Kagan & The Deprivation Account
According to Kagan, this is the main reason death is bad for the person who dies — not the pain of dying, not the grief of survivors, but this.
Death deprives us of the good things life would have brought (the deprivation account)
Finish the following quote from Epicurus' letter 'when death is there, we are not, and when we are there...'
'…death is not.'
This is the name of the fictional character from the Čapek opera whose 342-year existence Bernard Williams uses to argue that immortality would be intolerable.
Elina Makropulos (EM)
Nagel argues that death is bad not because of any positive features of being dead, but because of this — the same explanation Kagan calls the 'deprivation account.'
Death deprives us the goods of life
The mythological figure Camus calls 'the absurd hero.'
Sisyphus
Kagan distinguishes three ways something can be bad: intrinsically, instrumentally, and this third way — which is how he explains the badness of death.
Comparatively bad
Lucretius argues that death cannot be bad because there is a mirror image of postmortem nonexistence that we are completely unbothered by. What is it?
Prenatal nonexistence
Williams's term for desires that are not conditional on being alive — the ones that actually make life worth living.
Categorical desires
The type of misfortune Nagel uses to show that you don't need to be aware of something for it to be bad for you.
Betrayel
Frankl calls this the three-part 'tragic triad' at the heart of his concept of tragic optimism.
Pain, guilt, and death
Kagan calls this the version of the existence requirement that says something can be bad for you only if you exist at *some* time or other.
The modest existence requirement
Kagan introduces the term 'schmoss' as the temporal mirror of loss. If loss means you once had something and no longer do, schmoss means this.
You don't yet have something that you will get in the future
Fischer objects to Williams's 'necessary boredom' thesis by arguing that Williams unfairly assumes an immortal life must be dominated by a single type of experience. Fischer argues it could instead consist of a varied mix of these two types of pleasure.
Self-exhausting pleasures and repeatable pleasures
Nagel says the subject of good and evil is identified not just by their present state, but by their history and
Their possibilities
Frankl says meaning can be found through creating work, through love, and through this third avenue available even to those who cannot change their situation.
Chosen attitude
In Kagan's thought experiment, this name is given to the merely possible person who could have existed but never gets born, whose fate we apparently shouldn't feel sorry for under the modest existence requirement.
Larry
Nagel argues we can justify caring more about postmortem nonexistence than prenatal nonexistence because, unlike death, earlier birth is not a genuine metaphysical possibility — due to this fact about personal identity.
If you were born from different (or earlier) sperm and egg, it would be a different person, not you
Williams argues that for immortality to be appealing, the future person must meet two conditions — they must be genuinely identical to you, and the life must meet this second condition.
Attractiveness condition
Nagel says the subject of good and evil is identified not just by their present state, but by their history and...
Their possibilities
Camus writes: 'The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.' This line concludes with his most famous declaration about Sisyphus — what is it?
'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.'
Kagan says Epicurus's argument can be read as having these two premises: (A) something can be bad for you only if you exist, and (B) when you are dead you do not exist — leading to the conclusion that death cannot be bad for you. What label does Kagan give to premise (A)?
The existence requirement (or 'bold existence requirement')
Lucretius says the time before your birth and the time after your death should affect you equally — this one word describes the logical relationship between the two periods.
Symmetry
The Latin phrase Williams uses to describe someone lucky enough to die before immortality becomes unbearable.
Felix opportunitate mortis
Nagel says the death of Keats at 24 is tragic while Tolstoy's at 82 is not — but he resists concluding that Tolstoy's death was therefore this.
Not a tragedy / insignificant
Frankl's term for the feeling of emptiness he says underlies depression, aggression, and addiction in modern society.
Existential Vacuum