Elizabeth Mbone Jombo

Ah-Ha Journal 3

By reflecting on this week’s readings and materials, I will highlight the following

points from the reading and my perspectives.

Begin by distinguishing the process of dying, death, and being dead. Dying takes

place during life, and death is typically construed as the transition from dying to being dead.

Being dead takes place after both dying and death it is the state or condition of being dead.

We might state Epicurus’ well-known argument concerning death as follows: the harm thesis,

on which death may harm the individual who dies, can hold only if there is a subject who is

harmed by death, clear harm that is received, and a time when that harm is received. As to the

timing issue, there seem to be two possible solutions: either death harms its victims while

they are alive or later. If we opt for the second solution we appear to run head-on into the

problem of the subject, for assuming that we do not exist after we are alive, no one is left to

incur harm. If we opt for the first solution, death harms its victims while they are alive, we

have a ready solution to the problem of the subject but we face the problem of supplying a

clear way in which death is bad: death seems unable to have any ill effect on us while we are

living since it will not yet have occurred. For convenience, I will call any harm for which

death is responsible ‘mortal harm’.

At the beginning of his great and influential essay, “Death”, Thomas Nagel writes, “If

death is the unequivocal and permanent end of our existence, the question arises whether it is

a bad thing to die. Most of us do believe that death can, at least in some cases, be bad for the

one who dies. In other words, most of us think that death can harm the deceased. Death is not

a physical condition, instead, it is an unconscious void such that it lacks metaphysical

conceptualization. After death the deceased individual cannot be said to exist, moreover, to
speak of her as though she still exists is irrational. At best, it is the extrapolation of some

possible event or events from a person’s former existence. Further, any misfortune that one

wishes to attribute to a particular subject is no longer possible because that subject does not

exist. Thus, death cannot be said to adversely affect any subject because a deceased subject

lacks to necessary ontology to be qualitatively assessed. Besides, the new testament doctrine

of the general resurrection says that at the end of human history all human beings who are not

then alive anyway will be raised from the dead, that is, they will be brought back to life out of

their previous state of death, in preparation for the life either of heaven or another place. The

commonest New Testament metaphor for relation of this life to the resurrection life is that of

seed and plant. In various religions, where people believe in life after death, these statements

proved to be right. If the life after death exists and that life will be the reward of the life spent

in the world, the concept of seed and plant is truly amazing and interesting.

My belief regarding death is that it is unavoidable, I lost my loved ones, some died due to age

factor, some died due to any pain or suffering, and some died due to an untreated health

condition. One day my life will also end and I cannot deny this truth. Death is an inevitable

natural phenomenon; it is neither good nor evil.