Deprivation or Rescue?

This chapter examines whether death is always a deprivation, or whether instead it sometimes rescues those who are experiencing great suffering. It is argued that the answer depends on what the comparison is. If we compare our mortal lives to a certain form of immortality, where we are preserved at our peak and allowed an escape route should we desire to die, and if science would eventually cure any suffering, then death may never be a rescue.

Experience

This chapter asks: Does holistic gratitude for existing as an experiencer commit us to also being grateful for all particular experiences? It is argued here that the radiant value for which we can be holistically grateful extends from wholes to their parts, but not also to their contents. And since specific experiences are contents of our lives as experiencers, they do not get radiant value to be grateful for. Instead, consciousness, sensitivity, and other elements of experiencing life are the parts of our lives that get radiant value from life. As such, they are what we can affirm when we affirm our lives.

Valuable Imperfections

This chapter asks: How can we value imperfections, given that they are imperfections? When those imperfections are bundled up in something that has value for us (a memento, a loved one), that relation to us changes the value of the imperfection from wholly negative to partly negative and partly positive. This is not the claim that the whole can have a value different than the sum of the parts. Rather, it is the claim that the part’s value can change based on its relationship to the whole, when the whole has a particular relation to the valuer. Some such imperfections become good overall, while some stay in the bad column—but either way we can value them.

Changes

Would being immortal mean losing the kind of human life to which we are attached? This is the question taken up in this chapter. Even if immortality did cost us the kind of life to which we are attached, it is argued that there might be tradeoffs that make it worth it. Moreover, it is hard to evaluate such tradeoffs, because the two kinds of lives are so different. They arguably demand different standards of evaluation, and it is difficult to make a comparative evaluation. Consequently, the supposed downsides of immortality are too uncertain to be a place where we can find solace in death.

The Impossible Thing

Would an immortal life become so boring that it would eventually result in a debilitating boredom? This chapter examines that question. Others have pointed out that if repeatable activities are pursued, then that should allow us to stay engaged. And if memory and anticipation are limited so that we cannot remember everything, we will not be bored. A separate question is whether we might lose our human priorities if we were immortal. It is argued here that other limits besides death will preserve some structure in human choice.

Passing Away

This chapter argues that one way to reconcile Epicureanism with deprivationism is to say that death harms us not when we are nonexistent, but right when we pass away. This approach also answers the “timing question” of when death is bad for us. But it raises the further question of how we can be harmed by being deprived of a future good life prior to that future happening. The answer is that when we pass away, we lose the opportunity for that future.

The Last Part

Is passing away a part of life? It is argued here that it must be, insofar as passing away lies right on the line between existence and non-existence. Consequently, if life has radiant value, extending to its parts, and if one of those parts is passing away, then passing away has some of this value. This value is what we can affirm in passing away. There may be additional value in some so-called good deaths as well, when those deaths have their own narrative value.

Love

This chapter examines different forms of gratitude for those we love. We often tolerate our loved ones’ flaws, but sometimes we go a step beyond that, actually appreciating those flaws. We find them charming or endearing. It is argued that gratitude fits these flaws because they draw value from the loved one. Sometimes, when the flaw becomes increasingly bad, this gratitude must be cancelled or modified. It is suggested that death works like this: as part of a good, we can affirm it, but not quite in the way that gratitude is an affirmation—the affirmation needs to be modified given how bad passing away is.

The 8-Track and the Pen

This chapter examines different forms gratitude can take. One way gratitude manifests is holistically: when we are grateful for a whole we are also grateful for its parts, including the bad or useless parts of the whole. Arguably this is because the whole radiates goodness to its various parts. But when is gratitude supposed to be holistic, and when can it be fragmented, with each part getting its own distinctive evaluation? It is proposed that gratitude is holistic when the object in question is meaningful. Meaningful goods are those that figure in rightly valued life stories.

Gratitude

This chapter examines the possibility that we might find positive value in death if we are grateful for the life of which death is a part. But can we be grateful for bad things? There are blessings in disguise, where we are grateful for a good result of some bad event. However, in these cases we’d rather have the good result without the bad event. And if we try to find these hidden values in death, we run into the problem that the usual ways in which death has good side-effects—it can cause us to reevaluate our priorities and live life fully—are elusive, unstable, and diminishing.