Death may seem to be a rather morbid subject for philosophical speculation. Why, after all, should the living concern themselves with a state that, by definition, they do not occupy? Death – the sickle–wielding reaper, the biblical king of terrors – has not yet arrived for any reader of these lines. In one of the most famous reflections on death, the Greek philosopher Epicurus reminds us that “so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist”. Epicurus concludes from this that death is of no concern to either the living or the dead, “since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more” (Epicurus 1926: 85).

Still, as many philosophers have willingly or unwillingly conceded, it is hard to cultivate a state of genuine indifference to the fact that we will all eventually die. The thought that the people we love will die, whether before or after us, is inevitably painful. And it is hard to reconcile ourselves to the knowledge that we ourselves will finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Whatever else death may be, my dying marks the end of all those activities, projects, relationships and commitments that give sense and distinctiveness to my life. This termination of what I care about can scarcely be insignificant to me (or to others, with whose lives my own has interlocked).