The famous Epicurean argument that death (considered as leading to nonexistence) is not a harm is that death doesn’t harm one when one is alive and it doesn’t harm one when one is dead, since the nonexistent cannot be harmed.
However, the thesis that the nonexistent cannot be harmed is questionable: posthumous infamy seems to be a harm.
But there’s a neat way to fix this gap in the Epicurean argument. Suppose Bob lives 30 years in an ordinary world, and Alice lives a very similar 30 years, except that in her world time started with her existence and ended with her death. Thus, literally, Alice is always alive—she is alive at every time. But notice that the fact that the existence of everything else ends with Alice does not make Alice any better off than Bob! Thus, if death is a harm to Bob, it is a harm to Alice. But even if it is possible for the nonexistent to be harmed, Alice cannot be harmed at a time at which she doesn’t exist—because there is no time at which Alice doesn’t exist.
Hence, we can run a version of the Epicurean argument without the assumption that the nonexistent cannot be harmed.
I am inclined to think that the only satisfactory way out of the argument, especially in the case of Alice, is to adopt eternalism and say that death is a harm without being a harm at any particular time. What is a harm to Alice is that her life has an untimely shortness to it—a fact that is not tied to any particular time.
Why should anyone agree that the dead are nonexistent?
ReplyDeleteMaterialists will for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the ability for the survivalist dualist to evade the argument counteracts their supposed inability for them to evade the argument that they cannot account for the badness of death.
ReplyDeleteDeath is full-body amputation. It is bad to lose a leg, worse to lose two legs, worse to lose two legs and two arms, and even worse to lose the whole body.
ReplyDeleteBut if we define harm as anything that prevents someone from flourishing at a time they otherwise would have flourished, then it immediately follows that death is a great harm no matter what. (Unless death leads to a good afterlife.)
ReplyDeleteActually, even if death leads to a good afterlife, it's still a mixed harm. You would miss out on unique goods only available on this side of eternity (such as unique moments with the friends and family left behind).
ReplyDelete