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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
Challenges