See the axis · Death

Objection

The deprivation argument

Death is an evil because it deprives us of all that life would have offered us.

Objects to

Thomas Nagel · Death (Mortal Questions) · 1979

  1. Not all evils are felt pains: being betrayed without knowing it, or having one's work ruined after death, harms us without our feeling it.
  2. But death cuts off everything good we would have lived: it is a deprivation, and a deprivation can be an evil even if no one remains to feel it.
  3. The symmetry with the time before birth does not hold: what preceded me could take nothing from me, whereas death interrupts a life already under way, full of projects it reduces to nothing.

Therefore Therefore Epicurean indifference goes too far: it remains reasonable to regard death as a genuine loss.

Possible resolutions of the objection

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