Puzzling with nonexistence: can death be bad for the

one who dies?

Koen Bavelaar

k.t.bavelaar@students.uu.nl/k.t.bavelaar@gmail.com

Masterthesis Wijsbegeerte

Supervisor Dr. Jos Philips

15-01-2016

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 Table of Contents

1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................3

2. The Epicurean position...........................................................................................................6

3. Non-experienced Badness.......................................................................................................8

4. Some ways in which death is harmful..................................................................................12

5. The hedonistic deprivation view...........................................................................................15

5.1 Basic elements.................................................................................................................15

5.2 Problems..........................................................................................................................17

5.2.1 No-subject problem..................................................................................................17

5.2.2 Badness and comparative badness............................................................................21

5.2.3 Symmetry Argument................................................................................................24

6. Bad for a person....................................................................................................................35

7. Conclusion............................................................................................................................37

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 Abstract

This paper raises the Epicurean question whether death can be bad for the one who dies and
answers it affirmatively. It argues that there are inexperienceable harms with a distinct nature.
Death constitutes such a harm in two ways: as an interruption of projects and as a loss of
future experience (within a hedonistic framework). Death’s badness is understood as being
narrative in nature: it involves articulation of badness beyond direct experience. The notion of
losing something that is important to one provides a fruitful approach to construing such
harms. An inexperienced change of narrative can be bad for a person because a person cares
about this narrative. The paper also explores whether such changes in narrative can be bad
without a notion of care. Throughout these explorations, it deals with objections to death’s
badness, most notably the symmetry between prenatal and postmortem nonexistence. This
objection is answered by reference to the structure of hedonistic value and the effects on our
current biography if we would have been born earlier. Postmortem nonexistence, other than
prenatal nonexistence, can be bad for the one who dies.

1. Introduction

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and
had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."1 - Mark Twain

Death has been an object of fear and fascination ever since human societies have formed on
this planet. How to deal with death and how to understand it has been a subject of heavy
speculation through the ages. Philosophy and religion have offered many views and
interpretations of death. A view that is still very influential today is that of Epicurus. Put
roughly, Epicurus’ view consists of two elements. First, death is considered as the
annihilation of the subject, leaving no possibility for any experience whatsoever. The subject
is reduced to nothingness. Second, as a consequence of the impossibility of experience,
Epicurus argues that death is not a bad thing for the person who dies. There is no harm to be
felt. It is this latter point that I wish to take on in this paper. Can death be a bad thing for the
person who dies and if so: how? My answer will be affirmative, but not without any
reservations.

In answering this question, I will use Epicurus’ first point as a framework. That is,
death is considered as the complete annihilation of the subject or person. This excludes many
religious conceptions of death, especially those that involve an afterlife or reincarnation.
Although these views have interesting aspects of their own, I am not concerned with them in

1
This quote circulates the internet as if Mark Twain has said it, but I have not been able to verify this. Perhaps it
is not his, but it is nicely put. See for example: Snopes.com, “Mark Twain quote about death, ”
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=81874 (Accessed July 18th 2015).

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this paper. Furthermore, I will only take into account those views that regard life as a possibly
good thing, or at least not inherently bad. For instance, David Benatar has argued that from a
personal view “it is better never to come into existence.” 2 In such a view, death is rather a
good thing or relief than a bad thing to be regretted. Such views will also be excluded. This
does not entail that the question is whether death is always a bad thing. People who suffer
from severe illnesses, extreme hardships or heavy mental disorders, might well be better off
dead. The question is whether death can be a bad thing.

The question that will be scrutinized differs from the related question whether
mortality as such is a bad thing. The condition of mortality, some authors argue, affects the
value that can be found in human lives. More generally, this question is about the transiency
of the human world and whether transient matters are truly valuable. I think value can be
found in temporal worlds and subjects and there is no need for eternity to create value,
although the nature of value and experience might be affected. However, I wish not to explore
this thesis. Rather, we focus on death within a temporal framework. It will not deal with
eternity versus temporality, but rather with death occurring sooner rather than later, say in two
months instead of in twenty years.

As John Martin Fischer remarks, the question is also not aimed at the process of dying,
but at actually being dead. It might be obvious that the process of dying is a bad thing, since it
often involves fear, pain and suffering. However, this discussion focuses on death or being
dead, “the state of permanent nonexistence after being alive.”3

In this paper I will argue that death can be a bad thing for the one who dies. In order to show
that this is the case, I will start of by defending the existence of badness or harms that are not
experienced. I will argue that the structure of our subjective experience of badness only makes
sense when such harms exist. I then try to show that death constitutes such a harm. I will
discuss two categories of value in which this may be so: in terms of interrupted projects and in
terms of hedonistic value. The first can be constructed in terms of goal or desire frustration
and loss of meaning. Such misfortune due to death however, only applies to people who
actually (still) have such projects. The hedonistic approach tries to establish a more general

2
David Benatar, “Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics,” The Journal of Ethics 17
(2013), 123. Benatar is not claiming that death is not bad, but with such a view Benatar does seem to exclude a
lot of ways in which death can be bad.

3
John Martin Fischer, “Introduction: Meaning in Life and Death.” In John Martin Fischer (ed.), Our Stories:
Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 4.

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harm in terms of loss of future experience. The harm is constructed in a comparison between
the nearest possible world in which one did not die and the actual world in which one did die.

Subsequently, five objections will be considered to the hedonistic account. The no-
subject objection argues that comparisons that use worlds without a subject are not valid
(since the subject is dead). In response it will be argued that a comparison is made between
lives, without reference to the period in which the person no longer exists. The timing
objection argues that no harms or bads can exist which do not have a specific time at which
they are bad; and death does not have such a specific period. To this I will answer that since
death’s badness is inexperiencable and narrative, it does not require such a specific timing.
The symmetry argument argues that prenatal and postmortem nonexistence are equal and that
since prenatal nonexistence is not considered as bad, neither should postmortem nonexistence.
The response will be twofold: hedonistic value is greater in the present and the future than in
the past and living earlier would change important aspects of a person’s life; aspects she cares
about to stay as they are.

What becomes clear through these replies is the comparative and narrative nature of
the hedonistically construed badness of death. Both the comparative and narrative nature are
subjected to critique. The critique on the comparative nature holds that comparative bads only
make someone worse off; they are not bad for someone. Otherwise everything that could have
been better is bad for someone. It will be argued that there are ways to distinguish worse
possible worlds. It will be argued that through the standard of what can be reasonably
expected true misfortunes can be discriminated. The critique of the narrative nature holds that
death is not truly bad for a person, but that evaluations of death’s badness are rather stories or
reckonings about a person, which are of no concern to the person herself. I will answer this by
showing that there are such things as inexperiencable harms that a person cares about such as
goals, which can be interfered with by death. It literally ‘concerns’ a person as it is important
to her. Eventually, I will suggest hedonistic value could be constructed similarly.

The position I end up defending is much in line with Nagel’s chapter on death in
Mortal Questions.4 My position shares Nagel’s focus on the possibility of inexperienceable
harms and their clear distinctiveness from experienceable harms. However, Nagel left several
issues which needed refinement or elaboration and this paper is an attempt to do so. John

4
Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

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Martin Fischer can be understood as doing a similar thing in Our Stories.5 I share his
emphasis on the nation of care in death’s badness, but in several discussions, such as the
symmetry-argument and the defense of inexperienceable harms, I find his arguments lacking
or in need of adaptation. On many occasions, I have argued against Fischer to strengthen my
position. Finally, the notion of the narrative nature of death has been emphasized most
strongly by Byron Stoyles and this paper elaborates on the consequences of such a nature. 6 By
using, adapting and enhancing arguments from many authors in the debate, I offer a new and
refined defense of Nagel’s position in Mortal Questions.

Considering the questions about death’s badness is interesting for several reasons.
First of all, it helps us to come up with an appropriate attitude towards a crucial part of life,
namely death. This concerns our own death because we can establish whether it is something
to regret or even avoid. But it also concerns the death of others, in that we may have different
perspectives on the graveness of killing and murder. The immorality of taking a life might be
moderated if death is no harm as such. Furthermore, in reflecting on what it is that makes
death so bad, we reveal what makes life so good. That is, what we value and how we value
comes to light in assessing death’s badness. As such, answering the question of death’s
badness should provide insight in our human condition.

2. The Epicurean position

In this section I describe the Epicurean arguments that death is not bad for the one who dies.
The arguments presented here are ‘Epicurean’ arguments and not Epicurus’ arguments, since
it is a matter of debate whether Epicurus actually held these views in such form. 7 Rather, the
arguments presented here are modern interpretations of Epicurus’ line of thinking. These
arguments are presented to gain insight in the doubts about the commonsense belief that death
can be bad; doubts that I will try to take away in the subsequent chapters.

The Epicurean view can be divided into two arguments, one associated with Epicurus
and one associated with Lucretius. The first argument can be labeled the ‘no subject-

5
John Martin Fischer (ed.), Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009).
6
Byron J Stoyles, “Challenging the Epicureans: Death and Two Kinds of Well-Being,” The Philosophical
Forum, Inc (2011)
7
See for example, Eric T Olson, “The Epicurean View of Death,” The Journal of Ethics 17 (2013), 65.

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argument’. Contemporary authors often point to a passage in a letter Epicurus wrote to
Menoceus:

“Death, therefore, 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. It is nothing, then, either to the living
or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.” 8

Death is the annihilation of the subject, or the moment at which the subject ceases to exist. A
subject can in fact not ‘be’ dead, since it is no more. John Martin Fischer calls this an
‘experiential blank,’ since death cannot be experienced.9 The Epicurean argument questions
how death can be bad if there is no possible way to experience death or its consequences. This
point gives rise to questions about what it means to say that something is bad for someone.

The argument can be phrased differently, emphasizing the role of time. For instance,
Ben Bradly argues that the Epicurean argument can be constructed as stating that there must
always be a particular time at which death is bad for someone in order to be bad and that there
no time at which death is bad for the person who dies. Since before a person’s death, death is
not present, and after a person’s death the person is not present, there seems to be no time at
which death can be bad for a person. This challenges the defender of the commonsense view
on death to explain when death is bad for someone.10

The Lucretian argument is of a different nature and centers on the asymmetry in our
attitudes towards the period of non-existence after our death and the period of non-existence
before our birth. It is argued that the periods of non-existence before and after death are
qualitatively similar and would therefore require a similar attitude. It is unreasonable to look
at the period before our birth with indifference while fearing the period after our death or
conceiving it as a bad thing. Lucretius concludes that we should consider both periods with
indifference. The argument challenges the defender of death’s badness to account for the
asymmetry between our attitudes towards the two periods of non-existence. The argument can
be labeled the ‘symmetry-argument’.11

Death’s badness is attacked by the Epicurean line of thinking through the no subject-
argument and the symmetry-argument. The arguments challenge the defenders of death’s
badness to explain how death can be bad if it cannot be experienced, at what moment it can be
8
Epicurus, “Letter to Menelaos,” translated by Robert Drew Hicks, The Internet Classics Archive
http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html (Accessed July 28, 2014).
9
Anthony L. Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, ‘Why is death bad,’ in: Fischer, Our Stories, 28.
10
Ben Bradley, ‘When Is Death Bad for the One Who Dies?’ Nous 38 (2004), 1.
11
Frederik Kaufman“ Death and deprivation; or, why Lucretius' symmetry argument fails,” Australasian Journal
of Philosophy (1996).

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bad and how it can be that we have an asymmetrical attitude towards non-existence before
birth and non-existence after death. We now turn to the first challenge: explaining non-
experienced badness.

3. Non-experienced Badness

To evaluate the Epicurean position, one should consider whether something could be bad for
someone without the possibility of experiencing it. Anyone who wishes to defend that death is
bad has to answer this question affirmatively. Thomas Nagel has made an attempt at showing
how something can be bad without being experienced. He argues that being betrayed by
friends (for instance, they speak badly of you behind your back) is bad for you even if you
never find out that they betrayed you. We have an intuition that this is bad for you, whether
you will discover the betrayal or not. Similarly, if after your death people will mistakenly
ascribe your famous works to your brother, you will be harmed. Knowledge or awareness of
these events or any causal influence on your mental states is not required for these instances
to be bad for you. Death falls within the same category.12

Stephen Rosenbaum has argued against these examples. According to him, those who
deny death’s badness do not argue that all bad things have to be experienced. The point is
rather that they can be experienced. 13 Similarly, David Suits has argued that some actions or
things are bad in the sense that they are risky and usually cause pain. Some things are bad
since they have a tendency to cause pain, such as randomly firing a gun. 14 Intuitions about the
betrayal by your friends can be explained in this manner. There is some risk you might find
out you were betrayed. By betraying you, your friends put you at risk of being in pain. Death
and postmortem harms on the other hand have no such tendency: it is impossible they will
evoke pain and are thus not truly harms.

In response, John Fischer has offered a new example to make Nagel’s point. Imagine,
he says, your friends hired a person named White who could always prevent information of
the betrayal from reaching you. It would then be impossible that you could experience any
harm from them talking bad about you behind your back. He would never ever actually have
to intervene, but he is always on standby. The actual events are the same in Nagel’s original
case as they are in the case with White. Fischer argues that it is implausible that you find
12
Thomas Nagel, “Death,” in Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) 4-5.
13
Stephen E. Rosenbaum, “How to Be Dead and Not Care: A Defense of Epicurus,” American Philosophical
Quarterly 23 (1986) 221.
14
David B. Suits, “Why Death Is Not Bad for the One Who Died,” American Philosophical Quarterly 38 (2001),
70

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betrayal in Nagel’s case harmful, but not in the case with White, since everything that
happens remains the same. Thus one has to concede that in both cases you are harmed, which
makes experience irrelevant.15

David Suits has responded to this by arguing that a betrayal with such precautions is in
fact not a betrayal at all. Randomly firing a gun is bad or dangerous, but when precautions are
taken, for instance when shooting at a shooting range, firing a gun cannot be considered
harmful. A betrayal is connected to its possible bad effects. If those are made impossible, we
can no longer speak of a harm being done.16

I agree with Suits that Fischer’s example lacks the power to be convincing, but I do
support the conclusion that non-experienced betrayal (friends talking badly about you behind
your back) is harmful. I have two arguments to support this. About the first I am doubtful, but
I think the second provides proper reason to accept this conclusion.

The first argument centers on betrayal which is neither impossible, nor likely to be
harmful. Your friends have taken precautions, but could not exclude all chances of you
finding out. Rosenbaum and Suits could agree that such a betrayal is harmful, since it might
cause pain. However, consider it has the same likeliness of getting injured from a car crash on
your holiday in the Philippines, where an inexperienced driver brings you to the airport
through the most chaotic traffic. The amount of distress from finding out and getting injured
are the same level and the likelihood of things going wrong is in both cases 2,5 %. To me it
seems that even though the risk is similar, the betrayal is somehow worse for me than the car
ride. I would prefer the car ride. Yet according to those that deny the existence of non-
experienceable harm, these cases should be equal.

However, these intuitions could be challenged. The Epicurean could simply deny these
intuitions or argue that they are due to the ugliness of betraying friends in general, without
adding to the badness for the person. The resistance felt towards the betrayal is a resistance
towards the characters of your friends, which makes the story less appealing from an
outsider’s perspective. For the betrayed person himself however, there is no difference in
badness. Exactly where the intuitions come from is difficult to pin down, and so neither side
has a knock-down argument.

15
Fischer, “Death, Badness and the Impossibility of Experience ,” in: Fischer, Our Stories, 41-42.
16
Suits, “Why Death Is Not Bad,” 76-77.

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 The second and strongest argument against the Epicurean account of badness lies in
the phenomenology17 of badness for a person, an argument Thomas Nagel already presented
briefly. Nagel writes: “One advantage of such an account might be that it would enable us to
explain why the discovery of these misfortunes causes suffering – in a way that makes it
reasonable. For the natural view is that the discovery of betrayal makes us unhappy because it
is bad to be betrayed – not that betrayal is bad because its discovery makes us unhappy.” 18
The words ‘reasonable’ and ‘natural’ are important here. It is intuitively more appealing to
say that something causes unhappiness because it is bad; in this way it is more natural. This is
connected to the reasonableness of calling something bad. In the Epicurean view, there is no
explaining why something makes you unhappy, and therefore why something is bad. One
could argue that some things generally make human beings unhappy, but this does not provide
a first personal reason to be justified in your negative attitude towards the betrayal. There
seems to be no difference in rationality between being distressed by an object of phobia and
distress because your spouse cheated on you.

David Wiggins makes a similar point in his attempt to refute non-cognitivism about
meaning. He argues that the thesis that only mental states matter to human beings, which is
very much connected to the thesis that only experienceable bads are truly bad, is incoherent.
Wiggins argues that non-cognitivists pretend to take subjective experience very seriously, but
do not actually do so. Wiggins describes the problem as follows:

For (a) many of these conscious states have intentional objects; (b) many of the
conscious states in which intrinsic value supposedly resides are strivings after objects
that are not states, or are contemplations of objects that are not themselves states; and (c) it is
of the essence of these conscious states, experienced as strivings or contemplations or
whatever, to accord their intentional object a non-instrumental value.19

Non-cognitivists refuse to ascribe any importance to the objects of experiences, but these
objects are experienced as very important. With regards to value (and badness) the non-
cognitivist position “always readdresses the problem to the inner perspective without itself
adopting that perspective.”20 Part of the value in an aesthetic interaction between a subject
17
David Smith describes the discipline of phenomenology as “the study of structures of consciousness as
experienced from the first-person point of view.” Throughout this paper I use such arguments on several
occasions. Whenever I refer to the phenomenology of a particular thing, such as badness or certain types of
value, I refer to the structure of how such a thing is experienced, the structure of the inner or first-person
perspective. David Woodruff Smith, "Phenomenology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/phenomenology/
(Accessed July 27th)
18
Nagel, “Death,” 5.
19
David Wiggins, “Truth, Invention and the Meaning of Life,” in Wiggins, Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the
Philosophy of Value, third edition (Oxford: Clandon Press, 2002),104-105.
20
Wiggins, “Truth, Invention and the Meaning of Life,” 99-100.

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and an object lies for the subject in that object, not solely in the subject itself. For non-
cognitivists, the object has no non-instrumental value and could just as well have been a
different object, had it induced the same mental state. 21 This position denies the subjective
experience any role in determining what is valuable.

We can use this for our defense of inexperienced or inexperienceable harms. By only
considering experienceable bads as true bads, a person in fact ignores how bads are
experienced. Imagine you are betrayed by your friends, you find out they did, and they offer
you the following apology: ‘Sorry, we should have considered that the possibility of you
finding out and thereby feeling bad were too high.’ Such an apology misses most of the point.
The betrayal was bad regardless of the risk. The badness is about having lived in deception, a
deception created by other actors even. It is about a violated trust and empty friendship. They
should primarily be sorry for this, the primary bad, not merely for the consequences. Of
course being sorry for a person’s subsequent feelings is important, but it is not the only thing
to be sorry about. There is some other bad than the mere awareness of the betrayal. This does
not mean a betrayal that is found out might not be worse than a betrayal that is not. It does
mean that finding out and the subsequent results are not the only bad aspects of the betrayal.

Shelly Kagan refutes the claim to inexperienceable harm. He writes: “Increasing well-
being is providing an intrinsic, ultimate benefit to the person; thus, it would have to involve
altering the person's intrinsic properties. Since a person just is a body and a mind, changes in
well-being would have to involve changes in the person's body or mind.” 22 For Kagan,
changes must changes in intrinsic properties rather than relational properties to be affecting a
person’s well-being. Any non-experienced harm cannot be bad for a person, since he is not
affected by it. The narrative or relational properties of our live, since non-experienceable
harms always have to be formulated in narratives, can only be about a person, but do not
matter for a person if they do not affect her intrinsically. I have tried to show that these harms
do matter for a person since she is concerned about them. The structure of what we care about
includes more than the intrinsic properties of a person. What matters or is important to a
person, from a first personal or subjective point of view, goes beyond her intrinsic properties.
Making the objects of subjective experience of instrumental value only amounts to denying
any reasonableness to the subjective point of view, which does not seem right and
impoverishes life and possible sources of value. Byron Stoyles adds to this by saying that

21
Ibidem, 105.
22
Shelly Kagan, “The Limits of Well-Being,” Social Philosophy & Policy 9 (1992), 186.

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since we strongly care about these relational properties in our daily lives and have strong
intuitions that we rightly do so, we should not abandon this practice unless the arguments
against it are strong. 23

4. Some ways in which death is harmful

So far it has been argued that non-experienced harm is possible. In the rest of the paper I will
consider how death constitutes such a harm. As it turns out, there are several ways in which
death could be considered harmful. By describing instances of non-experienced harm due to
death, the concept of non-experienced harm might also become more convincing.

The first way in which death could harm a person is by interrupting his projects.
Authors vary in how they explain that this is bad for a person. Steven Luper has argued that
death interferes with interests we have while we are alive. Death and posthumous events “can
be the truth-making conditions for propositions which hold while we are alive. Facts about the
future can be against our present interests; when they are, our welfare is lower than it might
have been.”24 We have interests in the present about the future, interests that can be thwarted
in the future. We have interests in finishing our projects successfully, but death can interfere.

David Suits has argued that interests are not frustrated but vacated by death. In cases of
frustration, wishes are generally frustrated when the goal is obstructed but the desire to
achieve it remains. Sometimes however, people give up on their wishes, the wishes are
vacated. Death, according to Suits, is more like this second process than the first. The desire is
no longer there to be frustrated when death occurs. People cannot be frustrated when they are
dead and therefore neither can their wishes.25 This critique does not seem very convincing.
One difference with giving up an interest is that there is no actual act of giving up by dying.
Through giving up, a future-regarding interest is vacated, but it is not clear why a future-
regarding interest is vacated by death. One closes off the story of an interest by actively
giving up. But by passively no longer being able to hold that interest, a future regarding
interest might be frustrated in the future: since it was not closed off actively, it differs from
giving up. Suits’ ultimate point is of course that such frustration is not experienced while
normal frustration of interests is. This leads us back the discussion above. However, since
23
Byron J Stoyles, “Challenging the Epicureans: Death and Two Kinds of Well-Being,” The Philosophical
Forum, Inc (2011), 12.
24
Stephen Luper, “Mortal Harm,” The Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2007), 248.
25
Suits, “Why Death Is Not Bad,” 77-79.

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Suits’ comparison with giving up on interests goes awry, it is not clear how future-regarded
interests could not be frustrated by death.

However, if one is not convinced by the harm of death interfering with projects in
terms of interests, it could also be phrased in terms of meaning. Stephen Heterington argues
that events that interfere with projects render untrue some beliefs that are important for us to
be true. It leads to some kind of absurdity, namely a fundamental discrepancy between the
world and a person’s view on it. A person is severely mistaken about the world and it matters
to him that he is right. Thus in the case of the betrayal one mistakenly believes to have a
meaningful and sincere friendship and acts on that. As the sincerity of the friendship is
important to you, living in such a lie is a form of absurdity. In the case of death, a person
might have the belief that in the future he will finish some projects or reach a goal. Death
might falsify this future-directed belief. He is wrong about a belief about which he cares that
it is true.26

Byron Stoyles argues that our lives have narrative meaning and that such meaning is
part of our well-being. Death has an effect on someone’s life story, which can be told in terms
of projects, goals, perfectionism, interests and desires (and even hedonistic calculus as we
shall see).27 Stoyles contrasts this narrative well-being with temporary well-being, which is
someone’s conscious state at any given moment. The latter can never be affected by death,
since there is no such well-being after death. But narrative well-being, and more specifically
narrative significance, can be thwarted. The meaning of a certain act or event, Stoyles argues,
is in part relational and dependent on future events. Imagine a person who has to write many
papers in order to obtain an undergraduate degree. The significance of her efforts depends in
part on the result of her efforts. If she actually attains the degree, her efforts will have more
significance in the light of such success. However, would death or any cause prevent her from
attaining the degree, the significance of her individual efforts would be reduced (though they

26
Stephen Hetherington, “Deathly Harm,” American Philosophical Quarterly 38 (2001), 352, 356.
27
The narrative nature of death’s badness is an important element in this paper. The narrative nature is conceived
very broadly. Following Stoyles, it is contrasted with direct experience at a given moment. Any harm that goes
beyond such experience will be called narrative. This is because such harm usually requires formulation or
articulation in order to be a harm. Death’s badness, as it leaves out such momentary well-being at a particular
moment, is purely narrative. It is a narrative about someone’s life. Even the hedonistic account of death’s
badness is purely narrative, as it focuses on a comparative calculation of a total, a story which is not directly
experienced. It is an evaluation of a longer period, whereas direct experience only exists in the moment. Often
death’s badness involves a judgment about the storyline of someone’s life. Stoyles, “Challenging the
Epicureans,” 5. For further reading on narrative value, see Velleman, “Well-Being and Time,” Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1991), 48–77.

13
would not become insignificant). Actions, preparations and plans with a future goal are made
more pointless due to interference by death.28

Death, as it interference with a person’s projects, can be bad in several ways. Death
can go against someone’s interests of completing a project, it can be bad as it lowers the
significance of acts aimed at completing that project and it can be bad as it renders untrue
something which one hopes to be true. Projects that could be interfered with can include
having and raising one’s children, developing or perfecting character and finishing a
contribution to society. It also leaves out the possibility of changing one’s life story, such as a
man who was always greedy that wishes to turn his life around. Death can harm a person in
terms of meaning and interests in various ways.

However, such accounts only apply to people who are in the middle of life. It accounts
mainly for premature deaths: deaths that break down plans for the future or future possibilities
for important changes. Although I think these are valid problems with death, they do not
account for all intuitions about death’s badness. Imagine for instance a person of advanced
age who enjoys life, but has not currently taken on any projects that he thinks are very
important to finish, who lived well and who is content with how his life has developed and
who has no severe regrets that can be changed. Yet she thinks it would be nice if he could live
on much longer, spending time with his family and friends, playing games and engaging in
new projects and activities and learning new things about life. In short: to experience more of
life than he has experienced so far. Death ends any future experience, any learning, any joy,
any pain, any part of our being. Can we not be sad purely about leaving our experiencing of
the world behind and vanishing into nothing? Although the previously discussed harms are
true harms, they might just be a small part of the loss of future experience as such. 29

28
Stoyles, “Challenging the Epicureans,” 6-8.
29
Depending on how one views having a project, the scope of death’s badness as interruption of projects might
increase. Perhaps it is not necessary to have a properly defined project or goal. Nagel writes: “It is true that
various of my possibilities – things I might do or experience – will remain unrealized as a result of my death. But
more fundamental is that they will then even cease to be possibilities – when I as a subject of possibilities cease
to exist.” (Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 226).Part of the problem is the loss of possibility as such.
Even if one lacks a well-defined project, one might still be frustrated in the vague wish to make more of life. All
possible action is annihilated by death. Finding out who one truly is or what one truly wants, reconciling with old
friends, being an emotionally richer and wiser person. Perhaps these goals were only vaguely present in the mind
of the subject, death still frustrates them by ending all possibility. Any feeling of discomfort about ones way of
life, any small desire for turning things around and being more than one is now. The possibility that life will ever
make more sense or the possibility that areas of value light up in someone’s life are extinguished. Death might
also frustrate those with no particular goal, but feel that there is more to life.

14
Therefore, we will now turn back to experience, or more exactly, the non-experienced harm of
losing experience and we will consider whether it is truly a harm.

5. Losing future enjoyment of life: The hedonistic deprivation view

5.1 Basic elements

The most common response to the Epicurean vision of death, perhaps first formulated by
Thomas Nagel, is the deprivation account of death’s badness. This chapter is headed the
‘hedonistic’ deprivation view, since many authors try to refute Epicurus within a hedonistic
framework or to use such general arguments that they could include hedonistic values. Thus
the arguments for death’s badness assume that value for a person is determined by the
experiences they (might) have had, or at least, the arguments should be applicable to such an
account of value. The main reason is that authors think that an important aspect of the badness
of the experiential blank is the loss of future experiences. Furthermore, Fred Feldman argues
that if an argument for death’s badness succeeds within a hedonistic framework, it can work
in any framework, as experience is tied up to living and therefore an experience-based
account of value seems most hostile to the thesis that death is bad. Understanding value
hedonistically, or in terms of experience, is therefore also a strategic move.30

One thing all deprivation accounts share is a focus on the good of life, rather than the
qualitative state of being dead. The deprivation account of death’s badness concedes to
Epicureans that there is nothing intrinsically bad to death. There are no qualities to being dead
that make it positively bad. It differs in this aspect from pain, which we can usually describe
as being bad in itself. Death’s badness does not lie in any features of being dead. Rather, the
harm is constructed negatively. Death’s badness lies in what it deprives a person of: the goods
of life. To put it in Epicurean terms, death deprives us of many positive experiences we
would otherwise have had, such as being with the ones you love for a longer time, having
great meals and making new friends. Death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed
had we not died.31

It is important to notice that hedonistic evaluation about death also has a narrative
structure. In hedonistic evaluation, directly experienced momentarily well-being, which

30
Fred Feldman, “Some Puzzles About the Evil of Death,” The Philosophical Review 100 (1991), 210.
31
Feldman, “Some Puzzles About the Evil of Death,” 216.

15
requires a currently existing subject, is being put aside for a narrative in terms of an aggregate
of such momentary states. It is a narrative about what people could have had.

One of the first and clearest defenses of the deprivation account is offered by Fred
Feldman. I will use his account of the deprivation view as an anchor point to which I relate
similar but slightly differing views. Feldman employs a language of possible worlds to make
his point. He takes possible worlds to be enormous propositions that describe how the world
might have been, rather than existing worlds. To explain the badness of death, Feldman
wishes to compare the actual world in which one died with the nearest possible world where
one did not die. ‘Nearest’ means something like ‘most similar’ here.32

As Feldman accepts Epicurean hedonism (for strategic purposes), a simple comparison

can be made using hedonistic calculus. A comparison in lives could be made as following.
Feldman asks us to imagine that if a woman named Dolores would move to Bolivia, the rest
of her life would be horrible. Her life would be worth +100 points considering her pleasures
and pain in the nearest possible world in which she moves to Bolivia. The nearest possible
world in which she does not move would be worth +1000 points. Moving to Bolivia makes
her 900 points worse off, so the value of moving to Bolivia is -900 for her. Similarly, a
comparison could be made between the nearest possible world in which a person dies at forty
in a plane crash and the nearest possible world in which she does not die prematurely. In both
worlds the time before the moment of her death is identical and worth + 500 points. In the
world in which she dies in the plane crash, the time after her death could be granted a value of
0, since no pleasures or pains will occur. But in the world she does not die prematurely her
life would be worth a total of + 1100 points, since it is a happy life. Her death thus has a
negative value of -600.33

Of course, hedonistic calculation need not be that abstract or superficial. One might
make a similar point by saying that a person dying at the age of twenty misses out on the
richness of life, on experiences associated with old age that are of a qualitatively different
nature than at a younger age. Or perhaps an individual person would only develop certain
attitudes of appreciation at a later age, such as kindness, gratitude, emotional connectedness
and so on. Any higher state of being or grade of perfection of the self requires experience:
attaining standards of a full human life always involves the capacity to experience. Perhaps
we can also place Stephen Hetherington’s suggestion that those who have not attained
32
Ibidem, 208.
33
Ibidem, 217-218.

16
ataraxia yet, suffer more from death than those who did in this account of value, as they never
experienced the highest good of serene calmness. 34 What I call hedonistic value can thus be
construed very broadly, in any way that future experiences as such might be valuable.

It is in this way that death is bad for the person who dies: it deprives her of the goods
of living any further. Due to her dying, the person in the plane crash example misses out on
600 points of goods she otherwise would have had. Perhaps those points consisted in enjoying
her pension, spending times with her kids and grandkids or having great meals. We can now
understand how total annihilation or nothingness can be bad for a person. Although death has
no positive features that can be considered bad nor causes any states with such features, it
deprives a person of the goods of life she would have enjoyed had she not died.

5.2 Problems

However, several issues remain unclear. First of all, the no-subject objection has not been
fully answered yet. It might be wondered whether a valid comparison can be made between a
possible world in which one exists and in which one does not. Furthermore, it is still not clear
at what time a person’s death is bad for her (since she is nonexistent when death arrives).
Secondly, one could question whether it is enough for something to be bad for a person if that
person is made comparatively worse off. And finally, we have not yet found a solution to the
asymmetry-problem raised by Lucretius.

5.2.1 No-subject problem

5.2.1a Comparison Legitimacy

One aspect of this deprivation account of death that has been questioned is the welfare level
of a person after his death. On the deprivation account, the welfare level has been put at 0.
But, as some authors have pointed out, the value zero would normally apply to a moment or
period in life which is neither unpleasant nor enjoyable. Being dead is not at all similar to
such a moment in life. Harry Silverstein argues that a comparison between a period in life and
a period after death in terms of welfare level is not possible for exactly this reason. There is
no welfare level after death, and the value a person’s life would have had (say +2) lacks a
value to be compared with.35

34
Hetherington, “Where is the Harm in Dying Prematurely? An Epicurean Answer,” Journal of Ethics 17
(2009), 84-85.
35
Harry S. Silverstein, “The Evil of Death,” The Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980), 410.

17
Silverstein’s own suggestion, supported by Feldman, is that we should not make life-death
comparisons but life-life comparisons.36 A good description of the life-life comparison is
offered by Duncan Purves, who describes it as follows: “[a]n event e constitutes a harm
(benefit) for S if and only if the total value of S’s life is greater (smaller) in the nearest
possible world in which e does not occur.”37 This approach compares whole lives with each
other: the life that the person who has died has lived and the life he would have lived had he
not died (then). The event of death is bad if the total value of a life would have been higher
had death not occurred. The advantage of this approach is that no claim has to be made about
the welfare level of deceased persons. Instead of comparing a person’s welfare at time t where
that person is dead with the counterfactual welfare of that person at time t had he not died, the
life-life comparison compares the value of whole lives. More specifically, it compares how
much a certain period after death adds in value to the total value of life in the nearest possible
world where one dies and the nearest possible world in which one does not die. Now we can
sensibly make the comparison discussed earlier. The person who died prematurely had a total
life value of +500. In the thirty years after her death no value was added to the total life value.
The thirty years added zero value. In the nearest possible world where she did not die
prematurely, another +600 was added in those thirty years, amounting to a total of +1100. Her
death can be given a value of -600, without using a welfare level for deceased persons.

The life-life comparison seems to be able to address problems with the legitimacy of
the comparison. However, using the total value of a total life does press the timing question.
When is it bad for a person that she misses out on the richer life she would have had had she
not died, when is death bad for the one who dies? Let us recall the problem: when a person is
alive death is not present and when death comes, the subject has ceased to exist. At what
moment or period in time can we locate death’s harm?

5.2.1b Timing Question

There have been many attempts to solve the timing problem. Stephan Blatti calls it a debate of
“considerable controversy, with apparently all conceptual space now occupied.”38 Steven
Luper has summarized the positions on the timing of deprivational harm by death and post-
homous events. According to these positions, death and post-humous events are bad:

(a) at the times when death and posthumous events occur (concurrentism)
36
Silverstein, “The Evil of Death,” 405.
37
Duncan Purves, “Accounting for the Harm of Death,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2014). 12.
38
Stephan Blatti, Death’s Distinctive Harm,” American Philosophical Quarterly 49 (2012), 317.

18
(b) after they occur (subsequentism)
(c) before they occur (priorism)
(d) at all times (eternalism)
(e) at an indeterminate time (indefinitism).39

As we saw before, Epicurus’ claim could be rephrased as stating that a harm requires a
specific time at which it is harmful and that death has no specific time at which it is bad. This
is opposed to indefinitism (e), which denies the first claim, arguing that harm does not need a
specific time at which it is harmful. Thomas Nagel holds this position, stating that “although
the spatial and temporal locations of the individual who suffered the loss are clear enough, the
misfortune itself cannot be so easily located.”40 The other positions accept Epicurus
requirement for harm, but argue that death does have a specific time at which death is bad
(though eternalism might not be that specific). A prima facie argument for the specific time
requirement of harm is pointing to examples from everyday situations of harm. When you
stub your toe, it will hurt afterwards, probably for a few minutes. The badness for you of
stubbing your toe can thus be located at the time after the stubbing of the toe until the pain
resides. A specific period of time can be identified at which the harm is bad for him. Of
course, these examples are drawn from cases that involve direct experience and might not be
applicable to the case of death. But it remains puzzling how death could be bad for someone
if it is not bad for him at any identifiable moment in time. This is why Luper considers it ‘an
option of last resort’ for those trying to meet Epicurus’ challenge.41

Feldman has argued that it is eternally bad for a person that she died. “For when we
say that her death is bad for her, we are expressing a complex fact about the relative values of
two possible worlds. If these worlds stand in a certain value relation, then (given that they
stand in this relation at any time) they stand in that relation not only when Lindsay exists, but
at times when she does not.” 42 For Feldman, death’s badness is expressed in terms of
comparing two eternal worlds, of which one is better than the other, eternally so. Critics have
argued that it is not about the question ‘When is it true that his death is bad for him?’ but ‘‘At
which times t is it true that Lincoln’s death is bad for him at t?’ 43 The question is when a
specific moment or period of badness occurs for the person who dies.
39
Luper, “Mortal Harm,” 241.
40
Nagel, “Death,” 7.
41
Ibidem.
42
Feldman, “Some Puzzles About the Evil of Death,” 220-221.
43
Luper, “Mortal Harm,” 240.

19
 Duncan Purves offers a solution in which “At which times t is it true that a person’s
death is harmful for her at t?” is interpreted as the question “What times after someone’s
death ground the fact that someone’s life as a whole contained less value than it would have
contained had her actual death not occurred?” 44 Purves argues that it is now possible to locate
the times at which a person’s death is harmful to him. These are the times at which the
absence of death would have added positive value to a person’s life as a whole. This could be
days, weeks or years after a person has died.45

However, such a position only states that the period after death is bad for a person, not
when this period is bad for that person. An opponent could still object that there is no moment
at which this period of badness actually affects that person. An opponent could still be
puzzled when this ‘period of badness’ is actually bad.

Death’s badness in terms of interference with projects could easily be constructed

within a priorist framework. In such a case, death could be said to interrupt desires, interests
and goals a person has during life. Within a hedonistic deprivation view, this is more
problematic. A person would have to have a project or goal to have positive experiences in the
future. This might be the case when someone has a particular experience in mind, such as
finding love or serenity, or bungee-jumping, and dies in advance. This approach however
places value back in the first-personal perspective of what someone cares about, whereas the
hedonistic deprivation approach is also constructed from a third-personal perspective.

However, what the hedonistic deprivation view has in common with badness in terms
of interfering with projects is that there is no reference to the status of someone’s intrinsic
properties at a particular moment to account for badness. Evaluating someone’s life as a
whole does not involve someone being affected through the event. The hedonistic deprivation
view is a comparative statement about that person. This type of badness cannot be located in
time in the same manner as a directly experienced badness. Beyond locating the time after
death in which a person is comparably worse off, no further demands should be made for
locating when this being worse off is actually bad for someone. Such locating in time is only
applicable to badness that one can experience. Demanding that death’s badness should be
traceable in time is similar to asking at what point in time death is experienced as bad by the
subject. Doing so is treating death as a positive harm open to being experienced and then
finding faults in it. But death’s comparative badness explicitly does not have such a nature.
44
Purves, “Accounting for the Harm of Death,”15.
45
Ibidem.

20
Death’s badness has a narrative structure, which has a different relation to time than direct
experience. We can thus deny the claim that harms need a specific time at which they are bad
and opt for Nagel’s indefinitism. Stating that bad things require a specific time at which they
are bad for a person is not an extra argument in addition to stating that there are only
experienceable harms.

5.2.2 Badness and comparative badness

A further serious objection to the hedonistic deprivation account of death concerns its use of
the concept ‘badness’. Recall that the hedonistic deprivation view is a comparative account of
death’s harm: it compares the nearest possible world in which one dies with the nearest
possible world in which one does not die. If you would have been better off in the world one
does not die, death is bad. Death is bad because it makes you worse off.

This account of badness runs into some serious problems when applied to other comparative
cases. Aaron Smuts has invented a case in which trouble shows up:

Walking down the street, you turn the corner and find a table blocking most of the sidewalk.
Behind the table stands Annette Chigurh, the good sister of evil Antoine Chigurh (from No
Country for Old Men). On the table sit two closed brief cases. Having recently lifted two
million dollars from her brother, she plans to give the bulk to a lucky stranger. She flips a coin. ‘What
are the stakes?’ you ask. ‘Heads you get the briefcase on the side you call; tails the other. Both
contain wads of cash.’ You call the right. The coin lands heads and the right briefcase is yours. To
your delight you find $100,000 inside. You scream ‘Whoopee!,’ pick up your booty, and make your
way home. Unbeknownst to you, the other suitcase contained $1,000,000. Had you called ‘left,’
you would have walked away with an additional $900,000.46

The problem here is evident. The comparative account of badness would have us say
that picking the right brief case was bad for you, if you had picked the left brief case you
would have had much more money to spend. But although you are comparatively worse off,
picking the right briefcase cannot properly be described as bad for you. It is a great thing for
you that you got $100,000, although it is less good than getting $1,000,000. Similarly, David
Suits argues that it is not bad for an average western person not to win the lottery, although
winning the lottery makes her a lot better off. 47 And finally, Kai Draper has argued that
finding Aladdin’s lamp makes a person better off than not finding it, yet not finding Aladdin’s
lamp is not bad for a person. He concludes that “ 'P would have (great) comparative disvalue

46
Aaron Smuts, “Less Good but not Bad: In Defense of Epicureanism about Death,” Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly 93 (2012), 205-206.
47
Suits, “Why Death Is Not Bad,” 72.

21
for S' does not entail 'P would be a (terrible) misfortune for S.'” 48 Otherwise every possible
world is bad for you unless it is the best possible world.

Smuts conclusion is that comparative badness is not truly bad for a person, it only
makes him worse off. He offers a causal hypothesis of badness: “The causal hypothesis holds
that to be extrinsically bad something must lead to intrinsically bad states of affairs; merely
leading to a state that is less intrinsically good is not sufficient. Less good is not bad.” 49
Intrinsically bad are within a hedonistic framework states of pain. Since death is not a pain
state and does not lead to pain for the one who dies, it cannot be intrinsically or extrinsically
bad.

Three types of responses have been offered to this objection. Since the nature of
death’s badness is expressed in comparative terms, one option is to look for a certain standard
to compare the actual world with. Kai Draper for instance, argues that a fruitful difference
between merely worse off and a misfortune can be made. He defends that only missing out on
things you can reasonably expect can count as a misfortune. This would explain why not
finding Aladdin’s lamp is not a misfortune: we cannot reasonably expect that we will find it.
On the other hand, a long-awaited trip to Barcelona that is suddenly cancelled by jury duty
can be considered bad for a person. Although the first case has a greater comparative disvalue,
only in the second case could someone reasonably expect actually attaining the good. She
misses out on her trip to Barcelona, a good she could reasonably expect to attain.50

There is a certain class of deaths of which its badness can be accounted by means of
the reasonable expectation requirement. A premature death, here understood as a death at a
significantly earlier age than average, is less than one can reasonably expect. Due to bad luck
a person misses out on goods that people are generally likely to get. What one can reasonably
expect is derived from general human capacities. A premature death can be a misfortune. But
a death at the limits of what is possible in a human life, say a death at the age of hundred,
cannot be considered a misfortune through deprivation. One cannot reasonably expect to be
able to enjoy goods after a certain age, since it is beyond the capacity of a human life. It is in
the same sense a comparable disvalue as not having superpowers such as Superman’s
strength.

48
Kai Draper, “Disappointment, Sadness, and Death,” The Philosophical Review 108 (1999), 389.
49
Smuts, “Less Good but not Bad,” 221.
50
Draper, “Disappointment, Sadness, and Death,” 392.

22
This way, at least the badness of premature deaths can be explained. But this approach has a
few issues it has to deal with as well. If the badness of death is dependent on what one can
reasonably expect, the badness of a death becomes variable. Life expectancy was
significantly lower two thousand years ago. One could not reasonably expect to be much older
than say forty years old. Similarly, in the future there might be ways to extend life beyond the
age of hundred fifty and one could speculate about the possibility of immortality through
science. What one can reasonably expect seems to change over time, unless we could all
expect the oldest age we could possibly achieve. Connected to this issue is the question how
one establishes what can be reasonably expected and what one takes into account. Do we take
into consideration that a person smokes or takes part in extremely dangerous sports? It seems
that a person who always does dangerous or self-harming things cannot reasonably expect the
same things as a person who lives safely. Although these questions deserve answers, these
questions do not trouble the general idea of putting limitations on possible worlds by
reasonable expectations: they rather show interesting issues for a more detailed account.

A second response to Smuts causal hypothesis can be found in F.M Kamm’s

suggestion that losses are always bad while mere privations of benefits are not. Thus if one
loses a good it is bad but if one does not attain it this is not necessarily so. 51 As John Fischer
has argued, it is hard to see the difference of value in a decline or a non-attained increase as
something other than a psychological response to these events, since a loss is more painful.
But with death this is irrelevant since there will be no experience of the loss. 52 Furthermore,
in a life-life comparison, which compares whole lives, only the total amount of positive
experiences matters.53

Finally, Fischer denies the requirement of reasonable expectation. He argues that hope
and regret or disappointment are often expressed towards very unlikely cases and that such
attitudes are not irrational. One could be appropriately disappointed that one did not win the
lottery or that one’s favorite football team did not make the finals, even if one recognizes it
was a long shot. As long as it is metaphysically possible, one could reasonably regret or hope
something to be the case. And if one can reasonable regret something implausible, it means
51
F.M Kamm, Morality, Mortality, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 40-42, 67-71. Draper,
“Disappointment, Sadness, and Death,” 409.
52
Fischer and Brueckner, “Why is Death Bad?” in: Fischer, Our Stories, 31-32.
53
One could argue that the story of a person’s life is affected by a loss differently. But it remains unclear why
this should be a problem.

23
there is something bad about it that is regrettable. Thus, Fischer’s position could be
understood as biting the bullet, saying that indeed everything other than the best possible
world could reasonably be considered as bad to some extent. Or at least, not being in the best
possible world is always reasonably regrettable.54

Fischer’s suggestion does not seem to solve the problem. Since if there are so many
bads as one can imagine to be missing out on, death seems to disappear into a mass of bads
which we are not particularly concerned about, for instance that our experiences are not a
thousand times more enjoyable than they are now. We do not call such things misfortunes and
if we do it seems ‘misfortune’ or ‘genuine bad’ loses strength in its meaning. Death would
have to stand out from these other things to have the status of misfortune. However, even to
state that death is less good than being alive is a large step from the original Epicurean idea,
which seemed to imply that it was equal. Being alive, even if dying is not a misfortune or
genuinely bad, is preferable to death and something worth wishing for. In this sense then,
Fischer is right. From a hedonistic point of view we can account for premature deaths as being
true misfortunes based on what can be reasonably expected and for any other death as being
less preferable than living on (if living on would be mostly positive).

5.2.3 Symmetry Argument

The last major problem that faces the hedonistic deprivation account of death’s badness is the
problem posed by Lucretius. Applied to the deprivation view, the problem can be formulated
as follows: if one misses out on hedonistic goods in the period after death, does one not also
miss out on hedonistic good before one’s birth? There seems to be no difference between
prenatal and postmortem nonexistence. Lucretius gives the defender of death’s badness two
options: either concede that not being born earlier is equally bad as not dying later or show
that not dying later is somehow different from not being born earlier.

Fred Feldman has opted for the first approach and argues that not being born earlier is
indeed bad for a person as well. He argues that the emotional asymmetry towards postmortem
nonexistence and prenatal nonexistence is irrational. The reason for this position is that
Feldman wishes to compare whole lives in different possible worlds within a hedonistic

54
Fischer, “Earlier Birth and Later Death: Symmetry Through Thick and Thin,” in: Fischer, Our Stories, 72.

24
framework. He argues that whether a similarly happy period gets added on at the start of a life
or at the end of a life makes no difference. The total value of a life remains the same.55

I have some sympathy for Feldman’s account because of the way he conceives the
hedonistic value system. A hedonistic calculus can be made about someone from the outside,
without taking into account her personal cares and concerns. Hedonism attributes an objective
value to pain and pleasure, whatever the subject may think of it. Since he tries to refute
Epicurus’ view of death within a hedonistic framework, this understanding is important.
Hedonism utilizes a third-person perspective. The calculation can be made about someone and
not necessarily by someone.

However, most authors have disagreed with Feldman. They have tried to make sense of the
differing attitudes towards prenatal and postmortem nonexistence. Two accounts in particular
have been much debated, the account of John Fischer and the account of Frederik Kaufman.
Both accounts involve interesting philosophical ideas and have the possibility to be fruitful.
However, I will argue that Kaufman’s proposal has most potential, though both accounts need
adjustments.

5.2.3a Fischer’s argument: bias towards the future

John Fischer and Anthony Brueckner have tried to justify our asymmetrical attitudes towards
prenatal and postmortem nonexistence by appealing to a future bias. Leaning on the work of
Derek Parfit, they argue that the asymmetry towards prenatal and postmortem nonexistence is
part of a larger bias towards the future. Derek Parfit has argued with regard to pain that we
have a (not irrational) bias towards the future. If you wake up in a hospital and the nurse tells
you she is not sure whether you just had a completely safe but very painful operation or you
will have it later, you will hope for the first. Even if the nurse says you are either the patient
who had an intensely painful operation for three hours or the patient who will soon have a
quite painful operation for half an hour, you will hope for the first. We are indifferent to past
painful experience whereas we are troubled by future pain. Similarly, Fischer and Brueckner
argue, we have such a bias towards future goods. They ask us to imagine a harmless drug that
causes intense pleasure for an hour, followed by amnesia about that hour. You either got to
test it yesterday or still have to test it. You will hope for the latter. Again, there is an
indifference towards past pleasure and a strong interest in future pleasures.56

55
Feldman, “Some Puzzles About the Evil of Death,” 223.
56
Brueckner and Fischer, ‘Why is death bad?’ in: Fischer, Our Stories, 30-33.

25
 This second asymmetry could explain why postmortem nonexistence seems terrible
and prenatal nonexistence does not. It is because “[i]f death occurs in the future, then it is a
deprivation of something to which we look forward and about which we care – future
experienced goods.”57 Past nonexistence does not deprive us of anything we care about; we
are indifferent to the pleasures and pains of the past. The asymmetry is explained by referring
to a larger asymmetry in our appreciation of past and future goods or experiences.58

This account faces two problems. The first is that we do in fact care about past
experiences and past nonexistence. Various authors have argued that indifference towards the
past is often neither our actual attitude nor a rational attitude. Huiyuhl Yi contends that past
nonexistence should matter to us since it affects our current and future lives. If I had one more
year in the past to learn the guitar, I would now and in the future be able to enjoy playing in a
band with my friends. I could still learn it, but assuming the playing in a band is more
pleasurable than practicing alone, I would have one more year of greater pleasure ahead of
me. Indifference to past nonexistence is therefore irrational. 59 Christopher Belshaw added to
this that most of the time we do care about past experiences. The cases picked by Parfit and
Fischer are very peculiar, because we have no memory of what happened. In the cases we
experienced pain and have access to it, we wished it would not have happened. In normal
cases where we remember the experience we certainly are not indifferent. And any time added
to our existence in the past is likely to be remembered, since it would affect our current
selves.60 Combining these two critiques it is neither rational nor actually true that we do not
care about past experiences and nonexistence.

However, even if indifference is not the right attitude towards past experiences and
nonexistence, it is still possible that we care less about the past and should care less than
about the future. Furthermore, it is not immediately clear why prenatal nonexistence would
not be similar to inaccessible past experiences. We do not have actual access to our memory
of the experiences we missed out on in the past and it makes sense not to care about them.
This might influence our evaluation of these experiences as valuable, since we never actually
had them as experience. Although we would care about them had we actually had these
experiences, we do not care as much now. Thus although indifference towards prenatal
nonexistence might not be warranted, it would still be less important.

57
Ibidem, 33.
58
Ibidem.
59
Huiyuhl Yi, “Brueckner and Fischer on the Evil of Death,” Philosophia 40 (2012), 299-300.
60
Christopher Belshaw, “Death, Pain and Time,” Philosophical Studies 97 (2000), 322-323.

26
 The second problem with Fischer’s account is voiced by Fred Feldman, who actually
embraces the badness of prenatal nonexistence. He criticizes Fischer and Brueckner for
relying too much on the notion of care. Feldman points out that Parfit did not mean to argue
that our past suffering was not bad, since “from the fact that we don’t care about a certain
evil, it does not follow that it wasn’t an evil.”61 Feldman argues for the possibility of harms
that are not cared for. Our emotional or psychological responses could well be irrational.

To make his point, Feldman gives two interpretations of the thesis that death is bad for
us because it deprives us of things we care about. In the first interpretation, there are certain
specific experiences we care about in the future of which we might be deprived by death, such
as seeing one’s grandchildren. But Feldman argues, there are counterexamples in which death
is bad without such care. Consider for example the case of a six months old baby. Or even the
case a young adult, who has just graduated from college and does not know yet know what to
do with her life. Both do not or cannot care about specific future experiences. Yet they do
seem harmed. The second interpretation tells us that a person is harmed by death because he
“cares about the fact that if he dies, he will be deprived of some pleasant experiences (though
he may not know what experiences these will be) […].”62 Here the young adult is not a
counterexample anymore, if we assume she cares about her unsure future. But the baby’s case
still holds. And Feldman adds a different case, a man who does not care about his future
because he has a rather negative outlook and has low expectations. Unbeknownst to him, his
life would change dramatically for the better in a few days. Him dying in these days while not
caring does seem like a bad thing and a deprivation. Death can be bad for a person without
being cared for by that person. Badness is not determined by the amount of care a situation
receives: asymmetrical care is merely an irrational psychological response.63

Feldman’s accusation is that the bias towards the future is, although deep-seated, a
non-rational response which has no bearing on death’s badness. In a response to Feldman,
Fischer admits that he had presented his essay with a too large focus on actual ‘carings’.
However, they meant to argue that the bias is “not just a deep-seated feature of human beings,
but arguably rational.”64 Death is bad because it deprives us of something of which it is
rational to care about, prenatal nonexistence does not. But of course, this has been the whole

61
Fred Feldman, “Brueckner and Fischer on the evil of Death,” Philosophical Studies 162 (2013), 316.
62
Feldman, “Brueckner and Fischer,” 314.
63
Ibidem, 313-316.
64
Brueckner and Fischer, “The evil of death and the Lucretian symmetry: a reply to Feldman,” Philosophical
Studies 163 (2013), 787.

27
issue from the start. In what way exactly is it rational that we have this bias? Fischer’s answer
is highly problematic. He writes “[t]here is a clear survival benefit to creatures who care
especially about the future, so from a purely evolutionary perspective, there seems to be a
‘point’ to some sort of general asymmetry in our concern about the past and future.” 65 Since
causation goes forward in time, focusing on the future brings along survival benefits. In
addition, focusing on the future maximizes happiness, since situations of happiness can be
created.66

I do not have much sympathy for either argument. Evolution is a process with a certain
logic, but it is unclear why this logic would imply rationality. To take up an attitude towards
something, or to judge something bad or good, is evaluated from a different perspective than
evolution. When I judge something, the rationality of my judgment is not judged in the light
of evolution, which is a non-rational process based on causality.67 Standards of judging
might be found outside a person in culture or an intersubjective space of reasons, but it is
unclear how such standards could be found in a natural process as evolution. In order to be
rational, there has to be a plausible first personal reason in its favor, a reason why. It has to be
convincing from a first-personal perspective. To say that you think or do something because
of evolution provides an explanation of what you do or think, but not a justification. And it is
the latter we are looking for.68 Similarly, preferring pain in the past over pain in the future is
not motivated by maximizing happiness. Maximizing happiness might be a result of paying
more attention to future pains, but people do not present this as a first-personal reason to be
more reluctant towards future pains. And although it is instrumentally efficient to regret the
loss of future goods more than the loss of past goods, this does not say anything about their
respective badness. It would explain why, from a practical point of view, an asymmetrical
attitude is warranted, treating it as if one is worse than the other, but it does not show that one
actually is worse than the other. Fischer cannot show why postmortem nonexistence is bad if
prenatal nonexistence is not bad (or less bad).

65
Fischer, “Earlier Birth and Later Death,” 74.
66
Ibidem.
67
Even if it would be a rational process created by some God, it is puzzling how the aim of evolution is related to
the aims people have in life.
68
Consider making love: no one is concerned from a first-personal perspective with preserving one’s genes. One
might be very aroused and longing for one’s partner, one might do it for intimacy, one might do it out of a felt
obligation: there are many concerns that might be involved. But the process that might cause us to have such
considerations (evolution), is not what is of our concern from a first-personal perspective. It doesn’t explain why
someone does it from the subject’s point of view.

28
 However, one could still argue that hedonistic value is only valuable in actuality or
future potentiality. This would not be because of any rational argument or further reason, but
as a brute fact about hedonistic value. Past hedonistic value is no longer valuable to a person.
On this view, hedonistic value does not add up in a life. It is not possible to take an evaluative
perspective that views the entire life: only that which is actual or can still be actualized is of
hedonistic value. One could argue that phenomenologically, the structure of hedonistic value
is present and future-looking. Rather than looking at death’s badness from the perspective of
a total life, one views it from the subject’s point of view at a particular moment, looking into
the future. It is not adding a week to your total life or not, it is as Nagel puts it “the simple
choice between living for another week and dying in five minutes.”69

Such an approach argues that it is impossible to abstract hedonistic value from the
actual experiencing subject. It agrees with Suits that Feldman’s approach is too distanced
from the subject to be able to present value for her. Suits writes in the context of arguing
against a deprivational view in general: “So if a person is dead, then neither X nor
counterfactual-X is a good thing or a bad thing for him, even if there can be a hedonistic
reckoning about him (or rather the former him).”70 The current position does not deny death’s
badness, but only considers present and future goods as good for a person, whereas past goods
can only be included in a hedonistic reckoning about that person. Hedonistic goods in a
person’s past are not relevant to an actual subject, whereas her present and future goods are.
This would be a given of the human condition.

This approach could be criticized by showing that there are ways in which past
experience is (hedonistically) valuable to a person. For instance, it will be impossible to
compare past lives with each other in terms of value, a practice that seems intuitively
acceptable. In hedonistic terms, we would not be able to say that having lived a happy life is
better than having lived a life of sorrow for that person. Nor can we say that having had a rich
variety of experiences is better, such as having known romantic love, developed an
appreciation for art or achieved inner peace. It also becomes hard to explain why people
sometimes look back on a certain period and appreciate the ‘happy times’ they had back then.
Only the richness of the present and the future matter. Of course, one could reply that the past
is instrumentally valuable to the extent that it affects future and present experience. The past
can be actualized through memory and can be relived, and therefore made valuable. And rich

69
Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 224.
70
Suits, “Why Death Is Not Bad,” 81.

29
experiences affect our current state of subjectivity, broadening our perspective and
appreciation of the world. This reminds of what Huiyuhl Yi said earlier about playing an
instrument. In this way this position can account for ascribing the past some value, namely
instrumentally. But it cannot account for the practice of reflecting on someone’s life after his
death in which others state that at least he had a good life. One might argue that such a
practice is irrational or that it is good and comforting for people that cared about the deceased
but not for the deceased himself. One could also admit that past experience has hedonistic
value, but just much less than present or future experience. I think the latter approach can
incorporate many of the criticisms above.

Furthermore, the position does not seem inconsistent and it provides a justification for
the asymmetrical attitude towards past and future hedonistic goods. It improves on Fischer’s
position not by stating that we actively take up this asymmetrical attitude for some further
reason, but rather because it is the nature and structure of hedonistic value that makes us only
capable of appreciating such value in actuality or future potentiality. Feeling pain when being
cut is not rational or irrational either: it is just the way experience works. Rationality or
irrationality does not apply to the brute facts about our subjectivity.

Thus, Fischer has offered an argument against the symmetry between prenatal and
postmortem nonexistence. He argues that people have a bias towards future (hedonistic)
goods, whereas they are indifferent to past goods. Feldman has argued that this bias is an
irrational emotional response, and we should not focus too much on the actual, misconceived
‘carings’ of individuals. Fischer has agreed and tried to show that caring only for future goods
is rational, but I argued this attempt fails. To save his position I suggested that instead of
focusing on the rationality of caring about future goods rather than past goods, the bias should
be constructed in such a way that it represents a brute fact of our valuing. Being the beings
that we are, actuality and potentiality are valuable for us, whereas hedonistic pleasures that
have been are of less value to the actual subject. It is how we find ourselves valuing the world
in hedonistic terms, not a choice of some sort. Although I think this line of argumentation is
promising, some critics might need further arguments to be convinced of the asymmetry. We
therefore turn to a second line of argumentation.

5.2.3b Kaufman’s argument: changing the ‘thick’ self

The second attempt to offer a defense of the nonexistence asymmetry originates with Thomas
Nagel. He has argued that whereas it is conceivable that a person might have died later, it is

30
impossible for a person to have been born earlier. The timing of her birth does not deprive a
person of goods, since he could not have lived earlier. Nagel writes “[t]he direction of time is
crucial in assigning possibilities to people or other individuals. Distinct possible lives of a
single person can diverge from a common beginning, but they cannot converge to a common
conclusion from diverse beginnings. (The latter would represent not a set of different possible
lives of one individual, but a set of distinct possible individuals, whose lives have identical
conclusions.”71 It is not clear what exactly Nagel means with the impossibility of earlier birth.
One might argue that he means it is physically impossible to have been born earlier. If our
parents would have conceived a baby earlier, it would have been a baby with different genes
and thus a different person. Many authors, including Johansson, think this is problematic.
Even if one accepts that a person’s genes are necessary for establishing her identity, this still
does not mean that there is not a nearest possible world in which these specific gametes could
have been united earlier.72 Fischer suggests that it is possible that one’s parents were born
earlier as well (and many other factors). Furthermore, he argues that it is not only impossible
to have been born earlier, but also close to feasible in the actual world. Embryos or sperm-and
egg cells could be frozen and brought together at a later point. There might soon be babies for
which the date of birth actually could have been earlier. 73

A different interpretation of the claim that we could not have been born earlier is given
by Frederik Kaufman. He argues that there are two different ways of thinking about personal
identity. Theories of personal identity might focus on metaphysical essences, which Kaufman
calls ‘thin persons’. “A person, on this view, is simply a particular essence, and that person
exists in all possible worlds which contain that essence. The details of one's actual life are
wholly contingent features of an individual.”74 This essence could be a Cartesian soul, a
particular human body or a certain genetic construction. As long as this essence remains the
same, so does the person. A person’s biography is contingent to a person’s metaphysical
identity. It is for this reason, Kaufman adds, Kripke could say that Hitler could have lived a
quiet life or some could say that Socrates might have been an alligator. 75 With this notion of
identity, it is logically possible that a person could have been born earlier. Such metaphysical
essence can endure big changes across possible worlds.
71
Nagel, “Death,” 8.
72
Jens Johansson, “Past and Future Non-existence,” The Journal of Ethics 17 (2013), 53.
73
Fischer and Daniel Speak, “Death and the Psychological Conception of Personal Identity,” in Fischer, Our
Stories, 52.
74
Frederik Kaufman, “Pre-Vital and Post-Mortem Non-Existence,” American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1999)
11.
75
Kaufman, “Pre-Vital and Post-Mortem Non-Existence,” 11.

31
 However, Kaufman urges us, this notion of identity is irrelevant when it comes to the
badness of death. What matters is not the continued existence of a thin self, but a thick self.
The badness of death is due to the fact that it extinguishes “one’s conscious personal
existence.”76 If a possible world leaves a person’s metaphysical essence intact, but
extinguishes her subjective sense of herself, it would not truly be that person anymore. It
would not be her in a way that matters to her. Kaufman suggests that whereas my
metaphysical essence could have grown up as an Eskimo, my thick self could not. Kaufman
writes that “[t]he conscious personal life of the Eskimo "me" would consist of completely
different memories, projects, beliefs and commitments.”77 The subjective experience of a
person, the conscious stream of experience she regards as me, is constituted by the details of a
person’s life, her personal biography. One cannot be born earlier without substantially
changing the details of a person’s life and thereby, her psychological or thick self. And if this
is so, being born earlier is not a good we are interested in. Kaufman writes:

Were the "thin" metaphysical me to be raised by an Eskimo tribe, the conscious personal
entity that I currently am would regard him as a complete stranger. I wish him well, but I am no
more concerned about his death than I am about the death of any other stranger. When I reflect on
my death and whether it would deprive me (and hence be an evil), I reflect on the fortunes of the
conscious personal self that I currently am, not on some possible self with whom I have no
affinity.78

If I would have been born earlier, the thick person I am now would not have come into
existence; another thick person would have. Being born earlier cannot be good for us, since
we want our current psychological selves to live longer, not some other possible self.

Fischer and Johansson have criticized this view. Fischer argues that it is not
impossible for a thick person to have existed earlier. He agrees that it is “wildly and
fantastically implausible” for a thick person to have existed earlier, but not metaphysically
impossible. In most cases, we could say the same about thin persons. It is very unlikely two
particular sperm and egg cells could have been brought together earlier. Similarly, it is very
unlikely a thick person could be brought about earlier. As Kaufman admits, not every detail
about one’s life is essential for the thick person he is. So the exact times at which a person had
certain experiences do not matter. This makes it metaphysically possible to exist earlier as a
thick person.79 This draws us back into the discussion of whether missing out on very
implausible goods is truly bad. Although earlier birth is not inconceivable, in almost all cases
76
Ibidem.
77
Ibidem, 12.
78
Ibidem, 12.
79
Fischer, “Earlier Birth and Later Death,” 71.

32
it only occurs in a very far possible world. To keep the thick self constant, many events in a
person’s life would need to have happened earlier as well. On top of keeping the thick self
constant, one also has to be born earlier in a way that prolongs life. If one is born in 1950 and
dies in 2030 of cancer, being born in 1940 and dying in 2020 does not make it better (in cases
of accidents it does). Being born earlier in a way that prolongs life is only conceivable in a far
possible world. And as Draper has argued, not every lack of goods which we could have in a
far possible world counts as a misfortune. It might be preferable to live in that world, but it is
not a misfortune, as it is not a misfortune that we lack supernatural powers. For most of us
(Fischer’s examples excluded), the nearest possible world in which one was born earlier and
lived longer as a result is not that near at all. This gives us a legitimate reason to explain the
asymmetry between prenatal and postmortem nonexistence (though only for premature
deaths).

However, both Fischer and Johansson emphasize a different criticism. Johansson

phrases this by agreeing that people always are thick persons, but that this does not mean we
could not have been different thick persons. That we have certain actual properties does not
mean they are essential to a person to have them. That a person has a certain height does not
mean he could not have had another height. Formulated as such, this argument is rather weak
since Kaufman does argue why some details of the thick self are important: we are concerned
about our psychological selves as they are, since that defines our identity from a subjective
standpoint. It is not a random feature that could have been different, because then the person’s
entire subjectivity would have been different. However, Johansson leaves us another puzzle:

As Kaufman says, a thick person can become ‘‘thicker’’ by gaining new memories, beliefs,
projects, etc. Now, it seems clear that there are several different ways to get thicker: I might
remain in academia, or become a Buddhist monk in Cambodia, or a libertine in Las Vegas.
But then there must have been several substantially different ways for the very small boy I once
was to get thicker as well: different scenarios which would result in significantly different sets of
memories, beliefs, projects, etc. Since I am identical to this boy, it follows that I could have
been psychologically very different.80

An identity relation is transitional so if my past self is identical to various

contemporary possible and different selves, and I am identical to my past self, then I am
identical to various possible and different selves. This would be a good argument if identity
was a strict kind of identity and not personal identity. I am not identical to my past self, I have
changed. What connects me to my past self is a form of psychological connectedness through

80
Johansson, “Past and Future Non-existence,” 56.

33
memories and subjective experiences.81 It is not a type of identity that can be defined as ‘x
equals y’, and is therefore not as transitional as one might think. A different self that is not
linked through such psychological connectedness, is not a self in the same and relevant sense.

Fischer attacks Kaufman’s position from a different and more subjective angle. He
tries to show that there are situations in which comparing the actual self with different
possible selves is coherent and a common practice. Fischer gives examples of babies that get
switched up in the hospital or adopted children reflecting on having grown up with their
biological parents. People might wonder how their life would have been if they would have
lived with their biological parents and in fact might regret that they did not live with them.

This argument is not that impressive. The fact that people make such comparisons
does not mean they do so correctly or in a way that makes sense. My friends and I often
reflect on how awesome it would be if we would turn into cats. But what happens here is just
imagining your current thick self in a cat’s body. There never is any true understanding about
what it would be like to be a cat (or a bat for that matter). We have no access to the subjective
experience, because it is not our subjective experience. Similarly, to wish for a different thick
self is just to imagine a mix of your current thick self with certain features of that other self,
without actually coming near to understanding what it would be to be a different thick self. To
be a significantly different thick self is in fact, unimaginable from a subjective perspective,
since the way you imagine that other thick self is unavoidably through the lens of your current
subjectivity. So the fact that we have such practices says nothing about whether they are
coherent practices. Furthermore, I suspect they are not coherent because I cannot imagine
taking on a subjective perspective that is not biased by my current subjective perspective.

But even if one grants to Fischer and Johansson that we could have been a different
thick self in a way that is interesting to us, we can still find asymmetry in a weaker version of
Kaufman’s thesis. Kaufman argued that it is not possible to be coherently interested in having
a significantly different thick self, because this would be a different person, a stranger to your
current self. Fischer and Johansson have questioned this thesis. But what they have not
questioned is that indeed, being born earlier affects who you are. It affects your projects,
relations, subjectivity and ways you think. And most people care about these things and
would not like them to be different. Whereas dying later allows you to live longer in a way
that continues and develops your current way of existing, being born earlier will bring a

81
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, Clarendon Pess, 1984), 185.

34
different way of existing into being than your current way. If one cares about the actual details
of one’s life, which most people do, then being born earlier comes with a large cost. Even if
one can make sense subjectively of being a different thick person, a person who cares about
his actual life will think twice about wanting to be born earlier. And this cost is not present in
dying later. Hence we have an asymmetry between prenatal and postmortem nonexistence,
where postmortem nonexistence is more obviously bad.

We thus have three ways to deal with Lucretius challenge. Feldman’s suggestion is to
consider both prenatal as postmortem nonexistence as equally problematic. However, we have
found two strong arguments to defend asymmetry. The first argument accepts the asymmetry
of hedonistic value as a brute fact of human experience and subjectivity. Hedonistic goods are
only (or mostly) valuable in actuality and potentiality, and less in the past, because that is how
humans are. The second argument focuses on what it would mean to be born earlier. It was
argued that being born earlier would lead to a loss of self or at least to a loss of projects,
relations and ways of being that one probably cares about. Dying later has no such
consequences. These two approaches provide a good answer to the Lucretian challenge of the
symmetry of prenatal and postmortem nonexistence.

6. Bad for a person

Now opponents of death’s badness might still want to push their question whether all this is
truly bad for a person. They will return to the distinction between making an evaluation about
someone and something being good or bad for someone. Any evaluation of death’s badness is
an inexperienceable narrative about a person. Feldman for instance considers a total life of
experience, thus abstracting from the experiencing subject to a story about total comparative
experience. What does a total amount of comparative experience mean to a person? What
does a story about a person mean for a person?

The easiest category to explain is probably the class of badness which involves
interrupted projects. Here we have narratives about a person, but they are narratives that
person cares about. He wishes his projects to end well; he has a concern about the ending of
its story. There is an active engagement by the subject with his goals. From the perspective of
the subject, these projects matter and their interruption can rationally be considered bad for
him. The notion of what he cares about or what matters to him makes it easy to understand

35
how it is bad for him. That he no longer exists does not pose a problem, because meaning
during one’s life can be dependent on future events, as we saw earlier. Bad for someone is
thus constructed in terms of interrupting with what one cares about (see chapter 3 and 4).

The toughest category to deal with this challenge is Feldman’s type of hedonistic
evaluation which detaches the value of hedonistic narratives from care or concern altogether.
To say that it is bad for a baby to die while she does not have any wishes about the future, is
in some sense more a statement about that baby than something that really matters to her,
something that is bad for her. According to Feldman’s comparative hedonistic evaluation
death is objectively bad, by which I mean independent from the subject’s perspective.
Somehow such evaluation has to differ from the statement that it is bad for a car to crash. A
person has to have objective interests (attributed from outside) apart from actual experience.
The case of the baby brings out opposing intuitions. There is a point of view from which it is
good for the baby to live on, but it is not clear whether this has any bearing on the baby
herself.

It might be replied that the difference between the car and the baby is that the baby
misses out on a good that even Kagan agrees on: positive experience. 82 Although the baby
does not actively care about its future nor experiences a loss, she would have enjoyed future
experiences. The car would not have had such experiences. If good experiences are good for a
person, then it is not clear why future positive experiences would not be good for a person as
well. And if these experiences are good, missing out on them (if reasonably expected), is bad
for a person. Both the car and the baby have no direct experience of their harms, but the baby
would have had direct experience of her goods.

Another response would be to construe the value of future experience differently,

avoiding the discussion on the existence of objective harm. In many cases hedonistic value
might become a goal itself, when people want to experience something. People may want to
experience and understand the world better or find their place in this world and experience
inner peace before dying. Others might want to know what it is like to have children or to
marry. More generally, people might be concerned or might care about having more
experiences as a subject or about making one’s subjective world last longer. This cannot be
considered as merely an outside evaluation or story about someone, but it has to be regarded
as something that is bad for someone. And, as the whole previous discussion on hedonistic
To recall, Kagan argued that only intrinsic changes can be good or bad. Therefore positive states of mind,
82

which are intrinsic to a person, can be considered good.

36
value should have shown, wishing to have more experiences does not seem an irrational wish.
It might be irrational to wish to avoid a harm that is not truly a harm, but it is not irrational to
wish for a positive good (future positive experience). 83 Hedonistic value is then incorporated
in the account that views death’s badness as an interruption of projects or frustration of
wishes.

We were faced with the question how a narrative about someone could be bad for
someone. It was argued that with regard to projects if someone cares about such a narrative it
matters to her and thus is good or bad for her. Then we tackled the suggestion that hedonistic
value constructed from an outside perspective, without involving the inner perspective, is not
truly a harm. A first reply was that the lost good due to death would have been experienced by
the subject, thereby distinguishing it from badness for a car. A second response was to
construct the hedonistic value of future experience in a way that does involve the subject’s
point of view by caring about experience.84 I prefer the second approach since this avoids the
ambiguous intuitions surrounding the case of the baby for which I have no clear-cut solution.
The validity of the second approach on the other hand, has already been provided with a
strong defense. There is indeed a way in which death is bad for someone.

7. Conclusion

At the start of this paper the question was asked whether death can be a bad thing for the one
who dies. The answer is affirmative: death can be a bad thing. It was argued that there is such
a thing as non-experienced badness, especially if we wish to take our inside perspective and
experience seriously. I then constructed a few ways in which death is bad by interruption of
projects, both in terms of frustrated desires and in terms of loss of meaning during life.
However, these ways in which death is bad only apply to cases in which there actually are
important projects to be interrupted and for which that specific person is required for the
project to be continued. To find out whether there was a more general badness of death, we
considered the issue of losing experience as such. The harm that was found consisted of
83
This response with the notion of ‘care’ would account for a lot of cases, although not for case of the baby.
84
Badness for a person is thus understood as being constructible in several ways. Direct experience or mental
states at any particular moment are one of these, requiring the existence of a subject. Frustration of what one
cares about is a second, which requires a subject that existed and had wishes until her death. A third might be the
missing out on direct experience as such, which does not require the perspective of the subject. There might be
more ways to construct badness for a person, but these are the ones used in this paper. Only the latter two apply
to death. I have called these latter narrative because they usually involve articulation beyond direct experience
and beyond a particular moment (Stoyles), although perhaps some forms of care might be construed in a way
that does not involve articulation with propositional content.

37
missing out on (positive) future experiences, phrased in a comparison with other possible
worlds. I then countered two objections to the existence of such harm. First I countered the
timing objection by arguing that due to the narrative nature of the harm there could be no
specific time at which it is bad for a person in the same way pain is. Then I refuted the
Lucretian argument about the symmetry of prenatal and postmortem nonexistence with two
possible lines of argumentation. I argued that the structure of hedonistic value might be such
that only actual and potential experience matters and I argued that being born earlier results in
a loss of self which many might resent.
However, two interrelated objections proved to be more problematic: the objection
that comparative badness is not truly bad and the objection that a hedonistic narrative about a
person cannot account for a bad for a person. The first was problematic because any possible
world that is better than this could be considered bad for a person. This was countered by
referring to reasonable expectation. However, such a move restricted the badness of death in
hedonistic terms only to premature deaths. The second objection argues that a hedonistic
evaluation about a person might make sense from a perspective outside that person, but not
from the point of view of the actual subject. The total amount of experience in a lifetime does
not concern a person, so a calculation about it cannot account for a harm to a person. With
these objections, the hedonistic deprivation account of death’s badness seemed rather
problematic.
I tried to respond to the latter challenge in two ways. First I tried to argue that if
positive experience is good for a person, then so is future positive experience. Loss of such
experience is therefore (with some restrictions) bad. Secondly, I argued that hedonistic
experience does concern people in terms of care. Most people actually care about having more
experiences, making it not solely a story about a person but also a story by a person and
relevant for a person. The accounts of death’s badness presented here are restricted by what
can be reasonably expected and by actually having a project or goal in life. The latter might
be broadened so it can account for more intuitions about death. Still there might be cases that
fall beyond its reach. One of the remaining issues is the case of a baby’s death, for which no
fully developed account has been given. Despite such interesting cases, the major objections
to death’s badness have been answered. Death can be a bad thing for the one who dies.

38
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