Topics Death

Question Is death without afterlife really all that bad? I mean, it could be worse, right? Of the plethora of possibilities the human mind can imagine, quiet, peaceful oblivion seems to me like not such a terrible thing.

Accepted:
October 22, 2009

Comments

It may be to you but to a lot of people they would prefer a life of discomfort to no life at all. It is difficult to know how to judge the rationality of such attitudes, and is perhaps more an issue for the psychologist than the philosopher.

I'm not sure that it's right to describe death without afterlife as "quiet peaceful oblivion." If there is no afterlife, and you cease to exist at death, then there is no you to experience the peace and quiet. If you've ceased to exist, then you have no experiences at all. It's precisely for this reason that philosophers like Epicurus claim that we should not fear death; on his view, all good and evil consists in sensation, and death is the absence of sensation. So, says Epicurus, "death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing ot us, since so long as we exist, death is ot with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist."

In short, if you're looking for a quiet, peaceful oblivion, I don't think death is the right place to look...

Question Is death without afterlife really all that bad? I mean, it could be worse, right? Of the plethora of possibilities the human mind can imagine, quiet, peaceful oblivion seems to me like not such a terrible thing. Accepted:October 22, 2009

Question Is death without afterlife really all that bad? I mean, it could be worse, right? Of the plethora of possibilities the human mind can imagine, quiet, peaceful oblivion seems to me like not such a terrible thing.

Accepted:
October 22, 2009