Can death be a harm to the person who dies?

Abstract

This book is a concise, clearly written, and rigorously argued discussion of the main question regarding the metaphysics of death. In defending the view that death can harm the person who dies, Jack Li refutes Epicurean and Lucretian arguments that death cannot harm us and that it is irrational to fear death. Epicurus held that a person can be harmed only when he exists. Because death is the end of a person’s existence, death cannot harm him. Therefore, death should be “nothing to us”. Lucretius offered the following symmetry argument. No one is harmed by, and no one fears, prenatal non-existence. Postmortem non-existence is symmetrical to prenatal non-existence. Therefore, no one can be harmed by postmortem non-existence, and it is irrational to fear this state... Because all but the last two paragraphs pertain to metaphysical questions about death, one wonders why this book is included in a philosophy and medicine series. There is scant attention given to ethical issues in medicine and healthcare, and the two ethical issues the author mentions are discussed in only a cursory manner. In sum, this book is an important contribution to philosophical debate about the metaphysics of death. It sheds little light, however, on the ethics of medical decision making at the beginning and end of human life. It will appeal to philosophers, but not to healthcare professionals.