Nagel and his colleagues discuss two common perspectives on death. Some people view death as horrible and others see it as objective. “Death” was defined by Nagel as “permanent and unsupplemented death without any form conscious survival”. In this instance, death can be seen as an evil for its deprivation, but not for its positive attributes, since life is a good. He stated, “Death is evil because it takes away the good things in life.”
In the next sections, we will learn how Nagel arrived at this conclusion. Nagel’s first argument states that death is a result of deprivation and not positive features. The belief is that death will result in the destruction of all goods and benefits contained in life. His argument was based on two assumptions by Nagel. According to Nagel, the value and contents of life are not just related to organic survival. They also refer to conscious existence. Nagel argued that it is better to live longer than to die. People’s primary concern about life is its length, not its continuity. A long-term state of dormancy will not matter if we can regain consciousness. The second assumption is that death’s nature is not the loss of life but the non-existence or incoherence of consciousness. Nagel explained why long-term nonexistence was not an objection to death by pointing out two facts. As mentioned, the first is that people only consider their conscious life span and not the continuity of their lives. Another fact is that we don’t consider it a bad thing to die before our time. People often believe that fear of death stems from the inability to envision the future state of death.
Nagel provided an analogy to disprove this view. While it is impossible to picture unconsciousness, those who dislike death don’t object because unconsciousness reduces peoples’ lives. Nagel identified three types problems regarding loss, privation and mortality. Nagel first asked the question: Do evils only result from deprivation of goods or lack of them? The second problem is that, while a misfortune could be assigned, it cannot be assigned a subject. A person ceases to exist after death, so it is difficult for people to identify the subject and the time of the misfortune. Third, people have different views on posthumous or prenatal nonexistence.
Nagel stated that it was reasonable to object to death being considered an evil. This could also be true for other evils. Another objection he made was “What you don’t know won’t hurt” The following three examples show how assumptions about good and evil can lead to severe limitations.
Nagel believed that the only way to tell if something is a misfortune, deterioration, or deprivation is through experience. It is less important to have experience if you spend your life on useless goals, like communicating with asparagus plant. People who believe that “things have to be temporally assigned” will emphasize the effect of goods or evils through their experiences. Nagel stated that to make it possible to account for cases such as betrayal, loss, and deceit, one way to define human value is to distinguish good fortune from bad. This can be done by assessing the subject’s situation at the time, but also his experiences and possibilities. The subject’s location and time could also be affected by the goods or ills that arefall him. Nagel used a case of deprivation, which can be as severe or fatal as death to illustrate these ideas. It is an unfortunate circumstance for an intelligent adult that he suffers from a brain damage which lowers his mental status to that a child would experience. He doesn’t mind the condition but the unfortunate subject is an intelligent man, not a contented child. Nagel wondered if the man could still exist.
Nagel noted that the opposite is true for prenatal and posthumous death. It is not considered tragic to have an inept mind at age three, but it’s considered a tragedy when an intelligent adult loses its talent. It is not reasonable to feel sorry for the man whose mental state is deteriorating because the outcomes of both situations are identical. Nagel argued against Nagel’s view to show why it was understandable to feel sorry. He claimed that prior objections about the temporal relations between a subject and its circumstances are incorrect. The perspective of the man (i.e. The reduction in his ability to communicate is due to the man’s perception of himself (i.e. Nagel explained that it is difficult for us to identify misfortunes within our lives if we have some boundaries, such space and time.
Our lives are full of possibilities. Mental degeneration is a case of misfortune because it makes it difficult to see the difference between reality and alternate possibilities. Nagel added that even though it may be impossible to find death in the real world, a man is still subject to goods and evils because of his hopes and possibilities. Nagel examined the loss caused by death. He stated that a man who has lost his wife is more unfortunate than his present or past condition. Nagel stated that while a loss can’t be found in time or space, it can be identified by a man and he must experience such a loss. Although it’s unfortunate that no children are born, it’s absurd to suggest that it is a tragedy. Nagel suggested that posthumous and prenatal death should be treated differently. Even if both circumstances are nonexistence, death can cause victim’s to die. But nonexistence before birth is not a loss. A man would live longer if he had not died. It would be absurd to claim that he would live longer if born earlier. The man cannot have an earlier child unless he’s premature. Otherwise, he’d have been someone else. It is not possible to extend your lifespan by extending your life span before you are born. Even though we have infinite possibilities, it is theoretically impossible to live forever. Thoms argued that indefinite existence could still be a continuation or a benefit if we are good. Nagel suggested that the most suspect question is whether it is dependent on the realizability or hopes of people to determine if death is an abomination.
There are limits that can be set to limit the possibility of misfortunes not yet realized. Human beings are born to die. It is possible to say that someone who dies at 24 has a greater death rate than Tolstay at 82. However, both are still very sad because they have lost their lives. This begs the question: Can we accept inevitable and common limitations like mortality as a tragedy? While everyone has a limited life expectancy we don’t all realize it from our experience. A man has lived through many historical, natural, or social events and is the subject of an indeterminate, but not necessarily limited, life. Nagel finally stated that death, which is considered a bad, can cause the loss of goods. According to him, death is an abrupt cancellation and revocation of infinitely many goods. Normality appears to have nothing to be with it. Even though we will all eventually die within a few decades, that does not mean that it is not beneficial to live longer. Nagel’s final argument states that death is an evil because it prevents people from making plans about their future.
Bibliography Nagel, T. (1970). Death.