Mortality and Immortality: Philosophy of Death
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All humans are mortal, but- what is it to die?
As it's the Halloween season, I thought it would be fitting to talk about the philosophy of death. You might be surprised to find a lot more to discuss here than at first glance.
We will discuss some of the following questions, and more:
- Is death something to fear, or is it be welcomed?
- What are the implications of our impending death on our lives?
- Does death harm the person who dies?
- Would we really want to live forever?
For readings, I'm again returning to Thomas Nagel, who wrote a nice little philosophical essay on whether it's bad to die:
https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil150/Nagel.pdf
As well as Bernard William's Analysis of immortality, written after Nagel's:
https://wmit-pages-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/283/2022/06/12152936/williams.pdf
A shorter 1000 word essay that'll give a good basic understanding of the questions can be found here:
Is Death Bad? Frederik Kaufman
The Stanford Encyclopedia also has some good analysis of the main questions: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/
Happy Thinking!