Death and the Absurd

Flashcards on Death and the Absurd, based on lecture notes.

Death

The unequivocal and permanent end of our existence.

The Natural View of Death

Death is an evil because it brings to an end all the goods that life contains.

Value of Life

The value of life and its contents does not attach to mere organic survival.

Asymmetry in Attitudes Towards Death

We do not object to death merely because it involves long periods of nonexistence.

Misconception about Fear of Death

The fear of death does not originate from imagining what it is like to be dead.

Death as Deprivation

To die is bad because life is a good, and death is the corresponding deprivation or loss.

Problem of Assigning Misfortune of Death

There is doubt as to who its subject is, and as to when he undergoes it.

Temporal Asymmetry

A person is the subject of good and evil as much because he has hopes which may or may not be fulfilled, or possibilities which may or may not be realized, as because of his capacity to suffer and enjoy.

Prenatal nonexistence

The time before a man's birth is not time in which his subsequent birth prevents him from living.

Absurdity

A situation is absurd when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension or aspiration and reality

The sense that life as a whole is absurd

The sense that life as a whole is absurd arises when we perceive an inflated pretension or aspiration which is inseparable from the continuation of human life and which makes its absurdity inescapable, short of escape from life itself.

Philosophical sense of absurdity

Something universal - some respect in which pretension and reality inevitably clash for us all.

Collision

The collison between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt, makes life absurd.

Human life

Full of effort, plans, calculation, success and failure.

Looking for broader ultimate concerns

Looking for broader ultimate concerns, from which it is impossible to step back, does not solve the problem of absurdity.

Our absurdity

A manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.