Death and Nonexistence
The dead are gone. They count for nothing. Yet if we count the dead, their number is staggering. And they account for most of what’s great about civilization. Compared to the greatness of the dead, the accomplishments of the living are paltry. Which is it then: are the dead still there to be counted or not? And if they’re still there, where, exactly, is “there”? We’re confronted with the ancient paradox of nonexistence bequeathed us by Parmenides. The mystery of death is the mystery of nonexistence. A successful attempt to provide a metaphysics of death, then, must at the same time resolve the paradox of nonexistence. That is the aim of this study. At the same time, the ontology of death, i.e. of ceasing to exist, must serve as an account of birth, i.e. coming to exist, and the primary thesis of this book is that this requires expanding one’s ontology beyond existence and nonexistence to include what underlies both, namely, “being.” The dead, along with the unborn, are nonexistent objects which retain their identity before, during, and after their transition to, and from, existence. The nonexistent are what are “there” that can be counted when we count the dead. The dead and the unborn are thus the same kind of beings as the living. What separates the living from the dead is only their existence.