The Deprivation of Life's Potentials Isn't Necessarily a Bad Thing

We are particularly finite beings. What bothers me about Nagel's argument in his paper Death is that he focuses too much on humans' potential and not enough on their specific realizations. Nagel thinks that death is an evil because it deprives us of some possible life. "If there is no limit to the amount of life that it would be good to have, then it may be that a bad end is in store for us all." This is a conditional statement, but I would like to posit that life is particularly limited, and as such its end is not necessarily an evil.

Nagel Thinks Life's Deprivation is Something Evil

Nagel focuses on the idea that death is only evil in the sense that it deprives us of potential good life. "Clearly if death is an evil at all, it cannot be because of its positive features, but only because of what it deprives us of" or "if death is an evil, it is the loss of life, rather than the state of being dead, or non-existent, or unconscious, that is objectionable." It's not the state itself (of no longer being conscious and having experiences) which is the problem. It is the fact that death, by its nature, is such that it halts all possible future experiences and development. Being alive and having conscious states is good. The deprivation of something good is evil. Therefore death (what Nagel would call the deprivation of life) is something evil.

Life Needs an End

Life is meaningless without a particular end. The meaninglessness of the other, possible life is demonstrated nicely by the narrator in The Dream. He had infinite time and as such could do everything, and master it. But who even wants this? In the story, everyone eventually got bored and tired and chose oblivion simply to escape heaven-life's monotony. In this sense of having "more good life," is having more really that much better? The more life the people in heaven had to play with, the less they wanted to play with it! You can have too much of a good thing. The good of life should at some point be ended.

When I Die, I Will Die

I am me, and no one else. While I am alive I am, I have done, and I still may yet do. But there is a limit to how much life I could have done (I couldn't have fought Oda Nobunaga in medieval Japan) just as there is a limit to how much I still might do (I'm never going to walk on surface of Titan). What matters to the subject is that he is doing (being). Only historians and observers are interested that I had done a certain, limited, amount of doing (that was who I was; such a man that lived such a particularly finite life). If I had lived any longer I wouldn't be that man, but instead this other man who lived this other finite life.

Deprivation Isn't Necessarily Evil

I don't like how Nagel thinks that some "deprivation" is a bad thing. Isn't this going on at every moment of life anyway? I mean, the very fact that we are alive as human beings means that we are necessarily depriving ourselves of many possible futures. Death is simply the break of my life, just as my birth is the moment of my creation. There's nothing evil about it. Death deprives me of a possibly-imagined, future-projected life, but it is natural that I cease to be. “The question [is] whether the non-realization of this possibility is in every case a misfortune, or whether it depends on what can naturally be hoped for.” What can naturally be hoped for is that we are all going to die. That's just the nature of the mortal beast.

Hi, My Name is Rob

I am Rob. I am a painter and a philosopher. I have made choices in my life which have lead me to develop into this person writing this paper. My doppelganger over there (Rob-D) who was born at exactly the same instant as me, that is from the same mother, and actually occupied the same space in time as me for much of my early development, became a scientist instead. He may resemble my appearance and may even live a longer life-time, but he is not me. I'm the painter who will drunkenly riding his bike into the street getting hit by a street-car. Rob-D is that other man who plays it safe, develops scientific theories, and has a family. He will probably die in bed when he is eighty. I may have deprived myself of leftness because I chose rightness. I deprived myself of Coke because I chose Pepsi. But it's beyond good and evil to consider one's life through the choices decided to make it. It doesn't matter that I go right instead of left. It's just that I'm the sort of person who goes right because that's who I am (a righty; at this particular point in space-time). To talk about someone who would have gone left in that instance is to speak of another possible person, because I am such a person who would have gone (and did go) right. To say that because I die earlier than Rob-D that I am deprived of his potential doesn't make sense. I'm not Rob-D; my name is Rob.

If You've Seen One Haystack, You've Seen Them All

Monet painted a series of paintings of the very same haystack on many canvasses. The question arises whether each canvas is (for all intents and purposes) the same “painting.” Each painting was of the same subject, was made of the same paint, on the same canvas, each one cut the same size, painted from the same distance, and used the same composition. In fact the only thing which differentiated each painting (and there were a lot of them) was the shadow each of them cast as the sun moved through the sky whilst he painted that haystack again and again. The thing is, the painting that was created towards the end of the day is not necessarily any better (or worse) than the one painted near the beginning of the day. They are simply different paintings altogether. To say that the first painting was "deprived" of the potential to have a longer shadow is irrelevant to its worth or existence. It is still a painting of a haystack. It just so happens that it is representative of the morning's shadow. That's just the kind of painting that it is. Similarly, the life longer lived is not necessarily any better than the life shorter lived, only it is a different life lived by a different person.

Death's Not So Bad

That which defines who and what I am is the set of choices and decisions that I make, the things that I do, and the ways that I think. I make decisions all the time (else I would be nothing but a statue, or decaying maggot food). I am (still) because I decide so. And in so deciding I define my self. Death in itself isn't good or evil because it is simply a transitory moment of existence (the last one) like every waking moment of life. Whether it be oblivion or the movement into something else, it just is what it is (part of the definition of who and what I am: a mortal human being). There's no escaping the determination of who I am since to speak of any other possible world is to speak of something different (i.e., not me). I think there is a limit to the amount of life that it would be good to have, thus I don't think that death deprives me of anything and as such is not that bad an end after all. It is just the only end I could have possibly had (my end).

Works Cited

Nagel, Thomas. Death. 1970.