Thomas Nagel's Death: Is It A Bad Thing To Die?

Is it a bad thing to die? In Death, Thomas Nagel focuses on this question and comes to a simple answer: yes. However, before he comes to this conclusion, he is speaking of death as a complete cessation of life with no conscious activity – permanent death. Nagel argues that is not the state of being dead that is bad, but because of what it deprives us of: life. He claims that life is all we have and that when we die, we suffer the greatest loss. Nagel clarifies that death is not bad because it strips us of the ability to love, laugh, and all the other great things we can do in life, but because it deprives us of life itself which is much more valuable than the things it has to offer. Nagel argues that being alive is better than being dead because we are able to have experiences, whether they be good or bad. According to Nagel, even if your life is filled with more negative circumstances than positives ones, the fact that you are able to experience those events makes it worth more to be alive than not to be. For Nagel, experiencing life is what we are deprived of when we die; therefore, making death a bad thing. If death is an inevitable phase of our lives,
However, how does death taking away the simple possibility of good experiences make it so evil? Who is to say that death is not, instead, taking away the possibility of a life full of awful experiences? No one knows or can predict the life someone could have lived. Once someone dies, their experiences and the possibility of future experiences end. This does not mean that they are being deprived of anything, since there is no longer anything to be deprived of. At first glance, it may seem that Nagel’s argument is sensible and true. However, when you find yourself still asking questions that have no answer, you come to the conclusion that death is not a deprivation of life, it is simply the final stage of