Is Death Bad for the Person Who Dies? Philosophers Disagree

Most people feel that death is bad, especially an early death. Philosophers ask a harder question: bad for whom, and in what way? If the dead person no longer exists, how can death hurt them? This article summarizes the main answers. It is a debate with no settled winner.

What is the deprivation account?

The most popular view. A review on PhilArchive describes it this way: death is bad for a person because it deprives them of goods they would have enjoyed had they not died. Thomas Nagel set it out in a 1970 essay called “Death.” On this view, the harm does not have to be felt. What makes death bad is the good life that it cuts off. A summary of the Stanford Encyclopedia entry notes that Nagel held death is always an evil, since continued life always keeps good things within reach.

Why do some philosophers doubt it?

Four challenges come up again and again, according to the PhilArchive survey:

• No harm is done. The dead person feels nothing, so how are they worse off?
• No subject. After death there is no one left to be harmed.
• The timing puzzle. When does the harm happen? The Stanford Encyclopedia summary describes it as the problem of finding the time at which we are harmed by death.
• Symmetry. We do not mourn the time before we were born, so why mourn the time after we die? This is the argument from Lucretius. See Epicurus: Why He Said Death Is Nothing to Us.

How do defenders answer the symmetry problem?

With an asymmetry. One article notes that, by the same logic, being born late deprives us of past goods just as dying early deprives us of future ones. Defenders reply that the two are not the same. Derek Parfit pointed to our bias toward the future: we seem to care less about what happened in the past than what lies ahead. Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer used this idea in 1986, and a 1998 book chapter describes a combined “Nagel/Parfit proposal.” Philosopher Fred Feldman has argued that the Brueckner and Fischer version does not solve the problem however it is read. So the dispute continues.

Would living forever be better?

Bernard Williams said no, in a famous 1973 essay, “The Makropulos Case.” It takes its name from a play by Karel Čapek, in which Elina Makropulos has lived 342 years and finds life joyless. Williams argued that what makes a life worth living are what he called “categorical” desires, roughly life projects. In an endless life, he thought, these would eventually run out, leaving boredom. Philosophy Now sums up his conclusion this way: death is bad when it comes too early, but life becomes bad if it goes on too long.

How have others replied?

Critics say his argument is not really about immortality. An Aeon essay points out that if a human lifespan were 1,000 years, Elina would have died young. Her problem, on this reading, is not that she lives forever but that she has lived too long already. John Danaher’s IEET summary, drawing on the philosopher Scheffler, makes a similar point. John Martin Fischer replied in a paper titled “Why Immortality Is Not So Bad.”

Where does this leave us?

With a real disagreement. Many philosophers accept some form of the deprivation account, but its critics have pointed to real problems, and the symmetry question has not been answered to everyone’s satisfaction. If you are curious about the science, see Can Humans Live Forever?. For ways of living with the question, see Memento Mori.