BOOK REVIEW

Ben Bradley, Well-Being and Death

Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2009, xxi 198 pp.ISBN 978-0-19-955796-7. US$60.00 Hb

Walter Glannon

Published online: 11 September 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Many believe that death is bad because it deprives us of more of a good life. We

retain this belief despite the fact that we cannot experience the loss of any goods

after death. Much of the contemporary philosophical debate about death has focused

on the idea of deprivation in refuting Epicurus’ claim: ‘‘death is nothing to us, since

so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not

exist.’’ Ben Bradley’s Well-Being and Death is the latest contribution to this debate.

Bradley argues for a difference-making account of deprivation. This says that ‘‘the

badness of a death is determined by a comparison between the life its victim

actually lives and the life she would have lived had that death not occurred’’ (p. xiv).

The book is not ground-breaking because Bradley’s account of deprivation is not

fundamentally different from what Fred Feldman and Jeff McMahan have defended.

Yet his development of a particular version of deprivation has several implications

that distinguish it from other versions. Death is worse for its victim the earlier it

occurs. The badness of death for a person does not depend on how well that person’s

life has gone. Also, Bradley’s hedonistic account of well-being supports the view

that death has a temporal location. This means that death can be bad for its victim at

some time after the person has died.

There are two major strengths of Bradley’s book: his insightful way of

integrating a hedonistic theory of well-being into a deprivation account of death’s

badness; and the consistency and general cogency of his arguments. Bradley is

especially impressive in presenting persuasive arguments for theories and principles

that at first blush are not as intuitive as competing views that are more generally

accepted among philosophers. Although his use of terms such as ‘satisfactionism,’

‘achievementism,’ and ‘beliefism’ makes the prose turgid at times, overall this is a

W. Glannon (&)

Departments of Philosophy and Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary,

2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada

e-mail: wglannon@ucalgary.ca

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J Value Inquiry (2010) 44:107–111

DOI 10.1007/s10790-009-9187-3

thoughtful, intriguing, and spirited discussion of a wide range of issues pertaining to

the metaphysics of death.

In Chapter 1, ‘‘Well-Being,’’ Bradley develops and defends a hedonistic theory of

well-being. Nothing but pleasure is intrinsically good, and nothing but pain is

intrinsically bad. This is tied to the idea that death is bad because it prevents us from

having more intrinsic rather than just extrinsic goods. Well-being consists of value

atoms, the states of affairs that are intrinsically good and determine how well things

go for us. The value of a world for a person equals the sum of the basic intrinsic

values for that person for the states of affairs obtaining at that world. This

establishes the framework for Bradley’s discussion of deprivation in later chapters.

One might ask whether or where suffering falls under this theory. Many would put

suffering in the same category as pain and intrinsic bads. Yet a person can be in the

psychological state of suffering without being in the physical state of pain. Pain and

suffering are not necessarily coextensive, and suffering can adversely affect one’s

level of well-being. The bulk of the chapter is a defense of hedonism against

competing theories of well-being. Bradley calls these ‘‘correspondence theories,’’

which have two parts: some propositional attitude, such as desiring or believing

something; and the propositional object of that attitude being true for intrinsic goods

or false for intrinsic bads. He argues that hedonism avoids two problems with

correspondence theories: they cannot account for momentary well-being; and they

can have paradoxical consequences. One implication of Bradley’s rejection of

correspondence theories is the falsity of posthumous harms. Having one’s wishes

ignored after death does not by itself constitute harm. Yet Bradley is careful to point

out that ignoring the wishes of the deceased can be a form of harmless wrongdoing.

On the whole, Bradley successfully makes the case for accepting hedonism over

correspondence theories of well-being.

Bradley spells out his Difference-Making Principle (DMP) in Chapter 2, ‘‘The

Evil of Death.’’ DMP entails that ‘‘when death takes a good life from its victim, that

person’s death is bad. Conversely, it entails that when death keeps a person from

living a bad life, it is good for that person’’ (p. 50). In both cases, the goodness or

badness of death depends on a comparison between two possible worlds in which a

person dies at earlier and later times. Bradley adds the corollary Difference–Making

Principle of Harm (DMPH), whereby ‘‘an event harms a person if and only if it

makes things go worse for that person than they would have gone otherwise’’

(p. 65). Death is not timelessly bad for the person who dies but is bad at all those

times at which things would have been going better for the victim had her death not

occurred when it did. It is in this sense that death’s badness has a temporal location.

He elaborates these points further in Chapter 3, ‘‘Existence and Time.’’

The discussion in Chapter 4, ‘‘Does Psychology Matter?’’, is the most interesting

of the book. Here Bradley takes up McMahan’s ‘‘Time-Relative Interest Account’’

of the evil of death, which says that the magnitude of the harm of death is a function

of psychological connectedness of the person over time. The value of a person’s life

depends in part on the strength of the connections between one’s present and future

psychological states. These connections generate a prudential unity relation between

one’s present and future selves. The stronger these connections are, the worse death

is for one who dies because one has more to lose from death. To test this view,

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Bradley compares the lives of the older Student and the younger Baby. Student has

invested a great deal of time and effort in ensuring that his future goes a certain way,

while Baby has not. In addition, the fact that he has lived a certain number of years

gives Student’s life a particular shape or narrative unity, while Baby’s life lacks a

narrative because it has barely begun. On the time-relative interest account, the

inability to redeem his investment in the future and the destruction of his narrative

unity from death make Student’s death worse than Babv’s. Bradley rejects this

position. Facts about a person’s psychological relations do not make a difference to

how bad death is for that person. What matters is one’s idealized desire set, which

includes not only one’s present desires but also desires one will or would have in the

future. Since Baby’s idealized desire set contains desires for all the future goods that

he would have, and Baby’s death prevents the realization of more desires and takes

more of these future goods from him than from Student, Baby’s death is worse.

Those who insist that psychological investment in one’s future and the narrative

unity of one’s experience are what make life valuable would not likely relinquish

the conviction that the loss of these is partly what makes death bad. There is also the

question of whether all desires are equal. One could ask whether Student, with

the benefit of more life experience, would have more informed desires than Baby.

The thwarting of these desires through death could be more harmful to Student than

to Baby. Still, Bradley’s conclusion that death is worse the earlier it occurs in life

logically follows from his formulation of DMP and DMPH. It challenges defenders

of the time-relative interest account to reassess their position.

In Chapter 5, ‘‘Can Death Be Defeated?,’’ Bradley offers his own critique of what

McMahan calls the ‘‘Previous Gain Account’’ (PGA). This says that the value of

death is determined by the value of the life that preceded it. McMahan refers to

Mozart’s life and early death to show the implausibility of this account. Because

Mozart accomplished a great deal in a very short life, presumably his death was one

of the least bad deaths anyone could have. Bradley picks up on this and gets to the

heart of the problem with PGA: ‘‘Had he [Mozart] not died, he had a lot of great life

ahead of him. The Previous Gain Account completely ignores what Mozart lost out

on by dying young, and looks only at what he did while he was alive’’ (p. 167).

Previous gains in life do not affect the evil of death. Again, it is the loss of future

goods that accounts for the badness of death. Bradley concludes the book with the

sobering comment that death’s badness cannot be defeated. ‘‘The best way to make

your death less bad is to put it off for as long as a good life is available to you’’

(p. 180).

One generic problem with deprivation accounts of death’s badness is that, in

comparing worlds in which a person dies at earlier and later times, the assumption is

that all events and states of affairs apart from death in these worlds are either held

fixed or are relevantly similar between the two times. This assumes too much. The

short life of James Dean is analogous in some respects to that of Mozart. There may

be disagreement about the comparative value of what they accomplished. But most

would claim that both Mozart and Dean lost many good years in the lives that lay

ahead of them. Bradley claims, ‘‘Surely James Dean’s death was bad for him’’

(p. 159). His actual life was worse than the life he would have had if he had not died

when he did. Dean could have accomplished more and could have realized a richer

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set of desires over many more years. Yet suppose that he had survived the

automobile accident that killed him in 1955, but with a disability that prevented him

from any further acting. If most of his desires were linked to his acting career, and

his accident ended this career, then it is possible that surviving and living longer

would have been worse for him than his early death. His awareness of his disability

and the future opportunities for achievement it precluded could have adversely

affected his level of well-being. We cannot predict with certainty that Dean’s life

would have continued in the same way if he had survived the accident. Nor can we

predict how his life would have gone without the accident.

Deprivation accounts also ignore the extent to which the well-being of a person is

intertwined with the well-being of others. Consider the lives of the two main

characters in Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement. Robbie Turner and Cecilia

Tallis want to have a life together. But this shared desire is never realized because of

events associated with the Second World War. One might think that Robbie’s death

from septicemia one day before the evacuation of Dunkirk was tragic. One might

also think that Cecilia’s death from a bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains

above Balham Underground station in London was equally tragic. Given that their

lives were so emotionally intertwined, however, if Cecilia had survived and Robbie

had died, then continued life might have been worse for her than early death.

Similarly, if Robbie had survived and Cecilia had died, then continued life might

have been worse for him than early death. These situations are common and

complicate the claim that ‘‘a misfortune is a misfortune because it makes its victim

worse off than he would have been otherwise’’ (p. 169). Whether or to what extent a

person is better or worse off by dying sooner or later may depend on when other

people die.

Intuitively, a life of 40 years in which death cuts short a successful career is

worse than a life of 80 years of great achievement. But many people who have

achieved a great deal experience and suffer from gradual physical and cognitive

decline if they live long enough. If asked to choose between a shorter life of lesser

achievement that ends abruptly and painlessly and a longer life of greater

achievement that has an extended period of pain and suffering, at least some would

choose the first. Of course, most of us want a long life of accomplishment with a

brief period of compressed morbidity just before death. But we have little control

over this. The idea expressed in DMP, or indeed any deprivation account, that death

is bad when it takes a good life from a person and good when it takes a bad life from

a person fails to appreciate the randomness of events in life. No algorithm or

definition can neutralize the effects of this randomness. The principles and accounts

that have figured in these discussions since Epicurus may go some way toward

determining whether one’s life on balance was good or bad once it is over. But they

cannot tell us how the life of a person who dies prematurely would have turned out

if he or she had lived longer.

These points notwithstanding, Bradley’s book is a welcome addition to the

literature on the metaphysics of death. He uses many imaginative examples and

deploys intricate arguments to challenge accepted views and successfully defend

some controversial claims. Bradley’s conclusions also have interesting practical

ethical implications for giving priority to curing illnesses affecting infants over

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those affecting adults, as well as for questions about euthanasia and abortion. Well-Being and Death not only captures the full flavor of the contemporary debate on

death but also moves it forward in a stimulating and engaging way.

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