Oisín,36, lives in Cork, Ireland, where he’s a tutor in philosophy and politics at UCC. He’s just finished his Master’s there, and—since philosophy appears to have succeeded in gripping him firmly by the head—he’s returning to Canada soon (where he and his angelic wife Katherine used to live, and are looking forward to living again) to begin a Ph.D. More fool him, perhaps! In the last moments of my mother’s life, hoping to ease her distress, I urged her not to be afraid. I told her she was “pioneering” for us—where she was going, we’d all be going too.
But what was I talking about? What happens at “death”?
First, it seems clear that our familiar notion of “life after death” is incoherent, since it involves an outright contradiction; it wouldn’t really be death, you might say, if life continues.
Aside from this, what (if anything) could it mean for us to survive death?
Well, we can safely assume that our body doesn’t live on (since it’s bodily death that defines death). So perhaps some immaterial part of ourselves survives (if there is such a part), or is “reborn” into another body. This may involve our traditional notion of a “soul”.
If the soul survives without a body, then it must be either in the material world (as a disembodied “ghost”, if such an idea even makes sense), or else in an immaterial world. If survival is in an immaterial world, then such a world will presumably be either good or bad (these cover our traditional notions of heaven and hell), or else neutral (this, perhaps, covers our notion of purgatory). If the soul survives as a ghost or else is reborn into another body, these eventualities could also be good, bad, or neutral for us. The only other possibility is that there is no immaterial part that survives bodily death.
How ought we to feel about these options?
Well, if there really is a soul that survives bodily death, then (in any of the above options) we’d be justified in fearing worse and desiring better outcomes for our soul. (Personally, I find the idea of hell, stated in terms of eternal punishment for misdeeds performed in this life, to be one of the most morally repugnant ideas ever dreamed up.)
But what if no immaterial part survives (either because there’s no such thing, or because it too dies upon physical death)? How should we feel about death if it’s the irrevocable end of our existence? Would this be a good or a bad thing, from our point of view?
One way of answering this question is to agree with Epicurus, who asserted that
Death …, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.
Even so, it’s possible that the process of dying (for example, if it’s painful or slow) could be extremely unpleasant from our point of view. Still, if death really is the end of our existence, then maybe Epicurus is right. After all, the supposed harm of death (if such harm is supposed to consist solely in the fact that we no longer exist) does not apply to us while we’re living. And to whom could such harm apply once we’re dead?
It’s clear that death, if it’s the end of our existence, involves the end of our enjoyment of life. But surely we don’t think that we’ll miss enjoying life, given that we’ll no longer exist! We may regret not being able to continue enjoying life forever. We may wish to live a long and healthy life in order to enjoy more of life. But these thoughts don’t seem to capture the dismay we may feel at the idea that we will no longer exist at all.
As Thomas Nagel puts it,
The thought that the world will go on without you, that you will become nothing, is very hard to take in… [But] It’s not clear why.
Consider the following two facts. First, most of us readily accept that there was a time before we existed, namely, a time before we were born. Second, anyone who’s been under general anesthetic—say, for an operation—knows that it’s not like anything to be anesthetised. We’re normally untroubled by the fact that we didn’t exist before we were born. And the complete absence of conscious experience under anesthesia demonstrates that it can’t be a bad thing, experientially, to have no experiences at all.
But the case of anesthesia prompts another consideration: We aren’t dead when we’re anesthetised. We’re still biologically alive, we just lack consciousness. What this suggests (at least to me) is that it isn’t life so much as conscious life that interests us.
In any case, it’s not obvious what there is to fear. Death would be truly fearful only if it held in store for us something like hell (and I’ve already aired my views on this concept). Otherwise, what we think of as “fear of death” is likely a combination of regret at not being able to continue living and a desire for yet more of whatever we enjoy in life. Added to this may be genuine fear that the process of dying might be painful.
Is this, then, the whole story? It seems not. Perhaps illogically, death still strikes many of us as about the worst thing that could happen; which is to say, it remains fearful.
So maybe we’re looking at things wrong-headedly.
In the minutes following my mother’s death, I stood outside her nursing home; warm sunshine flooded the evening landscape. My mother was dead. I recalled a story about a fellow who’d crashed his bicycle at an intersection in the city; he’d smashed headlong through the passenger window of a car, but had escaped serious injury because he’d been wearing his helmet. For the whole next week, he was euphoric at being alive. In those minutes following my mother’s death, I experienced something akin to this feeling. I was simply in awe at being alive, consciously alive, in the world at all. The fact that there is conscious experience in the world at all is one of the most deeply mysterious aspects of the universe in which we live; it appears to be thus far outside the realm of what science can even hope to explain (this is the infamous “explanatory gap”).
Perhaps instead of dwelling on the fact that we may cease to exist, we should consider the quite astonishing fact that we are here in the first place, as consciously experiencing beings.
I cannot think of anything more astonishing than that.
But what was I talking about? What happens at “death”?
First, it seems clear that our familiar notion of “life after death” is incoherent, since it involves an outright contradiction; it wouldn’t really be death, you might say, if life continues.
Aside from this, what (if anything) could it mean for us to survive death?
Well, we can safely assume that our body doesn’t live on (since it’s bodily death that defines death). So perhaps some immaterial part of ourselves survives (if there is such a part), or is “reborn” into another body. This may involve our traditional notion of a “soul”.
If the soul survives without a body, then it must be either in the material world (as a disembodied “ghost”, if such an idea even makes sense), or else in an immaterial world. If survival is in an immaterial world, then such a world will presumably be either good or bad (these cover our traditional notions of heaven and hell), or else neutral (this, perhaps, covers our notion of purgatory). If the soul survives as a ghost or else is reborn into another body, these eventualities could also be good, bad, or neutral for us. The only other possibility is that there is no immaterial part that survives bodily death.
How ought we to feel about these options?
Well, if there really is a soul that survives bodily death, then (in any of the above options) we’d be justified in fearing worse and desiring better outcomes for our soul. (Personally, I find the idea of hell, stated in terms of eternal punishment for misdeeds performed in this life, to be one of the most morally repugnant ideas ever dreamed up.)
But what if no immaterial part survives (either because there’s no such thing, or because it too dies upon physical death)? How should we feel about death if it’s the irrevocable end of our existence? Would this be a good or a bad thing, from our point of view?
One way of answering this question is to agree with Epicurus, who asserted that
Death …, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.
Even so, it’s possible that the process of dying (for example, if it’s painful or slow) could be extremely unpleasant from our point of view. Still, if death really is the end of our existence, then maybe Epicurus is right. After all, the supposed harm of death (if such harm is supposed to consist solely in the fact that we no longer exist) does not apply to us while we’re living. And to whom could such harm apply once we’re dead?
It’s clear that death, if it’s the end of our existence, involves the end of our enjoyment of life. But surely we don’t think that we’ll miss enjoying life, given that we’ll no longer exist! We may regret not being able to continue enjoying life forever. We may wish to live a long and healthy life in order to enjoy more of life. But these thoughts don’t seem to capture the dismay we may feel at the idea that we will no longer exist at all.
As Thomas Nagel puts it,
The thought that the world will go on without you, that you will become nothing, is very hard to take in… [But] It’s not clear why.
Consider the following two facts. First, most of us readily accept that there was a time before we existed, namely, a time before we were born. Second, anyone who’s been under general anesthetic—say, for an operation—knows that it’s not like anything to be anesthetised. We’re normally untroubled by the fact that we didn’t exist before we were born. And the complete absence of conscious experience under anesthesia demonstrates that it can’t be a bad thing, experientially, to have no experiences at all.
But the case of anesthesia prompts another consideration: We aren’t dead when we’re anesthetised. We’re still biologically alive, we just lack consciousness. What this suggests (at least to me) is that it isn’t life so much as conscious life that interests us.
In any case, it’s not obvious what there is to fear. Death would be truly fearful only if it held in store for us something like hell (and I’ve already aired my views on this concept). Otherwise, what we think of as “fear of death” is likely a combination of regret at not being able to continue living and a desire for yet more of whatever we enjoy in life. Added to this may be genuine fear that the process of dying might be painful.
Is this, then, the whole story? It seems not. Perhaps illogically, death still strikes many of us as about the worst thing that could happen; which is to say, it remains fearful.
So maybe we’re looking at things wrong-headedly.
In the minutes following my mother’s death, I stood outside her nursing home; warm sunshine flooded the evening landscape. My mother was dead. I recalled a story about a fellow who’d crashed his bicycle at an intersection in the city; he’d smashed headlong through the passenger window of a car, but had escaped serious injury because he’d been wearing his helmet. For the whole next week, he was euphoric at being alive. In those minutes following my mother’s death, I experienced something akin to this feeling. I was simply in awe at being alive, consciously alive, in the world at all. The fact that there is conscious experience in the world at all is one of the most deeply mysterious aspects of the universe in which we live; it appears to be thus far outside the realm of what science can even hope to explain (this is the infamous “explanatory gap”).
Perhaps instead of dwelling on the fact that we may cease to exist, we should consider the quite astonishing fact that we are here in the first place, as consciously experiencing beings.
I cannot think of anything more astonishing than that.
Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, where people offer their pearls of wisdom for the rest of us to ponder. If you would like to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 words of wisdom, along with a bio and photo (or I'll write/ pick them) to auld.dog@gmail.com and I'll post it here.
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