On the Deprivation Account of the Evil of Death
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper is a short presentation of the Deprivation Account of the Evil of Death. According to this account, death is not an evil to us due to any of its positive features (it has none), but only due to some good, valuable and desirable things it deprives us of.
Departing from Epicurus’ famous argument against the fear of death, I briefly reconstruct the Deprivation Account, as proposed by Thomas Nagel, and then discuss one important objection against it – that it is implausible to judge the evil of death from the standpoint of “subjective immortality”. Finally, I distinguish two levels within the Deprivation Account – an “absolute” one, and a “relative” one, which enables us to judge some deaths as lesser evil or “negative good”.
Downloads
Article Details
By submitting his/her work to the Editorial Board, the author accepts, upon having his/her text recommended for publication, that Diametros applies the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license to the works we publish. Under this license, authors agree to make articles legally available for reuse, without permission or fees. Anyone may read, download, copy, print, distribute or reuse these articles without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as the author and original source are properly cited. The author holds the copyright without any other restrictions. Full information about CC-BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
References
Diogenes Laertios [1982] – Diogenes Laertios, Żywoty i poglądy słynnych filozofów, tłum. I. Krońska, K. Leśniak i W. Olszewski, PWN, Warszawa 1982.
Foot [1977] – P. Foot, Euthanasia, „Philosophy and Public Affairs” (6) 1977, s. 85-112.
Kołakowski [1994] – L. Kołakowski, Bóg nam nic nie jest dłużny. Krótka uwaga o religii Pascala i o duchu jansenizmu, tłum. I. Kania, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 1994.
McMahan [1988] – J. McMahan, Death and the Value of Life, „Ethics” (99) 1988, s. 32-61.
Nagel [1998] – T. Nagel, Co to wszystko znaczy? Bardzo krótkie wprowadzenie do filozofii, tłum. M. Szczubiałka, Fundacja Aletheia, Warszawa 1998.
Nagel [1997a] – T. Nagel, Śmierć, w: tenże, Pytania ostateczne, tłum. A. Romaniuk, Fundacja Aletheia, Warszawa 1997, s. 11-21.
Nagel [1997b] – T. Nagel, Widok znikąd, tłum. C. Cieśliński, Fundacja Aletheia, Warszawa 1997.
Rachels [1986] – J. Rachels, The End of Life. Euthanasia and Morality, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1986.
Wreen [1988] – M. Wreen, The Definition of Euthanasia, „Philosophy and Phenomenological Research” (48) 1988, s. 637-653.
Ziemiński [1999] – I. Ziemiński, Zagadnienie śmierci w filozofii analitycznej, TN KUL, Lublin 1999.