How strange a symptom of our existence, that we are disposed to contemplating our very own negation. Over the course of life, while enjoying the wonder of all that is, and aiding us in discovering what we ourselves are, we inevitably stumble on the prospect of what is not ourselves. That which is not living, what is that stuff? What should we think of it? The ancient question confounds us to this day, and this short discussion shall examine philosopher Thomas Nagel’s particularly illuminating 1970 article from philosophy journal Noûs, in which he reasons through the ways we ought to regard the idea of our eventual transition into non-being-ness.
The main question is whether death is a bad, an evil, experience for us, and by what criteria? The initial stumbling block is in wondering whether the state of being dead is an unpleasant one. It would seem impossible to imagine oneself dead to evaluate its merits, and in doing so we may in fact be creating the intractable problem simply by asking the question. By definition, experiencing nonexistence lies fully beyond the boundaries of our imagination. Rightly, Nagel notes that the unpleasantness of death is not in our “minding” a certain lack of life.
Indeed, one cannot mind death, because that seems to be the very thing that switches off in death: the mind. Death is, instead, a disturbing concept because of what it implies we are lacking: life. Nagel admits the absurdity, and shifts focus to the process of loss of existence.
An example is given of a man reduced to a (very young) child-like state of mind resulting from a brain injury. Observers of this tragic situation find they are primarily concerned with the magnitude of the loss of cognitive function, rather than dismayed at the prospect of carefree, infantile ineptitude. This is deemed a devastating situation in consideration of what the poor man could have become, and our heart is wrenched seeing him reduced to this state. Perhaps then, dying is like seeing a man in abject dementia. The sorry state of affairs is certainly an evil with respect to a hypothetical abstraction of a person’s life course; all the potential for achievements and milestones we feel a person is entitled to as they surmount the obstacles of life.
So the shock to us is in being confronted with the evidence of drastically divergent life course. As in the example, sort of like getting smashed in the head with sufficient blunt force trauma to relegate an adult man to the mumblings of a pre-toddler. Interestingly, it seems not so much that we feel truly sorry for him, but that we are stricken by the deduction that since it happened to him, there must but at least some possibility for that it might happen to us. That is very distressing. Nagel confidently concludes with this example that we are forced to envision the deprivation in relation to what could have or should have been.
Death is then not an evil inflicted at a definite point in time or space, but rather an evil in the fact of its stark contrast to the possibilities of life that might have been realized:
“…life is over and there will never be any more of it. That fact, rather than his past or present condition, constitutes his misfortune…”
With this revised approach, it is no longer a confounding issue that death is not located at some point within life. These beliefs move Nagel to label as outright false the views of the ancient Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, who asserted the irrationality of the fear of death, by virtue of the fact that death is just like the nothingness preceding birth, a notion not nearly so offensive for anyone to consider it an evil.
Nagel disagrees vehemently with the idea that “death is simply the mirror image of the prior abyss,” because, as his own words put it best:
“...any death entails the loss of some life that its victim would have lead had he not died at that or any earlier point…we know perfectly well what it would be for him to have had [life] instead of losing it,” which is very different from the case of birth, where “…we cannot say that the time prior to a man’s birth is time in which he would have lived had he been born not then but earlier…His birth, when it occurs, does not entail the loss to him of any life whatever.”
Time, as we perceive it, moves in an irresistible “arrow,” and our experiences of the world come after being born, so in that blank slate of pre-existence, the mind is not being deprived of anything it has not yet sensed, whereas in the posthumous nonexistence, it is.
To Nagel, ultimately, death does seem to be a misfortune to some degree in all cases:
“Blindness is not a misfortune for a mole, nor would it be for a man, if that were the natural condition of the human race…life familiarizes us with the goods of which death deprives us.”
Through the simple act of living, we become enamored with all life has to offer, so the cessation of life must be a negative in all cases. But one must wonder, would a mole mourn the loss of its sense of smell? Perhaps a mole would not mourn the loss of something with which it had become familiarized through life because it cannot postulate and romanticize all the possible things it could have used its smell for, had it not lost the sense.
Nagel reasons further that we should judge the magnitude of the misfortune by the time a person’s life could reasonably have been expected to continued on otherwise. In essence, we are evaluating the “evils gratuitously added to the inevitable (death).” Nagel is of course begging the question, what criteria we should we consult in order to define a reasonable life expectancy for a person? It must be noted that every reason for revising downward the years he/she (recently deceased) could have lived would be taken in very grim humor, and more so for those closest to the recently deceased. These suggestions generally do not alleviate the mood of such a melancholy event. People much prefer to preserve a fond memory and a good legacy of their dead, and so are prone to focus on, idealize, and finally, overweight the likelihood and impact of good habits and virtues on the deceased’s hypothetical lifespan. If our emotions do determine the violence of the calamity of lost life by comparing its annihilation to the wonderful possibilities we might have expected to see unfold over time, then we seem to be in the habit of making it much harder for ourselves.
Nagel himself engages in the enrichment of the picture of possibilities over a lifetime; appearing so compelling that life itself appears to us as an “open-ended possible future….Having been…introduced to the world by a collection of natural, historical, and social accidents, [we] find [ourselves] the subject of a life, with an indeterminate and not essentially limited future.” He believes this to be a compelling argument for thinking that death, whether natural or premature, would always constitute an “abrupt cancellation,” because it necessarily forecloses on at least some possibilities. He sadly concludes by saying that if there is indeed no limit to the possibilities, we are all headed toward a very bad experience.
There is no doubt that it is because we find our lives so compelling and valuable, so full of amazing possibilities that we press onward in spite of everything. The human race is here because it tells that very story.
In describing the serendipitous and spontaneous “accidental” nature of our being at all, Nagel falls into his own trap of dually romanticizing the possibilities of life in either abyss, and it seems we must conclude that the true reason we consider death an evil is simply that it seems that way from life. Of course, a healthy mind is keenly aware of and excited by the seemingly endless possibilities in life. It does not drag around an ominous sense of inevitable expiration, however “realistic.” Indeed, we see that such a morose view of life appears fairly infrequently in our population, and probably for good reason.
In the end, it seems the issue irretrievably entangled with the very mystery of life, hopelessly intertwined in our powerful imaginations, that cosmic engine of all possibilities. For as long as we don’t have eternity to figure the whole of life out, it will remain mysterious, and given this, it will forever awe, move, and inspire us. Should we hope that we, one day, will be truly able to grapple with nature of reality? Hope to avoid getting caught up in life’s bewitching charms, understand everything, even ourselves so perfectly that we will not be the least bit surprised when something or someone we once loved ceases to be? Such a cold, calculated approach to life is not an appealing one. Life is the ultimate seductress, and we will fall in love with everything she offers every time, and will be enraptured with all of it. When death comes to splash a bucket of cold water on our face, we will be anything but unfazed. If we really desired to be that stone cold sober the whole time, well, then we would stop drinking, wouldn't we? We will always despair what could have been, because what once was, will cease to be.
I’ll drink to that.
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