Episode Details

Mortality raises difficult questions about whether being dead can actually harm the person who dies. While Epicurus argued that nonexistence cannot be bad because there is no subject left to experience it, Thomas Nagel countered that death is a misfortune of deprivation. Exploring the contrast between experienced suffering and lost opportunities reveals how philosophers tackle the timing of harm, prenatal nonexistence, and whether more conscious life is always better than less. Key sources: • Thomas Nagel, Death, *Noûs* 4(1), Feb 1970, pp. 73 — https://joelvelasco.net/teaching/2330/nagel70-death.pdf • Bernard Williams, The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality, in *Problems of the Self* (Cambridge UP, 1973) — https://wmit-pages-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/283/2022/06/12152936/williams.pdf • Samuel Scheffler, *Death and the Afterlife* (Oxford UP, 14 Nov 2013), doi record — https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199982509.001.0001 Episode 6248 — myweirdprompts.com/n/6248 (permanent short link: myweirdprompts.com/018394)