6 - Posthumous harms
Summary
We will die. Before we die, good and bad things can happen to us. What about afterwards? Can we be benefited, or harmed, after we die? I shall focus just on the bad. Are there posthumous harms? Unsurprisingly, many people seem to think there are. They think that speaking ill of the dead, abusing or using their bodies or body parts, overturning their projects, ignoring their not unreasonable wishes or breaking our death-bed promises are all wrongs inflicted on dead people, evils done to them, causes of harms they then incur. Surprisingly, many philosophers believe that puzzles about the harm of death and about posthumous harms stand or fall together – if death can harm us then we can be harmed after death – while if the Epicureans are right and death is not bad, then the period after death poses no threat. Whether there are, or can be, posthumous harms is a question of some complexity, and will take us some time. A good part of its complexity comes about because the notion of a harm is, itself, in need of unpacking. This is not the place to attempt a full account of that notion but, along the way, some progress in this direction will have to take place. Whether this harm question can be detached from that of death's badness is, I think, considerably easier. So I shall start there.
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- Information
- AnnihilationThe Sense and Significance of Death, pp. 127 - 152Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2008