Thomas Nagel "Death": Summary and Analysis

Death Essay Outline

Introduction

• Introduction to Nagel's exploration of death as an evil
• Definition of "death" as permanent and without conscious survival
• The central question of whether death is an evil and why

Nagel's First Premise: Deprivation as the Basis for Death's Evil

• Nagel's argument that death's evil is rooted in the deprivation of life
• Importance of conscious existence and living longer in his argument

Nagel's Second Premise: The Nature of Objection to Death

• Nagel's rejection of the idea that nonexistence before birth is an objection to death
• The role of conscious lifespan in people's objection to death
• The challenge of imagining the prospective state of death

Nagel's Three Types of Problems Related to Loss, Privation, and Death

• Examination of problems related to the deprivation of potential goods
• Challenges in identifying the time and subject of the supposed misfortune
• Differing attitudes towards posthumous and prenatal nonexistence

Nagel's Argument on the Impact of Goods and Evils

• Nagel's assertion that experience is crucial in determining misfortune
• The role of experience in evaluating loss, betrayal, and deception
• The need to consider both the subject's categorical state and experience

Nagel's Example of Severe Deprivation

• Nagel's use of an example involving severe deprivation to illustrate his points
• The distinction between the intelligent man and the contented infant
• The focus on the subject's perspective state and possibilities

Nagel's Argument on the Nature of Misfortune

• Nagel's argument that misfortune is determined by the subject's perspective state
• The difficulty of locating misfortune in time and space
• The impact of a person's hopes and possibilities on the perception of death

Nagel's Examination of Loss due to Death

• Nagel's exploration of how death leads to a loss of life
• The distinction between posthumous and prenatal nonexistence
• The limitations of treating mortality as a misfortune

Conclusion

• Summary of Nagel's argument that death is an evil due to its deprivation of life
• The significance of life as a good and the loss of indefinitely extensive possible goods due to death

Death Essay Example

Starting from two common views concerning death - some people regard death as terribleness while others thinks death is not objective, Nagel discuss “whether death is in itself an evil; and how great an evil, and of what kind, it might be?”. He defined “death” as “permanent death, unsupplemented by any form of conscious survival” and concluded that in this case, if death is evil, the only reason is its deprivation of life but not its positive features, as life is a good. As he stated that: If we are to make sense of the view that to die is bad, it must be on the ground that life is a good and death is the corresponding deprivation or loss, bad not because of any positive features but because of the desirability of what it removes.

We will discover how Nagel derived this conclusion in the following sections. The first premise of Nagel’s argument is that the deprivation rather than positive features, deriving from death, is the mere reason for death to be an evil. It is widely convinced that death leads to termination of all goods contained in life, where some of these goods are powerful advantages in themselves. Nagel made two assumptions for his argument. On the one hand, the value of life and its contents are proposed to relate to not only organic survival but more about conscious existence. On the other hand, Nagel assumed that living longer is better than shorter.

In this case, people’s main concern regarding life is the length rather than continuity of it. If resumption of conscious life is possible, a long-term dormancy is not a big deal for us. The second premise is that the nature of objection to death is the loss of life, instead of the state of non-existent or unconscious. Nagel argued the reason why a long-term nonexistence is not a direct dominant of objection to death with two facts. The first one has been mentioned above: people regard merely the conscious lifespan but not continuity of life. The other fact is that it is not regarded as a misfortune for us to be nonexistence before birth. It is commonly suggested that the origin of fear of death is that people fail to realize the impossibility to imagine the prospective state of death.

Nagel made an analogy to refute this view: it is also impossible to imagine unconsciousness but people hating death do not object to unconsciousness because death reduce people’s lifespan whereas unconsciousness does not. Three types of problems with regards to loss, privation and death were then derived by Nagel. The first question is: Are there any evils result from only the deprivation or absence of potential goods, instead of people’s minding of such deprivation. Secondly, as Nagel put that a misfortune can be assigned to its subject but a person does not exist once he dies, it is hard to identify the time and subject of the supposed misfortune. The third difficulty is people’s different attitudes regarding posthumous and prenatal nonexistence.

Nagel claimed that if it is reasonable to object counting death as an evil, it could be the same for other evils. He made an analogy of another objection which is expressed as “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. A question about what assumptions about goods and evils can cause drastic limitations is derived by the following three examples of this objection: it is not a misfortune for a person to be betrayed by his friend while he does not know the truth; a deceased's wishes being ignored by the executor is not a misfortune; a renowned scholar, whose literature works are believed to be his brother’s work after his death, will not get hurt.

As the questions mentioned above are all related to time, Nagel held that one’s experience is required to determine whether something, like deterioration, deprivation and damage, is a misfortune. Experience is less important when a person spends his life on meaningless goals, such as communicating with asparagus plants. In contrast, people who believe that “things must be temporally assignable” would emphasise the impact of goods and evils by their experience. Nagel described, in order to accommodate cases like loss, betrayal, and deception, which are viewed as bad, one of the ways to constitute human value is to identify good and ill fortune not only by its subject’s categorical state of the moment but also by his experience and his possibilities. It is also mentioned that the located places and times of the subject could be different with those of goods and ills that befall him. To demonstrate the above ideas, Nagel used an example of deprivation which is as severe as death to demonstrate the above ideas: it is a misfortune for an intelligent adult to suffer from a brain injury which reduces his mental condition to that of a contented infant. Although he does not mind his condition, the intelligent man, rather than a contented infant, is the unfortunate subject of this misfortune. In this case, Nagel doubted whether this man can still be regarded as existing.

Similarly as the asymmetric attitudes about death between posthumous and prenatal unexistence, Nagel put that no one thinks it is a tragedy to have a naive mind when a person is at his age of three month but it is regarded as a misfortune when an intelligent adult loses his talent. As the results of two situations are the same, it is unreasonable to pity the man whose mental condition is reduced. Nagel then argued in the opposite views to discuss the reason why it is understandable to pity the man. He claimed that the assumptions of previous objections are wrong about the temporal relation between subject of a misfortune and circumstances which constitute it. If we focus on the man’s perspective state (i.e. how intelligent he was, what he could be originally), instead of the reduced mental conditions, the reduction of his talent is a “perfectly intelligible catastrophe”. Nagel illustrated that it is hard to locate misfortune in our lives with some boundaries, such as time and space, because there may be all kinds of goods and evils, which are excepted by the accounted restrictions, befalling us.

There are countless possibilities in our lives. The difference between reality and alternative possibilities is what made the mental degeneration case a misfortune. Nagel further stated that no matter how impossible to locate death, a man’s hopes and possibilities in his life, which make him the subject of goods and evils, are what make death an evil. Nagel then examined the loss due to death: a dead man’s loss of his wife, rather than his current or previous condition, make him unfortunate. He claimed that although a loss cannot be located by time and space, a man does and he must suffer from such a loss. We can say it is unfortunate to have no children but it is ridiculous to say that never be born is a misfortune, unless an embryo can be a subject of goods and evils. Nagel argued that it is reasonable to treat posthumous and prenatal nonexistence differently. Even if the two circumstances are both nonexistence, death is a deprivation that makes victim lose their life while nonexistence before birth does not cause a loss. If a man did not die, he would have lived longer. However, it is fallacious to say he could have a longer lifespan if he had been born earlier. Unless the man is premature, he could not have earlier birth, otherwise he would have been another person rather than himself. Thus, the time prior to his birth does not account for extension of lifespan. Although there are infinite possibilities in our lives, it is logically impossible to live forever. However, Thoms claimed that the possibility of indefinite existence can still be a continuation of a good if life is a good for us. Nagel pointed out the most doubtful question is that if it depends on realizability of possibilities or people’s hopes to determine whether death is an evil.

Some limits are required to suggest the level of possibility for an unrealized possibility to become a misfortune. Being dead is the nature of human beings. Maybe we can say a person dying at 24 has a greater loss of life than Tolstay who died at 82 but it is still a terrible thing for both of them to die as they lose their life no matter how old they are. This leads to a question: whether we can treat inevitable and normal limitation, such as mortality, as a misfortune. Obviously we all have a limited lifespan but a man does not realize this natural limit from his experience. With experience of natural, historical and social accidents, he has been the subject of a life, with “indeterminate and not essentially limited future”. Nagel finally pointed out that as life is treated as a good, death cause a loss of goods at any cases. As he put that: Death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods. Normality seems to have nothing to do with is, for the fact that we will all inevitably die in a few score years cannot by itself imply that it would not be good to live longer. This finalises Nagel’s argument that as life is a good as long as people have wishes regarding their open-ended future, death is an evil at any time because of its deprivation of life.

Bibliography

• Nagel, T. (1970). Death.