Thomas Nagel, about 40 years after writing about death

Class 3.1 Nagel - Death

Last week we read and grappled with Lucretius’s famous argument that death - or at least, the kind of death that means ending and not just being resurrected or reincarnated into another life or body - is not and cannot be bad for us. This week we turn to competing views about the badness of death. One of the most influential essays on death in philosophy in the last fifty+ years is Thomas Nagel’s article, ‘Death’.

Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel is a contemporary philosopher who taught at Princeton University in the 1970s and at NYU from about 1980 to 2016. He is most famous for his work on consciousness and in moral theory, but his essay on death that we are reading has been cited over 700 times. If you get a chance, ask me about the time he took me out to lunch.

Deprivation

Nagel considers Lucretius’s argument and responds that even though your death may not be bad for you either before you die or after you die, nevertheless you are worse off for dying, because death deprives you of some goods that would have otherwise been part of your life. Nagel’s answer to what is bad about death went on to become a leading exemplar of what are known as deprivation accounts of the badness of death.

Reading

For today’s class, we are going to read Nagel’s article, ‘Death’. The article is short, so read slowly and carefully and try to make sure that you understand what he is trying to do in each step of his argument. As you read, ask yourself, “What is Nagel’s answer to Lucretius?” “Is that one of the possible answers that we talked about last week, or is it a new one?” “What would Lucretius say in response?” “Does Nagel’s answer to what is bad about death require the assumption that there is no life after death in the same way that Lucretius’s argument requires this assumption?”