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Preface

Christopher Belshaw
Affiliation:
Open University
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Summary

No one died. The motivation for this book does not stem from personal encounters with what, too poetically, they call the grim reaper. There have been no premature deaths among people I have been close to, nor with those expiring closer to full term have I been up against the awfulness of dying, either because it has not been awful, or because I have been elsewhere, in another country. Perhaps I have, so far, been very lucky. Rather, it was in California in the mid-1980s that, in a much more abstract way, I first became interested in some of the topics discussed here. A lazy but uneasy summer in the Santa Barbara foothills when I first discovered Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons. Reading, and soon after replying to, a provocative paper on a birth–death asymmetry by Anthony Brueckner and John Fischer. The finishing of a dissertation on Hume, and the need for something new. I worked on a longish paper on the evils of death, but set it aside, although always with the intention of taking it up again some day. Other projects have somehow been easier to address, and allowed me to put off this one without feeling too guilty about it. But they are also now finished. And time is running out.

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Chapter
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Annihilation
The Sense and Significance of Death
, pp. ix - xii
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2008

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  • Preface
  • Christopher Belshaw, Open University
  • Book: Annihilation
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654116.002
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  • Preface
  • Christopher Belshaw, Open University
  • Book: Annihilation
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654116.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Christopher Belshaw, Open University
  • Book: Annihilation
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654116.002
Available formats
×