5 - Circumstances and degrees
Summary
Consider two questions. When is death bad? And, how bad is death? The first question is ambiguous, asking about the circumstances in which death is bad, or about the time or times at which the badness of a bad death hits home. I discussed that question in the previous chapter. The focus here is on the circumstances under which death is bad. Views are that it is always bad, bad in all circumstances, or that it is never bad, bad in no circumstances, or that it is sometimes bad, bad in some circumstances, but not in others. The last is the prevailing view, and the one I explore here. How bad is death? Someone might think that death is not always bad, is not bad in all cases, or under all circumstances, but nevertheless think that when bad it is bad, always, to the same degree. But a more common, and more defensible, view is that just as it is bad in some circumstances and not others, so its badness varies from case to case. So, some deaths are worse than others. The main concerns here, then, are to discuss the circumstances under which death is bad, and to say something about how and why its badness might vary. But there is a third question. Is death really bad at all? It seems that it is bad in at least the prime of life case.
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- Chapter
- Information
- AnnihilationThe Sense and Significance of Death, pp. 94 - 126Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2008