Philosophy & Death by Black Eye Design

Philosophy and Death Introductory Readings

Edited by Samantha Brennan and Robert J. Stainton

broadview press

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Copyright © 2009 Samantha Brennan and Robert J. Stainton All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher — or in the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario m5e 1e5 — is an infringement of the copyright law. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Philosophy and death : introductory readings / edited by Samantha Brennan and Robert J. Stainton. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-55111-902-1 1. Death. I. Brennan, Samantha, 1964– II. Stainton, Robert J., 1964– BD444.P486 2009 128'.5 C2009-903755-6 broadview press is an independent, international publishing house, incorporated in 1985. Broadview believes in shared ownership, both with its employees and with the general public; since the year 2000 Broadview shares have traded publicly on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the symbol bdp. We welcome comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of our publications — please feel free to contact us at the addresses below or at: broadview@broadviewpress.com / www.broadviewpress.com. North America Post Ofﬁce Box 1243, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada k9j 7h5 2215 Kenmore Ave., Buffalo, New York, usa 14207 tel: (705) 743-8990; fax: (705) 743-8353

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death

A. Epistemological Issues 1. Paul Edwards (1969). “Existentialism and Death: A Survey of Some Confusions and Absurdities”

B. Personal Identity and Survival 2. Plato. Excerpts from Phaedo 3. John Perry (1978). Excerpts from A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality 4. Stephen T. Davis (1988). “Traditional Christian Belief in the Resurrection of the Body” C. The Nature of Death 5. Louis Pojman (1992). “What is Death? The Crisis of Criteria” 6. Jeff McMahan (1995). “The Metaphysics of Brain Death” 7. Fred Feldman (1992). “The Enigma of Death”

3 39 39 64 76 99 99 109 143 vii

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Part II: The Badness of Death

161

A. Ancient Reflections on the Badness of Death 8. Epicurus. “Letter to Menoeceus” and “The Principal Doctrines” 9. Titus Lucretius Carus. Excerpts from Book Three of On the Nature of Things

163 163

B. Some Recent Responses 10. Thomas Nagel (1979). “Death” 11. Harry S. Silverstein (1980). “The Evil of Death”

177 177 185

C. The Goodness of Immortality 12. Bernard Williams (1973). “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” 13. John Martin Fischer (1994). “Why Immortality is Not So Bad”

207

D. Gender and the Badness of Death 14. Samantha Brennan (2006). “Feminist Philosophers Turn Their Thoughts to Death”

239

172

207 224

239

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Epistemological Issues

Paul Edwards This paper is not meant to be an exhaustive discussion of existentialist pronouncements about death. Some, like the curious notion that life is “essentially being toward death,” are not dealt with at all, and others, like the view that an “authentic” mode of life is possible only for a person who “resolutely confronts death,” are no more than mentioned in passing. My aim has been to cover those existentialist doctrines which are tied, in one form or another, to confused ways of thinking about death common among people in general and which occur independent of the efforts of the existentialists.1 1

I wish to thank my friends Martin Lean, Donald Levy, Margaret Miner, Mary Mothersill, and Elmer

Sprague for reading an earlier version of this manuscript and for making helpful suggestions.

Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Epistemological Issues

Existentialism and Death: A Survey of Some Confusions and Absurdities

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Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Epistemological Issues

I. Death as Sleep in the Grave Most human beings, whether they are religious believers or not, appear at times to have great difficulty in regarding death as truly and really the absence of life. In some contexts they do treat death in this way, but at other times they think of it as a restful or gloomy or undesirable continuation of life. There is a very common tendency to think of a dead person as sleeping an extremely deep sleep in his grave—so deep that he will never again wake up. A famous Italian conductor was once greatly upset by the way the musicians of the New York Philharmonic were playing the movement of a Brahms symphony at a rehearsal. “If Brahms were alive,” he finally exclaimed in exasperation, “he would be turning in his grave.” When this story is told, it usually takes some time before people see the absurdity of the conductor’s remark. If Brahms were alive he presumably would find better things to do than lie in a grave.2 However, to a person vaguely thinking of Brahms as sleeping in his grave, the conductor’s remark will not seem absurd. People do not have this difficulty in the case of other absences. If a whisky bottle is empty, nobody is likely to maintain that it is filled with an ethereal liquid; and if one comes across a blank canvas, one is not tempted to describe it as an exceptionally abstract painting. Yet, this is precisely how we frequently think of death. We then refer to it more or less seriously as “the rest which may not be unwelcome after weariness has been increasing in old age” (Bertrand Russell), as “quiet consummation” (Shakespeare), or perhaps as “the cool night” which follows the hot and busy day (Heine). We also think of it as a place to which we “pass on” or depart (at the end of our “journey”), as “the harbor to which sooner or later we must head and which we can never refuse to enter” (Seneca), as “the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns” (Shakespeare); and we tend to regard this place as dark and perhaps even terrifying, as “eternal night” (Swinburne), “a beach of darkness ... where there’ll be time enough to sleep” (A.E. Housman), the “engulfing impenetrable dark” (H.L. Mencken). It is not uncommon to speak of this place as the same one which we left when we were born. Schopenhauer speaks of birth as the “awakening out of the night of unconsciousness”3 and he wavers between regarding our return to this state of unconsciousness as something to be welcomed and something to be dreaded. On the one hand he writes 2

The only person known to me who habitually slept in his coffin was “Lord” Timothy Dexter, an illiterate

Yankee trader who made a fortune during the Revolutionary War and who subsequently settled in Newburyport, Massachusetts. There he built a Hall of Fame containing statues of Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, George

Washington, George III, and himself as well as a mausoleum with an enormous coffin painted white and green. To enjoy the coffin while he was still alive, Dexter had a couch put into it and not infrequently he took his nap on the couch. Brahms was an eccentric man, but it was not his habit to sleep in a coffin.

Schopenhauer 1819: III, 382.

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Landsberg 1953: 13.

Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Epistemological Issues

that the “heart of man rebels” against having to return to nonexistence; on the other he claims to be speaking for suffering mankind who would much rather have been “left in the peace of the all-sufficient nothing” where their days were not spent in pain or misery (Schopenhauer 1819: 389). Darrow, who shared the latter of these sentiments, spoke of life as “an unpleasant interruption of nothingness.” “Not to be born is the most to be desired,” in the words of Sophocles, “but having seen the light, the next best thing is to go whence one came as soon as may be.” Pliny, who ridicules any belief in survival as the logically baseless “fancy” of human vanity, accuses the believers of robbing mankind of “future tranquillity.” “What repose,” he exclaims, “are the generations ever to have” if they cannot be “from the last day onward in the same state as they were before their first day?” Seneca, too, thought it fortunate that a person could always, by a voluntary act, “escape into safety.” Advocating suicide in certain situations, he asks, “Do you like life? Then live on. Do you dislike it? Then you are free to return to the place you came from.” At death, Seneca writes in another place, “you are brought back to your source.” A lamp, he also observes, is no “worse off when it is extinguished than before it was lighted,” and in the same way “we mortals are also lighted and extinguished; the period of suffering comes in between, on either side there is a deep peace.” But not all writers who regard death as a “homecoming” think of the place to which we return as a restful abode. Thus James Baldwin, the novelist, admonishes us to negotiate the “passage” of life as nobly as possible—in this way we will obtain “a small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we came and to which we shall return.” This tendency to think of death as a shadowy and, especially, a very painful and undesirable form of existence is reinforced by the way in which we place death at or near one end of the scale of our punishments and illnesses. Just as two years of imprisonment are more undesirable than one year and life imprisonment is worse than either, being sentenced to death is regarded by most people as a worse fate yet; and even those who consider life imprisonment worse than death regard the latter as very undesirable—at least as undesirable as, say, imprisonment for ten years. Again, just as we regard a chronic illness involving some pain as worse than a merely temporary ailment involving the same degree of pain, so we regard a mortal illness, because it is mortal, as worse than either; and although many people would regard some chronic (non-fatal) illnesses as “objectively” worse than death, almost everybody treats mortal illnesses as (necessarily) very undesirable, even if the amount of pain involved is relatively slight. Since languishing in jail and suffering a painful illness are states or processes of living organisms, it becomes tempting to regard death as another, very undesirable, state of a living organism. We see, in the words of P.L. Landsberg, a philosopher writing in the phenomenological tradition, that “death ... must exceed all experience of illness, suffering or old age.”4

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Another line of reflection that may lead to a similar conclusion is suggested by Landsberg in the course of discussing the “community” that two people may form—a husband and wife, for example, who not only love each other but who have braved many a storm together. If one of them dies, this “community,” this “we,” is destroyed. The surviving person experiences then a “bitter cold.” In feeling the death of the “we,” he is led into an “experiential knowledge” of his own mortality. “My community with this person,” writes Landsberg, “seems shattered, but the community was to some degree myself, and to this degree I experience death in the very core of my own existence” (1953: 14–16). It is tempting to proceed to the conclusion (though Landsberg in fact does not explicitly go that far) that one’s own death is a more extreme instance of the same kind of thing: even more bitter and cold than the bitter cold which the survivor experiences upon the death of the “we.”

Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Epistemological Issues

II. Fear, Anxiety, and Death This common human tendency to regard death not as just the absence of life but as existence in a dark, impenetrable abode has been enshrined into a philosophical doctrine by the Christian existentialist, the late Professor Paul Tillich, in his “ontology” of Non-Being or Nothingness. Tillich’s doctrine is introduced in connection with his distinction between fear and anxiety (it should be noted that although Tillich’s use of these expressions is in harmony with that of other existentialists, it is significantly different from their use by most professional psychologists and psychiatrists). In fear, writes Tillich, we are always facing a definite object: It may be physical pain, the loss of a friend, the rejection by a person or a group or any number of other things, but in each case it is something “that can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured,” and met by courage.5 In anxiety, on the other hand, the object, if it can be called an object, is “ultimate nonbeing”; the “threat” here is due not to something specific like physical pain but to nothingness. Unlike fear, anxiety cannot be met by courage and it is almost unendurable. “It is impossible for a finite being,” in Tillich’s words, “to stand naked anxiety for more than a flash of time. People who have experienced these moments, as for instance some mystics in their visions of the ‘night of the soul,’ ... have told of the unimaginable horror of it” (1952: 39). Although fear and anxiety must not be confused with one another, they are closely related. Among other things, there is an element of anxiety in every fear and it is this element of anxiety which gives the fear its “sting.” Tillich applied his distinction between fear and anxiety to the “outstanding example,” namely, the fear of death. There are two elements in this fear—fear proper which has an object like an accident or a mortal illness and anxiety whose “object is the absolutely unknown ‘after-death,’ the nonbeing which remains nonbeing even if it is filled with images 5

Tillich 1952: 36.

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Excerpts from A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality John Perry This is a record of conversations of Gretchen Weirob, a teacher of philosophy at a small Midwestern college, and two of her friends. The conversations took place in her hospital room on the three nights before she died from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. Sam Miller is a chaplain and a longtime friend of Weirob’s; Dave Cohen is a former student of hers. I. The First Night10

... MILLER: Good evening, Gretchen. Hello, Dave. I guess there’s not much point in beating around the bush, Gretchen; the medics tell me you’re a goner. Is there anything I can do to help? WEIROB: Crimenetley, Sam! You deal with the dying every day. Don’t you have anything more comforting to say than “Sorry to hear you’re a goner”? you will regard it as having no probability whatsoever?

... WEIROB: I would not require so much to be comforted, Sam. Even the possibility of

something quite improbable can be comforting, in certain situations. ... So I will set an easier task for you. Simply persuade me that my survival after the death of this body is possible.

... MILLER: But what is possibility, if not reasonable probability? WEIROB: I do not mean possible in the sense of likely, or even in the sense of conforming to

the known laws of physics or biology. I mean possible only in the weakest sense—of being conceivable, given the unavoidable facts. Within the next couple of days, this body will die. It will be buried and it will rot away. I ask that, given these facts, you explain to me how it even makes sense to talk of me continuing to exist. Just explain to

THE FIRST NIGHT: The arguments against the position that personal identity consists in identity of

an immaterial soul are similar to those found in John Locke, “Of Identity and Diversity,” chapter 27 of Book II of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This chapter first appeared in the second edition of 1694.

Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Personal Identity and Survival

... MILLER: How can I hope to comfort you with the prospect of life after death, when I know

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Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Personal Identity and Survival

me what it is I am to imagine, when I imagine surviving, that is consistent with these facts, and I shall be comforted. MILLER: But then what is there to do? There are many conceptions of immortality, of survival past the grave, which all seem to make good sense. Surely not the possibility, but only the probability, can be doubted. Take your choice! Christians believe in life, with a body, in some Hereafter—the details vary, of course, from sect to sect. There is the Greek idea of the body as a prison, from which we escape at death—so that we have continued life without a body. Then there are conceptions in which, so to speak, we merge with the flow of being— WEIROB: I must cut short your lesson in comparative religion. Survival means surviving, no more, no less. I have no doubts that I shall merge with being; plants will take root in my remains, and the chemicals that I am will continue to make their contribution to life. I am enough of an ecologist to be comforted. But survival, if it is anything, must offer comforts of a different sort, the comforts of anticipation. Survival means that tomorrow, or sometime in the future, there will be someone who will experience, who will see and touch and smell—or at the very least, think and reason and remember. And this person will be me. This person will be related to me in such a way that it is correct for me to anticipate, to look forward to, those future experiences. And I am related to her in such a way that it will be right for her to remember what I have thought and done, to feel remorse for what I have done wrong, and pride in what I have done right. And the only relation that supports anticipation and memory in this way, is simply identity. For it is never correct to anticipate, as happening to oneself, what will happen to someone else, is it? Or to remember, as one’s own thoughts and deeds, what someone else did? So don’t give me merger with being, or some such nonsense. Give me identity, or let’s talk about baseball or fishing—

... MILLER: My own beliefs are quite simple, if somewhat vague. I think you will live again—

with or without a body, I don’t know—I draw comfort from my belief that you and I will be together again, after I also die. We will communicate, somehow. We will continue to grow spiritually. That’s what I believe, as surely as I believe that I am sitting here. For I don’t know how God could be excused, if this small sample of life is all that we are allotted; I don’t know why He should have created us if these few years of toil and torment are the end of it—

... WEIROB: But in a few days I will quit breathing, I will be put into a coffin, I will be buried. And in a few months or a few years I will be reduced to so much humus. That, I take it, is obvious, is given. How then can you say that I am one of these persons a thousand years from now?

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... MILLER: What is fundamentally you is not your body, but your soul or self or mind. ...

As you are a philosopher, I would expect you to be less muddled about these issues. Did Descartes not draw a clear distinction between the body and the mind, between that which is overweight, and that which is conscious? Your mind or soul is immaterial, lodged in your body while you are on earth. The two are intimately related but not identical. Now clearly, what concerns us in survival is your mind or soul. It is this which must be identical to the person before me now, and to the one I expect to see in a thousand years in heaven. WEIROB: So I am not really this body, but a soul or mind or spirit? And this soul cannot be seen or felt or touched or smelt? That is implied, I take it, by the fact that it is immaterial? ... But how do you know you are talking to Gretchen Weirob at all, and not someone else, say Barbara Walters or even Mark Spitz! MILLER: Well, it’s just obvious. I can see who I am talking to. WEIROB: But all you can see is my body. You can see, perhaps, that the same body is before you now that was before you last week at Dorsey’s. But you have just said that Gretchen Weirob is not a body but a soul. In judging that the same person is before

Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Personal Identity and Survival

Suppose I took this box of Kleenex and lit fire to it. It is reduced to ashes and I smash the ashes and flush them down the john. Then I say to you, go home and on the shelf will be that very box of Kleenex. It has survived! Wouldn’t that be absurd? What sense could you make of it? And yet that is just what you say to me. I will rot away. And then, a thousand years later, there I will be. What sense does that make? MILLER: There could be an identical box of Kleenex at your home, one just like it in every respect. And, in this sense, there is no difficulty in there being someone identical to you in the Hereafter, though your body has rotted away. WEIROB: You are playing with words again. There could be an exactly similar box of Kleenex on my shelf. We sometimes use “identical” to mean “exactly similar,” as when we speak of “identical twins.” But I am using “identical” in a way in which identity is the condition of memory and correct anticipation. If I am told that tomorrow, though I will be dead, someone else that looks and sounds and thinks just like me will be alive—would that be comforting? Could I correctly anticipate having her experiences? Would it make sense for me to fear her pains and look forward to her pleasures? Would it be right for her to feel remorse at the harsh way I am treating you? Of course not. Similarity, however exact, is not identity. I use identity to mean there is but one thing. If I am to survive, there must be one person who lies in this bed now, and who talks to someone in your Hereafter ten or a thousand years from now. After all, what comfort could there be in the notion of a heavenly imposter, walking around getting credit for the few good things I have done?

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you now as was before you then, you must be making a judgment about souls—which, you said, cannot be seen or touched or smelt or tasted. And so, I repeat, how do you know? MILLER: Well, I can see that it is the same body before me now that was across the table at Dorsey’s. And I know that the same soul is connected with the body now that was connected with it before. That’s how I know it’s you. I see no difficulty in the matter.

... WEIROB: But then merely extend this principle to Heaven, and you will see that your

conception of survival is without sense. Surely this very body, which will be buried and as I must so often repeat, rot away, will not be in your Hereafter. Different body, different person. Or do you claim that a body can rot away on earth, and then still wind up somewhere else? Must I bring up the Kleenex box again?

Epistemology, Metaphysics and Death • Personal Identity and Survival

... MILLER: Are you saying I don’t really know who you are? WEIROB: Not at all. You are the one who says personal identity consists in sameness of this

immaterial, unobservable, invisible, untouchable soul. I merely point out that if it did consist in that, you would have no idea who I am. Sameness of body would not necessarily mean sameness of person. Sameness of psychological characteristics would not necessarily mean sameness of person. I am saying that if you do know who I am then you are wrong that personal identity consists in sameness of immaterial soul.

... MILLER: Perhaps by tomorrow night I will have come up with a better argument. WEIROB: I hope I live to hear it.

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