Death by Thomas Nagel

In Thomas Nagel’s “Death,” he questions whether death is a bad thing, if it is assumed that death is the permanent end of our existence. Besides addressing whether death is a bad thing, Nagel focuses on whether or not it is something that people should be fearful of. He also explores whether death is evil. Death is defined as permanent death, without any form of consciousness, while evil is defined as the deprivation of some quality or characteristic. In his conclusion, he reaffirms that conscious existence ends at death and that there is no subject to experience death and death ultimately deprives a person of life. Therefore, he states that Death actually deprives a person of conscious existence and the ability to experience. The ability to experience is open ended and future oriented. If a person cannot permanently experience in the future, it is a bad or an evil. A person is harmed by deprivation. Finally, he claims that death is an evil and a person is harmed even though the person does not experience the harm.

Nagel suggests that Death can be the greatest of all losses or not be a great loss at all depending on the position we take. The deprivation of life would make it the greatest of all losses when he states, “on the one hand it can be said that life is all we have and the loss of it is the greatest loss we can sustain” (Nagel, 769). But Nagel shifts his position by also stating that “on the other hand it may be objected that death deprives this supposed loss of its subjects, and that if we realize that that is not an unimaginable condition…we will see that it can have no value whatever, positive or negative” (Nagel, 769). He suggests that if death is the end of a life, it would not be a great loss, but just the removal o...

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...fortune, although the person as a subject does not survive his or her death. If he or she had not died, he or she would have continued living and this is further explained by Nagel when he states, “He has lost his life, and if he had not died, he would have continued to live it, and to possess whatever good there is in living” (Nagel, 772). A further reply could be whether the death of a subject is always a misfortune or if it is contingent on the personal or impersonal point of view. Many people celebrate the life of the subject, for what they had accomplished during the number of years that they had lived and do not see death as a misfortune.

Works Cited

Nagel, Thomas. “Death” The Elements of Philosophy: Readings from Past and

Present. Eds. Tamar Szabo Gendler, Susanna Siegel, Steven M. Cahn. New York,

NY: Oxford University Press. 2008. 677 – 683. Print.