Death, Anxiety, Value
Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011
5:30 pm – 7pm
Location: Sparks 302
This Philosophers’ Guild event has two parts. For the first part, philosophy major Matthew Andler will lead a discussion about death in relation to Thomas Nagel’s argument about the badness of death. We’ll consider the following:
Nagel claims “If death is an evil at all, it cannot be because of its positive features, but only because of what it denies us” (pp. 62). He continues to claim that it denies us of “all the goods that life contains [… some of which include] perception, desire, activity, and thought” (62). But death is not the only thing to deprive us of these goods. Coma, sleep, and even depression make these goods either unavailable to us or reduce our ability to experience them fully. Nagel fails to define the badness of death as something categorically different than these aforementioned states, even though he claims that it is more than “an unfortunate state” (63). With this is mind, is Nagel’s reasoning substantially different from the claim, “depression is bad for X because it deprives X of fully experiencing all the goods of life?” Does the symmetry (of kind, not of degree) between death and depression miss something about the badness of death?
For the second part, recently graduated alumni Zachary Watts will lead a discussion about the effects that death has on us in relation to how Jacques Derrida's reflections in The Gift of Death about Heidegger’s descriptions of death (Being and Time) and Kierkegaard's descriptions of death (Fear and Trembling). More specifically, Zach will explore the following with us:
What does the anticipation of death entail? Or, more importantly, what meaning is death able to bring about? What systems of values should we associate with death?
Are we able to give our deaths? That is, how do we understand sacrifice, specifically death for the other?
Considering the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham (the focus of Fear and Trembling), what sorts of ethical systems are associated with death? In this event, Abraham is intending to murder his son, is this ethical? How do we approach responsibility and ethics in light of death and the anxiety produced by death?
