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Death: A Philosophy Course
by Shelly Kagan
4.02 · Rating details · 410 ratings · 58 reviews
About the Course
There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it i ...more
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Audiobook, Yale College PHIL 176 Spring 2007
Published 2007 by Open Yale Courses (first published November 13th 1997)
Edition LanguageEnglish
URLhttp://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/death
Other Editions (12)
Death
Death
Death (The Open Yale Courses Series)
令人著迷的生與死：耶魯大學最受歡迎的哲學課
Death Open Yale Courses
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Hamêd
Feb 10, 2016Hamêd rated it it was amazing
Shelves: philosophy
Shelly Kagan is a great philosophy professor. He investigates some philosophical issues concerning death, raises some questions and attempts to answer them. Some of his views are controversial. He denies the existence of souls. He says suicide can rationally and morally be justifiable in some particular situations. He argues that life isn't always worth living. He raises this question that given the inevitability of death, how one should live. How thinking about death can affect the way we live? (less)
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Bogdan Liviu
Jan 24, 2013Bogdan Liviu rated it it was amazing
I'm obsessed with the subject so I don't really have a choice but to give it five stars even though I sincerely expected more from Shelly Kagan on the subject; and the subject itself requires more effort. It would be indeed childish to ask for a more direct approach even though as Cioran says "Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy", but at least it would have been more useful to read this without having to go through a lot of things I already knew so that didn't help me at all. It was an introduction to this subject but still it was too defensively, too fearful. I had to read nine pages of things I knew already to find something worth reading in the tenth page. He really should have cut a lot of useless/simple minded/too obvious statements and get to his points faster (I know the point of philosophy is to keep asking but on this subject you really have to think like a man who's mind watches itself), you can't resolve the issue of death using a "system" like you do in any other field of philosophy. Here I think you need a more aggressive approach, as aggressive as you can otherwise you keep saying the same things and the point itself becomes worthless. It's like writing a book, you know how it ends from the first pages of the author if the author doesn't think outside himself. Reason in its pure essence is still not enough to win death. If you are to find something about death you have to think really deep, that fearful approach when you scratch only the surface with rigorousity, doesn't help with the subject of death (who, like the universe, is filled with this overwhelming, pitiless indifference).
For those of you who are interested in a brutal approach of this fascinating(and at the same time hideous) subject of death, I strongly recommend Emil Cioran (all his works but you can start with the one he wrote at the age of 22, doctor in death, as he called himself on his birthday) the book is called: On the heights of despair. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre are also fundamental on the subject. Another one who battles with suicide/death is Albert Camus - The myth of Sisyphus (actually he kind of talks about death in any books of his). Tolstoy - Death of Ivan Ilych, Kafka's The trial & The Castle , any of Dostoyevsky's novels and Gogol's dead souls might also be useful. I hope this helps.
PS: If you have any interesting books on the subject on death please let me know, write them down when you have the time. Just send me a PM and I will be more than happy to exchange with you ideas/books/movies on this fundamental subject. Thank you, and, of course: easy death to everyone... (less)
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Leo Robertson
May 11, 2016Leo Robertson rated it liked it · review of another edition
Philosophy is not my discipline of choice. Reading this book reminded me of one afternoon I spent studying with a friend: she was a law student, and I was in third year of chemical engineering. I was learning how to calculate the length of time it would take to freeze a sausage, using the laws of heat transfer and thermodynamics. By considering the sausage as an infinite cylinder, axial conduction becomes negligible. The class was Food Engineering, that was six years ago, and clearly it stuck. She had some exam on the laws and ethics surrounding abortion. 'It's so depressing,' she said. 'There's all these opinions, and no one's right or wrong.' The majority of this text is comprised of theories just like that: well argued from either side, not really provable either way, which makes you wonder what the point is in discussing them. Rather, makes me wonder, because philosophy isn't my thing.
I had this boyfriend whose every word over the course of our four-month relationship I sometimes think I have ridiculed to exhaustion until something triggers another stupid thing he said, such as this book which brought back, 'We're all filled with energy, right? And like, when you die, where does that energy go? So how can anyone say there aren't ghosts? This is like my favourite thing to do is just like have banter with my mates and we're like drunk or stoned.' Reaching the conclusions offered in this book requires large passages that, to me, sounded just like that dude.
Don't take my word for anything though: upon knowing and facing my inevitable death, I spent a non-negligible amount of time performing sausage calculations and dating stoners (very funny: they were separate activities.) But hey: say I die tomorrow, who could say if I made the right choices or not? *screams into void* NO ONE!!!! (less)
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Hamed
Jul 10, 2014Hamed rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
A must-to-read book. It consists of four major parts:
1- Some discussions on the existence of soul, both positive and negative.
2- The identity theory: What does make us what we are? Soul, body or something else?
3- Value theory, with some discussions on death and immortality: Should we really prefer immortality over death?
4- How should we treat death; should we be afraid, angry or grateful? He also discusses the rationality and morality of suicide.
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Boris
Nov 24, 2012Boris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Death is a taboo topic for many but inevitable to deal with when the time to leave this world comes. This is a very profound book that question all your beliefs about the nature of life and death. I suggest that instead of reading books from self-appointed spiritual guides, people should read this book and learn to question each one of their beliefs, and whether these beliefs are rational.
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Fatimah
Jan 19, 2020Fatimah rated it it was amazing
Shelves: my-self-searching, suicide-related
Quite a journey!
This course is about life as much as it's about death. Life, something we often take for granted, if not by words, by actions. It was subarashii to explore this interesting indispensable topic from the philosophical point of view.
And i encourage everyone to read Shelly's works and take the course of his, available on Yale university website and YouTube channel. (less)
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J.
Aug 11, 2014J. rated it liked it · review of another edition
A very accessible book introducing the philosophical subject of death.
I really liked one characteristic of this book: the author is upfront about his biases. He points them out. He tells the reader what the alternatives are to his own conclusions. And yes, while he endorses his own conclusions, he at least mentions the philosophical conclusions of his philosophical rivals --- especially towards the beginning, when he thought he had enough space in his book (the end of the book is far more rushed). It is a refreshing change from other philosophy authors who regard those who disagree with them as intellectual idiots, and are therefore wary of giving their philosophical opponents any kind of legitimacy. The author of this book at least gives legitimacy to opposing philosophical conclusions --- though he makes sure to point them out as being wrong, in his opinion.
There were three main problems I had with the author of this book. One is towards the beginning when he is discussing dualism vs. physicalism. His own preference is towards physicalism; mine is towards dualism --- so I was specially sensitive to his presentation.
In his presentation Mr. Kagan makes it seem as if physicalism could be wrong, but on the whole he thinks the evidence is that it is right. Thus, he doesn't claim that the evidence points 100% towards physicalism, but thinks that physicalism is more likely than not. To me, this made it seem that he thought the evidence for physicalism was, let's say, 60%--40%, or 70%--30% in favor of physicalism, but not 100%--0%.
And yet, when he discussed (too briefly) the arguments for dualism, he seemed to want perfect certainty in order to be convinced about dualism. That is, even though he thought the evidence was 60%--40% (or 70%--30%) in favor of physicalism, he wanted the dualist to have conclusive proof that would result in a 0%--100% verdict in favor of dualism in order for him to give any credit to the dualist position as being right. This is seen specially in that (too brief) section where he presents too briefly the arguments for dualism. After acknowledging that some of these arguments are particularly powerful, he responds that, however, there are physicalist responses that have the possibility of answering the dualist argument. Thus, it makes it seem that as long as there is the shadow of a possibility that the physicalist argument might have a chance of maybe containing the seeds of a response, however unlikely it may seem, one ought to take the physicalist position. That is, he wants 100%, logically unassailable proof for the dualist position, even if the arguments he holds for physicalism are not 100% proof. It seems fair to say that, if the belief of the physicalist rests on a tip of the balance in his favor (and not on a 100% logically unassailable type of argument), then the only job of the dualist is to tip the balance towards dualism, perhaps on a 45%--55% basis, or more. But to demand a 0%--100% balance tip for dualists while accepting a 60%--40% (or 70%--30%) balance tip for the physicalist is a most unfair double standard.
I can see why Mr. Kagan is susceptible to this double standard. We are all susceptible to this same error. We hold on to our own beliefs with more tenacity than we objectively should, demanding proof against them with greater probability than the proofs for them. That is, we all have believer's bias for our positions. The job of a student of philosophy is to get a multitude of perspectives, and thus to come to a conclusion which takes into account all evidence. The more perspectives we truly take into account, the more likely it is that we shall approach actual truth.
Another major of point of disagreement I had with Mr. Kagan's methodology (I have several disagreements with his conclusions --- which should not be at all surprising, given that he is a physicalist and I am a dualist) happens in his discussion of immortality. While he holds that in general, life is good, he imagines immortal life as something which will eventually sour, and turn out to be --- on the whole --- as something bad, not something good. Thus, despite having defended the position that death is a bad to be avoided in an earlier chapter, he now looks at immortality, and decides that it is definitely bad. Therefore, he turns around and labels death as good, since it will stop immortality, which he argues is clearly very bad.
At this point Mr. Kagan has fallen into a common fallacy which affects a great many Americans --- I do not know if it affects other peoples, but I have seen it affect most prominently Americans (especially during presidential elections). The argument he makes goes like this: death is bad; but immortality is really bad, perhaps even worse than death; therefore death (at some point, not necessarily when most people go through it) is good. The fallacy that he adopts can best be countered with the following slogan: The lesser of two evils is still an evil. Yes, a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater evil; but for all that, a lesser evil is still an evil. Every presidential election Americans are presented with two very bad choices to elect as President. And every year Americans engage in the analogous argument that Mr. Kagan used: candidate A is bad; but candidate B is worse; therefore candidate A is good --- and then they go out to their friends and neighbors defending candidate A as good (and not as the lesser of two evils). I think Mr. Kagan's presentation could really have been improved in this section by making a differentiation between a lesser evil and a good.
Finally, the third major point of disagreement I had with Mr. Kagan has to do with his appeal to authority (his own authority as an academic philosopher at a prestigious institution, that is). And yes, I think it is important to praise him for his very limited use of such an appeal. Other philosophers do it all the time.
The issue I want to point out can best be expressed with a question: why do we listen to the opinions of any philosopher at all? Shouldn't his/her opinion count as much (or as little) as anyone else's? In theory we listen to them because of the valid arguments they set forth: arguments which are supposed to avoid extraneous fallacies that might convince people, but which really amount to cheating, as far as the actual argument goes. In practice we listen to philosophers more than other people because we are impressed with the culture of wisdom that they have accumulated over the centuries. If a philosopher is honest, he/she will not take advantage of this authority that they have accumulated professionally in their arguments, but rely entirely on the strength of the arguments themselves. Most philosophers, however, cannot resist using their professional authority (in very subtle ways, to be certain) to give more strength to their arguments than the arguments themselves warrant. That is one of the things that makes most philosophic writings seem biased and one-sided: that philosophers sprinkle their arguments with the fallacious appeals to authority.
That being said, despite the fact that Mr. Kagan's book on death is certainly lopsided, he avoids fallacy by being upfront about his bias, and by mentioning (even if briefly) opposing philosophic arguments. Thus, he informs the reader of the possibilities, even if he champions a particular possibility: he allows the reader the opportunity to make up his/her mind even if he champions a particular result. Except in one place, towards the end --- in his discussion of the worth of life, per se. He mentions several possibilities of what he labels as "container theories" of life. Here he discusses the value of life itself, independent of the events which happen in life. He mentions three such "container" theories of life: the neutral, the positive, and the "fantastic".
In the neutral container theory of life, life has no intrinsic value, each individual life being as good or as bad as the total sum of the goodness or badness of the events in that life. In the positive container theory of life, life has some intrinsic positive worth of its own, independent of whatever events happen therein --- and this value can be quite high, depending on the particular theory ---; which positive value, however, can be overwhelmed, in principle, if sufficient badness is found in the particular events of a person's life, thus rendering the overall value of that person's life as negative (not worth having). Finally, in the "fantastic" container theory of life, no event in a person's life --- however negative --- can overcome the positive, intrinsic value of human life.
My problem with Mr. Kagan's presentation here is not in the philosophical arguments he makes (or doesn't make). My problem is that he unfairly and fallaciously biases the argument: that he using an appeal to authority to dismiss an argument. To be sure, he does it quite subtly. After all, subtlety is the fashion these days when it comes when using this type of trick.
He biases the discussion by labeling one of the "container" theories of life as "fantastic". I suppose it is his book, and he can label it whatever he wants to label it; but by labeling thus --- using his authority as a philosopher at a prestigious university --- he can very easily dismiss it. After all, if something is "fantastic", isn't that like saying that something is "irrational" --- irrational being the worst insult a philosopher can fathom? Isn't saying that something is "fantastic" something like saying that it is "extremist", and therefore not "moderate"? Certainly Mr. Kagan takes the view that he doesn't need to argue against those who would hold the "fantastic" theory of life's worth because it is so outside of the stream and non-moderate, and not worth believing. Presumably he thinks that only a non-nonsensical person would defend such a theory. Or at least, that is the impression he gives his readers (certainly, that is the impression he gave me). And if Mr. Kagan thinks that to defend such a theory is nonsense, what am I supposed to think?
Aha! Here is the fallacious appeal to authority! If Mr. Kagan thinks that to defend what he calls the "fantastic" theory of life is non-nonsensical, and if I am like most people, believing uncritically in the prestige of philosophers, I will be unduly influenced to believe as he does: that to defend such a "fantastic" theory of life's worth is non-nonsensical. And all of this accomplished by a simple label, without actually having to argue anything, or state a bias. And all of this happening completely on an unconscious level --- at least for the reader. After all, the professional prestige and authority of philosophers is held by most people at the unconscious level. And many of the implications of adopting a certain language also happen at the unconscious level. The question now is: was Mr. Kagan aware that he was making a fallacious appeal to authority? Or did one of his biases simply got the better of him in this section? In the first case he is insidiously manipulative --- as many philosophers are these days. In the second case he is honestly limited by his own bias, but not insurmountably so; a person's bias can be fought against if an effort is made.
And what is the payoff of this fallacious appeal to authority? Well, suicide becomes possible. Assisted suicide becomes possible. After all, if the theory of the "fantastic" container of life is irrational, then statements like "suicide is always a loss" becomes just as irrational, not to mention statements like "assisted suicide is nothing but disguised and consensual murder". Given that these are the consequences of so easily dismissing the "fantastic" container theory of life, and given that many people want to get there (including, perhaps, Mr. Kagan), it is difficult to not doubt that the fallacious appeal to authority of Mr. Kagan was unintentional. But I could certainly be wrong about that.
Other than those three huge problems I had with the book, I found it a good philosophic introduction to the topic of death. I ended up disagreeing with the majority of the conclusions in the book, but I did not think the author was trying to hide any philosophic opposition to his views, except as described above with my discussion of his "fantastic" label --- which I think invites accusations of obfuscation.
(less)
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James Yu
Jul 06, 2017James Yu rated it it was amazing
This was my first serious philosophy book and I was quite pleased. Shelly forced me to think in ways I hadn't before, and was rigorous without being overly pedantic. With Death, he strikes a good balance. This also made me question my belief that immortality is always good. Any book that can make me question deep beliefs is a good book. (less)
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Vegantrav
Mar 08, 2014Vegantrav rated it really liked it · review of another edition
In Death, Yale professor of philosopher Shelly Kagan addresses some of the key questions surrounding death:
1. What is death?
2. What is it, exactly, that dies? That is: what is the nature of personhood? What is a person?
3. Could we survive death? If so, how might we survive death? Do we have souls?
4. Is death bad for us? If death is bad, what is it that makes death bad?
5. Should we fear death?
6. Is it ever rational and moral to commit suicide?
Kagan lays out the arguments with care, and he is frank about his own positions and offers what believes are the best answers:
1. Death is the end of our existence. Death is not a state of being in which we exist. It is simply nothing.
2. Kagan has much sympathy for the traditional Lockean view of a person being a personality (memories, personality traits, behavioral tendencies), but he eventually comes down on the side of the body view: a person is a body. So, death for a person is simply death for a body.
3. No, we cannot survive death. We do not have souls. Kagan rejects dualism and lays out the arguments against it and in favor of physicalism, but he is also careful to point out the problems with the physicalist view.
4. Kagan accepts the deprivation view of death: death is bad in the sense that it deprives us of obtaining future goods. So, in many cases (if we die too early), death is bad. However, death is not always bad. When death brings an end to suffering and disease in old age, death is good. Further, Kagan follows Bernard Williams in arguing that immortality would be evil, asserting that an eternal existence would eventually grow tedious and tiresome, so death is good in that it saves us from the evil of immortality.
5. Death should not be feared. There is nothing painful in death, for it is nothing. Now, we may fear dying too early, but we should not fear death itself.
6. Yes, suicide can be both rational and moral.
Kagan is an engaging writer who addresses these perennial questions in a conversational manner with thought-provoking analogies and examples. Death is directed at a lay audience and not academic philosophers, so it easily accessible.
For anyone interested in seriously and philosophically examining death, Death provides an intelligent, thoughtful analysis of the inevitable fate of us all. (less)
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Sam Eccleston
Feb 14, 2014Sam Eccleston rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Honestly, I found this book quite tiresome. Perhaps because it is adapted from lecture format, the exposition is very repetitive and simple ideas are outlined in unnecessary detail. While the subject matter is interesting, the needless amounts of explanation make getting to the point of each section extremely tedious. Additionally, and again perhaps because it is adapted from an undergraduate course, I found much of the material somewhat uninspiring; Kagan makes few of the insightful conceptual distinctions or unusual arguments one would expect from a philosopher of his stature. Additionally, he often makes use of thought experiments which are dis-analogous in important respects from the subject he is discussing. Most frustratingly, he merely dismisses what ought to be one of the main subjects of the book: the problem of consciousness, insisting in what seems to me a rather naive way that it will simply be solved by scientific investigation. Needless to say, I find this line of argument less than convincing. (less)
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