasons for living, and suicide are as he presents them: in the early part of his paper Williams ignores, for example, the possibility that a person with categorical desires may have grounds for suicide; namely, when he has knowledge that he has no chance in a continuing life of satisfying those desires. Furley points to further problems with Williams’ account of categorical desires.

20 By an optimal life span (supposing such exists), for a person, in the circumstances in which he or she lives, I mean a length of life which allows the/a greatest enhancement of the quality of life of that person.

21 It should perhaps be noted that Williams’ account gives a similar result, for one-day-old babies do not have categorical desires.

22 Nagel envisages an indefinitely continued existence. This introduces an issue (whether any of us would want to live forever) I don't want to get into at this point. I have selected for discussion cases which assume a finite existence. They will serve for the point I wish to make.