Cave, in discussing Annihilation: The Sense and Significance of Death (London: Acumen 2009) by Christopher Belshaw, says imagine what life would be like if death were really not bad for those who die. Belshaw argues that
There would be no proper justification for our grief and distress at the death of others, no reason to avoid runaway buses, intensive care units would have their funding cut, murder would be a lesser crime than assault and battery.Cave notes potential implications -
In other words, if it is not bad for you to die, it is not bad for me to kill you. Mowing down people would be no more wrong than mowing the grass. There would be no point in saving lives, or even taking the least safety precautions. If death is not to be feared, we should take off our crash helmets, toss all the parachutes out of aircraft, and, if we fancied, toss ourselves out after them just to see how far we can get by flapping our arms and making bird noises.The Philosophy of Death (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2009) by Steven Luper argues that
Belshaw ... describes this position as "strongly counterintuitive". Society exists to preserve life; it is therefore grounded on the 'badness' of death. But, he acknowledges, "this is not to say that its badness can be easily understood". The problem, as Epicurus identified, is that the dead are those who have ceased to exist. And how can anything, even death, be bad for someone who does not exist?
Not implausibly, Belshaw counters that it is not the dead who are harmed by death but the living: the moment of dying is the moment when harm is done. And dying is something that happens to living people. Aside from any pain that might be involved, the "problem" of dying is that it deprives the person of the good life they could otherwise have had.
anything that deprives me of a stretch of good life is thereby bad for me. Being dead may not be dreadful in itself, but dying is dreadful if it stops me from having a fine time with my family and friends. Just as it is bad for me if I miss the bus to a party that I am looking forward to, it is even worse if I am knocked down dead by the bus and cannot go to a party ever again.Cave comments that
In arguing that death is awful after all, these philosophers believe they are defending common sense. But in unpacking the implications of their arguments, they come to some startling conclusions. ...My first response - thinking like a dissertation worker, presumably, rather than as a humane person or someone who's read some Rawls - is that much law depends on whether an individual is alive and, if dead, when/how the person got that way ... murder, interference with a corpse versus rape, organ harvesting, defamation, pre/post-mortem publicity rights (eg protection in perpetuity under the Tennessee 'Elvis' law), estates ...
Belshaw challenges us with this grim conundrum: suppose you come across a burning car in which a 30-year-old man and a baby are both trapped; you have time to rescue just one of them before the flames engulf the wreck. Which do you choose? He believes the answer is clear: the man "has more, stronger and further-reaching desires for more life than does the baby". He, therefore, stands to lose a great deal of what he hopes for, whereas "the baby loses nothing at all".
Many will disagree with the cold logic of this view. The baby, after all, stands to lose more future life. But Luper, too, struggles to see how death is genuinely bad for babies. The surprising conclusion to which these philosophers come is that we can show death to be fearful, but only with any certainty to humans with well-formed hopes and wishes for the future.
And of course there are the undead: corporations rather than just Count Dracula (whom I'm supposed to be discussing in a conference paper that refuses to emerge from its crypt, oops, my hard drive, for restoration by my co-author) and embodiments of artificial intelligence. Taxonomy fodder!
