耶鲁大学开放课程哲学死亡的26课的英文字幕17.docx

1、耶鲁大学开放课程哲学死亡的26课的英文字幕17Death: Lecture 17 TranscriptProfessor Shelly Kagan: Last time we made the turn from metaphysics to value theory. We started asking about what it is about death that makes it bad. The first aspect of the badness of death that we talked about was the fact that when somebody dies

2、, thats hard on the rest of us. Were left behind having to cope with the loss of this person that we love. Nonetheless, it seems likely that if we want to get clear about the central badness of death, it cant be a matter of the loss for those who remain behind, but rather the loss, the badness of de

3、ath, for the person who dies. That, at any rate, is what I want to focus on from here on out. What exactly is it about my death, or the fact that Im going to die, that makes that bad for me?Now, I want to get clear about precisely what it is we want to focus in on here. Now, one thing that could be

4、bad, obviously, is the process of dying could be a painful one. It might be, for example, that I get ripped to pieces by Bengali tigers. And if so, then the actual process of dying would be horrible. It would be painful. And clearly it makes sense to talk about the process of dying as something that

5、 could potentially be bad for me. Although similarly, I might die in my sleep, in which case the process of dying would not be bad for me. At any rate, I take it that most of us, although we might have some passing concern about the possibility that our process of dying might be a painful one, thats

6、 not, again, the central thing were concerned about when we face the fact that were going to die.Its also true, of course, that many of us find-;here, right now, while were not actually dying-the prospect of dying to be unpleasant. So, one of the things thats bad about my death for me is that right

7、now Ive got some unhappy thoughts as I anticipate the fact that Im going to die. But again, that cant be the central thing thats bad about death, because the prospect of my death-it makes sense for that to be a painful one or an unpleasant one, only given the further claim that death itself is bad f

8、or me. Having fear or anxiety or concern or regret or anguish or whatever it is that maybe I have now about the fact that Im going to die, piggybacks on the logically prior thought that death itself is bad for me. If it didnt piggyback in that way, it wouldnt make any sense to have fear or anxiety o

9、r dread or anguish or whatever it is that I may have now.I mean, suppose I said to you, Tomorrow somethings going to happen to you and that thing is going to be simply fantastic, absolutely incredible, absolutely wonderful. And you said, Well, I believe you and I have to tell you, Im just filled wit

10、h dread and foreboding in thinking about it. That wouldnt make any sense at all. It makes sense to be filled with dread or foreboding or what have you only if the thing youre looking forward to, anticipating, is itself bad. Maybe, for example, it makes sense to dread going to the dentist, if you bel

11、ieve that being at the dentist is a painful, unpleasant experience. But if being at the dentist isnt itself unpleasant, it doesnt make sense to dread it in anticipation.So again, if were thinking about the central badness of death, it seems to me that weve got to focus on my being dead. What is it a

12、bout my being dead thats bad for me? Now, if we pose that question, it seems as though the answer should be simple and straightforward. When Im dead, I wont exist. Now previously, in the first part of the class, we spent some time saying that, look, on certain views, therell be a period of time in w

13、hich you might be dead, but your body might still be alive. Or you might be dead, but even though your body still exists, its not alive, but you exist as a corpse. Put all that aside. Go to the period beyond any of that murky stuff in the short-term and just, for simplicity, lets suppose with the ph

14、ysicalists that once I die, I cease to exist. All right.So, dont we have the answer to whats bad about death right there? When Im dead, I wont exist. Isnt that the straightforward explanation about why death is bad? Now, what I want to say, in effect, is this. I do think the fact that I wont exist d

15、oes provide the key to getting clear about how and why death is bad. But I dont think its quite straightforward. I think, as well see, it actually takes some work to spell out exactly how death, how nonexistence, could be bad for me. And even having done that, therell be some puzzles that remain tha

16、t well be turning to in a little while.So, the basic idea seems to be straightforward enough. When Im dead, I wont exist. Isnt it clear that nonexistence is bad for me? Well, immediately you get an objection. You say, how could nonexistence be bad for me? After all, the whole point of nonexistence i

17、s you dont exist. How could anything be bad for you when you dont exist? Isnt there a kind of logical requirement that for something to be bad for you, youve got to be around to receive that bad thing? A headache, for example, can be bad for you. But of course, you exist during the headache. Headach

18、es couldnt be bad for people who dont exist. They cant experience or have or receive headaches. How could anything be bad for you when you dont exist? And in particular, then, how could nonexistence be bad for you when you dont exist?So its not, as I say, altogether straightforward to see how the an

19、swer Death is bad for me, because when Im dead I dont exist, how that answers the problem, as opposed to simply focusing our attention on the problem. How can nonexistence be bad for me? The answer to this objection, I think, is to be found in drawing a distinction between two different ways in whic

20、h something can be bad for me.On the one hand, something can be bad for me, we might say, in an absolute, robust, intrinsic sense. Take a headache, again, or some other kind of pain-stubbing your toe or getting stabbed or whatever it is, being tortured. Pain is intrinsically bad. Its bad in its own

21、right. Its something we want to avoid for its own sake. And those-;Normally, things that are bad for you are bad intrinsically. Theyre bad by virtue of their very nature. Theres something about the way they are that you dont want those that are bad in their own right.But theres another way of someth

22、ing being bad for you that its easy to overlook. Something can be bad comparatively. Something could be bad because of what youre not getting while you get this bad thing. It could be what the economists call bad by virtue of the opportunity costs. Its not that its intrinsically bad; its bad because

23、 while youre doing this, youre not getting something better.How could that be? Lets have a simple example. Suppose that I stay home and watch something on TV-Deal or No Deal. I watch this on TV and I have a good enough time. How could that be bad for me? Well, in terms of the first notion of bad, so

24、mething being intrinsically bad, its not bad. Its a pleasant enough way to spend a half an hour, or however long the show is on. On the other hand, suppose what I could be doing instead of watching a half an hour of television is being at a really great party. Then we might say, the fact that Im stu

25、ck home watching television is bad for me in this comparative sense. Its not that its, in itself, an unpleasant way to spend some time; its just that theres a better way to spend time that I could be doing, in principle at least. If only Id gone. If only Id been invited. If only I remembered, what h

26、ave you. And because Im foregoing that better good, theres something bad, comparatively speaking, about the fact that Im stuck at home watching TV. Theres a lack of the better good. A lack is not intrinsically bad, but its still a kind of bad in this second sense. To be lacking a good is, itself, ba

27、d for me.Similarly, suppose I hold out two envelopes and I say, Pick one. And you open up the first one, you pick the first one, and you open it up and you say, Hey look, ten bucks! Isnt that good for me? Well, of course, ten bucks is intrinsically good. Anyway, well, its not intrinsically good, its

28、 only good as a means to buy something. But its sort of good. Its worth having for its own right, because of what it can get you. But if unbeknownst to you, the other envelope had $1,000 in it, then we can say, Look, its bad for you that you picked the first envelope. Bad in what sense? Because you

29、would have been better off, had you picked the second envelope. You would have been having more good, or a greater amount of good.Well, nonexistence cant be bad for me in our first sense. It cant be that nonexistence is intrinsically bad, worth avoiding for its own sake. That would only make sense i

30、f nonexistence was somehow, for example, painful. But when you dont exist, you have no painful experiences. Theres nothing about nonexistence in and of itself that makes us want to avoid it. Nonexistence is only bad for me in this comparative sense, because of the lack. When I dont exist, Im lacking

31、 stuff.What am I lacking? Well, of course, what Im lacking is life and more particularly still, the good things that life can give me. So, nonexistence is bad by virtue of the opportunity costs that are involved. Famously, W.C. Fields on his tombstone says, Personally, Id rather be in Philadelphia.

32、Whats bad about being dead is you dont get to experience and enjoy any longer the various good things that life would offer us. So nonexistence does point to the key aspect about death. Why is death bad? Because when Im dead I dont exist. But if we ask, why is and how can it be the case that nonexistence is bad? the answer is, because of the lack of the good things in life. Because when I dont exist, I am not getting the things that I could have otherwise gotten, if only I were still alive. Death is bad because it deprives me of t