The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195388923.001.0001

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death

Edited by Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson

Abstract

Death has long been a preoccupation of philosophers, and this is especially so today. The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Death contains chapters that cover current philosophical thinking of death-related topics across the entire range of the discipline. These include metaphysical topics—such as the nature of death, the possibility of an afterlife, the nature of persons, and how our thinking about time affects what we think about death—as well as axiological topics, such as whether death is bad for its victim, what makes it bad to die, what attitude it is fitting to take toward death, the possibility of posthumous harm, and the desirability of immortality. The chapters also explore the views of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Epicurus on topics related to the philosophy of death, and questions in normative ethics, such as what makes killing wrong when it is wrong, and whether it is wrong to kill fetuses, non-human animals, combatants in war, and convicted murderers.

Keywords: death, nature of death, afterlife, time, posthumous harm, immortality, Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, philosophy of death

Bibliographic Information

Publisher:: Oxford University Press

Print Publication Date:: Dec 2012

ISBN:: 9780195388923

Published online:: Dec 2012

DOI:: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195388923.001.0001

Editors

Ben Bradley, editor
Ben Bradley is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. He is the author of Well-Being and Death (Oxford University Press 2009), “When Is Death Bad for the One Who Dies?” (Nous 2004), “How Bad Is Death?” (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2006), “The Worst Time to Die” (Ethics 2008), “Fischer on Death and Unexperienced Evils” (Philosophical Studies, forthcoming), and “Death and Desires” (with Kris McDaniel, to appear in The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death, Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Fred Feldman, editor
Fred Feldman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he has been teaching since 1969. He has long been fascinated by philosophical problems about the nature and value of death. He is author of Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death (Oxford University Press, 1992), Pleasure and the Good Life: On the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism (Oxford University Press, 2004), What Is This Thing Called Happiness? (Oxford University Press, 2010) and several other books and more than seventy-five papers in professional journals.

Jens Johansson, editor
Jens Johansson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is the author of several journal articles about the philosophy of death and related issues, including “Non-Reductionism and Special Concern” (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 2007), “Kaufman’s Response to Lucretius” (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 2008), “Parfit on Fission” (Philosophical Studies 2010), and “Past and Future Non-Existence” (forthcoming in The Journal of Ethics).

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Front Matter
- [UNTITLED]
- Preface
- Contributors
Introduction: Philosophy of Death BEN BRADLEY, FRED FELDMAN, and JENS JOHANSSON
When Do Things Die?CODY GILMORE
Death and the Disintegration of PersonalityFRED FELDMAN
The Person and the CorpseERIC T. OLSON
Personal Identity and the Survival of DeathDEAN ZIMMERMAN
The Evil of Death: What Can Metaphysics Contribute?THEODORE SIDER
Death and Eternal RecurrenceLARS BERGSTRÖM
Death in Socrates, Plato, and AristotleGARETH B. MATTHEWS
When Death Is There, We Are Not: Epicurus on Pleasure and DeathPHILLIP MITSIS
The Badness of Death and the Goodness of LifeJOHN BROOME
The Symmetry ProblemROY SORENSEN
The Timing ProblemJENS JOHANSSON
Death, Value, and DesireCHRISTOPHER BELSHAW
Death and Rational EmotionKAI DRAPER
Retroactive Harms and WrongsSTEVEN LUPER
ImmortalityJOHN MARTIN FISCHER
The Makropulos Case RevisitedReflections on Immortality and AgencyCONNIE S. ROSATI
The Wrongness of Killing and the Badness of DeathMATTHEW HANSER
Abortion and DeathDON MARQUIS
The Morality of Killing in War: Some Traditional and Nontraditional ViewsF. M. KAMM
The Significance of Death for AnimalsALASTAIR NORCROSS
Capital PunishmentTORBJÖRN TÄNNSJÖ
End Matter
- Index

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date: 25 May 2020

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The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death

Edited by Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson

Abstract

Bibliographic Information

Editors

Contents