Response To Nagel Death

In his 1970 essay titled ‘Death’, American philosopher Thomas Nagel presents the deprivation account of death. Nagel describes death as the unequivocal and permanent end of our existence. He then presents the question is death a bad thing? In the following essay I will explore the two observations Nagel presents on death which constitute his argument that death is an evil not because of its positive features, but because it deprives us the good of life. I will then present a main objection to Nagel’s view, namely that it can be doubted that the deprivation of life is evil unless someone minds the deprivation. Subsequently, I will offer the response that the fortune of a person depends on their history and possibilities rather than their momentary
In this essay, I will address the first, and in my opinion, the strongest objection against Nagel’s argument. The objection is that it can be doubted that anything can be evil unless it causes displeasure to a person. In other words, how can the deprivation of life be evil if there is no one there to mind the deprivation? (Banach 2016) This type of objection can also be expressed in the general form by the remark ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’ (Nagel, 2008, p.771). To represent this objection, Nagel presents an example of a man who is betrayed, ridiculed and despised by people who seemingly like him. Yet none of this can be counted as a misfortune to him as long as he does not aware of it. Someone arguing for this objection holds the view that goods and evils must be temporally assignable states of a person. In the case mentioned above, betrayal, deception and ridicule are only bad for the man when he learns of them, but until he does, he does not suffer. Applying this argument to death, one can only suffer the implications of death after one ceases to exist. However, after one ceases to exist, there is no subject that the misfortune can be assigned to, and therefore death does not deprive us of any
Thus, a person can still suffer a misfortune even if they are not capable of experiencing it (Banach 2016). In the previously mentioned case of the betrayed man, he would have still suffered even though he was not aware of the intentions behind people’s actions. This is because they are not only misfortunes because they make him unhappy when he discovers them. But rather, the discovery of the wrongs done in his absence make him unhappy because they are misfortunes. Nagel presents another scenario that effectively exemplifies his counter argument. If an intelligent person receives a brain injury that reduces their mental state to that of a contended infant, this should still be considered a grave misfortune even if the person in their current state is unable to comprehend it. We recognize this because we consider the person’s past and the person they could have been now (Nagel, 2008, p.772). Essentially, the objection is invalid because it makes a false assumption about the temporal relation between the subject of the misfortune and the evils which constitute it. Even though a person cannot survive their death, they can still suffer a misfortune because the time after their death is time which they have been deprived of; time in which they could have enjoyed the good of