Abstract

The discussion on posthumous harm is focused primarily on the subject problem—the question whether it is reasonable to postulate the possibility of posthumous harm despite the lack of a subject who could experience it. Pitcher-Feinberg’s argument is paradigmatic for this approach. Both Pitcher (1984) and Feinberg (1993) bring the problem into question about the meaning of the term posthumous harm and seek the right reference for it. This reference is, in their view, a violation of the interest of the deceased, which also continues after his death. Daniel Sperling seems to be the follower of this approach. He says that human exists in two ways: as a person who has cognitive capacities and self-awareness and as a Human Subject, which holds interests (Sperling 2008).

I would like to expand these considerations and show, on the basis of phenomenology, that deceased in spite of their death continues functioning as an element of the structure of sense given to the world by those who knew them and, as such, may be the reference of the possible posthumous harm. For those close to them, they does not disappear but rather becomes absent, and that absence unlike non-being is something perceivable. In phenomenology the other is a fundamental condition of the intersubjective and objective world (Husserl 1960, 1989). The other and the ego together constitute a community which gives sense to that world and when the other dies the sense given to the world still needs him.

Keywords: posthumous harm, phenomenology, human subject, human body, death and dying