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North American Philosophical Publications
Lucretian Death: Asymmetries and AgencyAuthor(s): Stephen HetheringtonSource: American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 211-219Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the North American PhilosophicalPublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010202 .
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American Philosophical Quarterly Volume 42, Number 3, July 2005
LUCRETIAN DEATH: ASYMMETRIES AND AGENCY
Stephen Hetherington
1.
Oeminally, Lucretius followed Epicurus in arguing that being dead cannot harm one.
The most distinctive element in Lucretius's
reasoning is sometimes called the symmetry
argument.1 And this paper will develop a
strengthened argument for Lucretius's conclu?
sion.2 This will be achieved in part by under?
mining the main contemporary objection to his
argument, and in part by modifying that objec? tion. A description will also be provided of a
fundamental way in which, nonetheless, one's
dying?even painlessly?can harm one.
2.
The core Lucretian reasoning is as follows.
Your being dead will be your posthumous nonexistence. As such, however, it is no more
your nonexistence than was your prenatal
nonexistence?your not coming into existence
until you did (whenever and however that
occurred). But you were not harmed by your
prenatal nonexistence. Similarly, then, you will
not be harmed by your posthumous nonexis?
tence. Just as not-yei-being-alive was not bad
for you, not-sri/Z-being-alive will not be bad for
you.3 That Lucretian symmetry (as it may be
termed) ensures that you cannot be harmed by
being dead, once of course you are dead. (And in this respect you represent each of us.)
3.
Most contemporary philosophers, it seems,
resist that disarming view of death. They claim that it is possible to be harmed by
being dead. But they rarely engage directly with Lucretius's argument. A prominent ex?
ception has been Thomas Nagel,4 who tells
us that Lucretius is mistaken in regarding
prenatal and posthumous nonexistence as
being metaphysically equivalent. Why so?
Nagel highlights a purportedly countervail?
ing metaphysical asymmetry. You could not
be you (according to Nagel) without having come into existence exactly when you did,
whereas you could be you without going out
of existence exactly when you will. The exact
time of your beginning is essential to you; the exact time of your ending is not. Those
details of your prenatal nonexistence cannot
be altered; those details of your posthumous nonexistence can be altered.
And why does that metaphysical asym?
metry matter? Nagel claims that there can
be a harm in the posthumous nonexistence
which that asymmetry prevents from ever
being part of the prenatal nonexistence. The
possible harm in posthumous nonexistence
is one's being deprived of experiences?in
particular, beneficial ones?which one might well have had if not for dying when one does:
because one might have died at a different
211
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212 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
time, one might have had further beneficial
experiences. Yet (given the supposed asym?
metry described by Nagel) there can be no
such harm in prenatal nonexistence: because
there is no alternative possible time at which
one might have begun to exist, there are no
further beneficial experiences which one
might have had owing to beginning one's
living at some earlier time. By beginning life
when one does, one is not being deprived of
any benefits that one might, alternatively, have received if not for beginning one's life
at that particular time.5
4.
However, Nagel is not clearly correct in de?
scribing that putative asymmetry as he does.
He treats birth as the beginning of life; and
he claims that there is almost no correlative
leeway in the precise time at which one's life
begins.6 Birth is thus to be contrasted with
death (Nagel will say): In general, there is
much greater leeway as to when one's dying can occur (and hence we have to acknowl?
edge ?3's Nagelian asymmetry). But those
claims are misleading. The leeway that there
is in one's precise time of birth might not be
so insignificant, relative to the length of the
preceding pregnancy. In numerical terms, an
extra year of life at a life's end could stand
to the preceding lifespan much as being born
a few days earlier would stand to the time
between your being conceived and your otherwise being born. For example, to die at
81 rather than at 80 is to lengthen one's life
by 1.25 percent; and to be born four days
prematurely is to shorten one's mother's
pregnancy by approximately 1.48 percent. In these relevantly relative terms, therefore,
there is not the fundamental constitutive
asymmetry between prenatal nonexistence
and posthumous nonexistence that Nagel believes there to be.
5.
Still, could Nagel strengthen his argument for that metaphysical asymmetry's obtaining,
by talking of conception rather than of birth?
Presumably, he would then be comparing
posthumous nonexistence with preconceptive nonexistence. And the possible strengthening of the argument might be due to his justifying this shift on independent Kripkean grounds.
As part of his investigation into the nature of
metaphysical modality, Saul Kripke argued that it is essential to each person to have
originated in the particular egg and sperm from which in fact she came.7 Would this
Kripkean thesis?if it is true?show that (as
Nagel claims) you could not have existed any earlier than you did?
Even that Kripkean analysis will not help
Nagel, and adapting ?4's argument explains
why that is so. Presumably, the same egg
might have been fertilized by the same sperm at a slightly different time, such as 1.5-per cent-of-one-second later. And obviously?
when considered in relation to the relevant
range of times within which that particular
egg and that particular sperm might have met
and interacted8?some such leeway in timing could be similar, in percentage terms, to the
possible leeways described in ?4. That is, the
leeway might be of a similar percentage, in
relation to the available period within which
a life could have begun via that specific egg and that specific sperm.
And thus the Lucretian challenge per?
sists?being merely postponed, not evaded,
by the Kripkean suggestion. The timing?not the material involved?remains that which
is pivotal to the Lucretian challenge. Even if
we agree that only the actual sperm and egg that initiated you could have done so (with
any different combination of egg and sperm
generating someone else), this does not es?
tablish the Nagelian?anti-Lucretian?claim
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LUCRETIAN DEATH: ASYMMETRIES AND AGENCY / 213
of temporal asymmetry. It does not reveal the
essentiality to you of when your life began
(as opposed to the supposed accidentality of
when it will end).9
6.
Moreover, Nagel's suggestion undermines
Lucretius's argument only if there is inde?
pendent reason to accept Nagel's deprivation
analysis of the harm that, supposedly, there
can be in posthumous nonexistence. But that
deprivation analysis is far from obviously true. Its truth should not be taken for granted, at any rate.10 And if it happens not to be true,
then the asymmetry which Nagel claims to
notice will not provide any reason on its own
for our-being-dead's not being able to harm
us. The Nagelian asymmetry-of-metaphysi cal-constitution as such leaves untouched
the Lucretian symmetry-of-lack-of-harm. Even if we suppose, for argument's sake
(and contrary to ??4, 5), that the details of
one's prenatal nonexistence are essential to
one, while the details of one's posthumous nonexistence are not, this asymmetry will
not entail that although there cannot be harm
within one's prenatal nonexistence there can
be harm within one's posthumous nonexis?
tence. For the fact of whether or not there is
harm within a particular state is independent of whether or not that state is impossible to
avoid. Lucretius was not making the modal
claim that prenatal nonexistence and post? humous nonexistence are equally avoidable.
He was relying only upon the non-modal
view that, within themselves, each of those
two states is as full, or as empty, of harm as
the other. More fully: Given the existence of
each state (along with whatever modal status
of avoidability or unavoidability is, in each
case, the accompanying one), neither state
contains harm to the person any more than
the other does?because each is as much the
person's nonexistence as the other is.
7.
From ?4: Nagel has not uncovered any clear
asymmetry between prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. (From ?5: Nor is there a simple
Kripkean way to repair Nagel's argument in
that respect.) And from ?6: Even if there is
such an asymmetry, it is not obviously the
right kind of asymmetry with which to show
directly?on its own?how there could be
harm in being dead. Moreover, Nagel himself
is aware of a possible failing in his deprivation
analysis (with which he seeks to supplement his supposed description of the asymmetry). He suspects that it omits "something essen?
tial ... from the account of the badness of
death" (p. 8 n.). What is perhaps overlooked is
"something about the future prospect of per? manent nothingness" (pp. 8-9 n.). He believes
that in some respect "[t]he direction of time is
crucial" to this issue (p. 8) And he is right: it
is.11 There is even a correlative asymmetry of
which we should take note.12 Nonetheless, it
is a different one to that which Nagel purports to have described?and its existence will not
support his conclusion that there can be harm
for a person in her being dead. The rest of this
paper, accordingly, will offer an alternative
analysis, incorporating these various claims.
The result will be clearly Lucretian.
8.
That analysis is centered upon the phenom? enon of agency. Here is how someone might
initially attempt to derive the analysis. Whenever we fear death, we are fearing
something that we think of as lying in our
future. Vitally, we do this as part of living as
agents (as people acting, performing tasks)? where we act only into the future. Dying may then be regarded as affecting only our future
as agents. Specifically, it will be (at least) the
losing of agency. Conversely, coming into
existence may be conceived of as (at least) the gaining of agency.13 Thus, our agency as
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214 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
a whole begins and ends as our living begins and ends. But, qua agents at the present mo?
ment, only the future can still be of concern for
us. As we act into the future, our death (unlike our birth) will somehow be an aspect?quite
possibly an unwelcome one?of our living as agents. So, we may hypothesize: It is ex?
planatorily significant that whenever we fear
dying and the subsequent nonexistence, we do
so either as, or in recognition of our being,
agents.14 We do so, qua agents, as a response to what we realize can still affect us as agents. In particular, we fear, either as agents or in
response to being agents, our ceasing to be
something that, crucially, we are?which is
to say, agents. Fundamentally, we are agents
fearing the ending of that same fundamental
aspect of ourselves?our agency.15
9.
How effective is ?8's proposed thinking? For a start, one could pose the following ques?
tion, in a Lucretian spirit: Would that way of
thinking?that agency analysis, as it could be
termed?give us any rational entitlement to
fear our posthumous nonexistence? Posthu?
mous nonexistence is an absence of agency. And insofar as an agent fears that absence
of agency, should she not also fear prenatal nonexistence's absence of agency? Yet (it
may be assumed) the latter would be an ab?
surd fear. The following modified Lucretian
argument therefore seems to arise:
There was no harm in prenatal nonexistence's
absence of agency. But neither in prenatal nonex?
istence, nor in posthumous nonexistence, is there
any more of an absence of agency than there is
in the other. Hence, there will be no harm in
posthumous nonexistence's absence of agency.
In what follows, it will be explained why,
although this Lucretian argument does further
the case for our not being harmed by being
dead, an application of ?8's form of analysis remains able to explain the respect in which
dying can be harmful.
10.
That respect will concern the phenomenon of agency. How will it do so? In ?11, it will be found to reveal a deep potential harm in
dying. And the existence of that potential harm will be clearer after this section has
attended to the way in which ?8's reflections
on agency do not quite succeed in countering
?9's Lucretian argument.
Thus, it might at first be thought that to
adapt ?8's claims in the following way would
be to undermine that Lucretian argument. An agent can only ever regard herself as be?
ing harmed, qua agent, by what is yet to occur
or obtain?by what awaits her, as she acts into
the future. Admittedly, she can look back with
regret or embarrassment upon past events in
her life, events about which she is now unable
to do anything. (Her birth?its details or even
its very existence?could fall within the scope of that description.) Still, she cannot now
rationally fear those past events, given that
they are unable to play any continuing 'active'
role within her life as an agent either now
or in the future.16 By definition, considered
only insofar as she is currently an agent, she
can rationally fear?and she can be harmed
by?something only insofar as, qua agent, she
can interact with it now or in the future.17 So, we must confront the possibility that a person can somehow be harmed, qua agent, by her
death?insofar as her death is incompatible with the continuation of that agency. On this
way of thinking, the harm is, most simply, the non-continuation of that metaphysical status. (Bear in mind, of course, that any such
metaphysical status is a deep or central aspect of a person.) In contrast, though, a person cannot be harmed, qua agent, by the fact of
being born (let alone by being born at some
particular time)?because this is also the birth
of her agency. With birth, there is not thereby
any loss of non-agency?because the person did not exist along with the non-agency, prior to losing it by gaining the agency. And for a
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LUCRETIAN DEATH: ASYMMETRIES AND AGENCY / 215
person to gain agency, as generally occurs
with birth, is not for her to be harmed qua
agent. At any rate, this is so, unless agency is
generally harmful in itself. And no reason has
been provided here for thinking that it is. Con?
sequently (it might be concluded), there is a
significant metaphysical asymmetry between
prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. It is
an asymmetry pertaining most fundamentally to agency, not merely to birth and death as
such, say. Is Lucretius therefore mistaken in
believing that being dead cannot harm one?
Does the asymmetry described here imply that
there is a possible harm in being dead?unlike
in not yet being alive?
No, it does not. The Lucretian may suc?
cessfully reapply ?9's argument?saying that
when one is dead, agency is no more, just as
it never was, when one was yet to be born.
Hence (he will continue), there cannot be any rational fear, even as an agent, of one's being dead. This is because one's being dead?like
one's prenatal nonexistence, and indeed one's
birth?is not something with which, qua
agent, one now has any potential to interact.
In that sense, being dead is as estranged from
one's being an agent now as is one's prenatal nonexistence. It is as an agent now, acting
only into the future, that one can regard the
distant past with equanimity. But, equally, it
is as an agent now, acting into the future, that
one can regard with equanimity the future in?
sofar as it lies beyond the possibility of one's
acting?with that future obviously including the time of one's posthumous nonexistence.
So, once agency is accorded an explanatory
centrality, the Lucretian argument ends up
being affirmed. It is even strengthened some?
what, due to the core Lucretian argument (in
?2) being rendered a little more specific. This
is achieved by articulating the argument in
terms of what is metaphysically estranged from agency at a time. It is thereby shown
that, insofar as agency is central to any ex?
planation of what harm there could ever be in
death, there is no harm in being dead.
11.
Nevertheless, that result does not entail
there being no harm in any aspect of death.
For it does not entail that there is no harm in
dying. And the fact that there can be harm
in dying is able to be explained in terms
of agency. That explanation will continue
attending to an asymmetry, tied to the es?
sential future-directedness of agency.18 But
now the point made at the end of ? 10 by the
Lucretian?that agency is pertinent only for
the living?must be applied. What then fol?
lows? Simply this: The asymmetry in ques? tion pertains only to people qua agents. And, as will now be explained, this still allows our
dying to harm us.
The asymmetry in question can affect
someone only as a living person?because
only such people are agents. The Lucretian
will note?correctly?that neither prenatal nonexistence nor posthumous nonexistence is
in itself any more an absence of agency than
is the other. But that is beside the immediate
point. The asymmetry being described at the
moment concerns only how a living person is
affected. It is not meant to reflect any asym?
metry between the prenatal and the posthu? mous nonexistences as they are intrinsically,
purely qualitatively and purely in themselves.
In effect, the immediate concern is with the
losing, not with the absence, of agency. It is
with the ending of agency, not with agency's
having ended or its being no more. And only a living person (rather than one who is dead
or someone who is yet to exist) can ever
lose agency. Any harm that there is in losing
agency, or in the ending of one's agency, is
a harm that can be incurred only by a living
person?because it can be incurred only by a person qua agent.19
Consequently, even if (as the Lucretian
argues) the state of being dead cannot harm
one, this does not entail that no aspect of
one's death can harm one. Let us reflect in
more detail upon the process of dying. Con
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216 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
sidered just as an agent, in principle a person can sometimes control or evade details of her
dying?details such as the time, the place, the method. It is to anything lying temporally
beyond those details?such as, notably, her
subsequently being dead?that her agency fails to extend. Hence, she cannot do any?
thing to control aspects of her being dead. It
is true that, while alive, she might be able to
control aspects of her living that will affect, for example, what her dead body will later
look like and how both it and the memory of
her will be treated by other people. But even
this would not be her controlling her being dead as such. For the state of her being dead
is present only after she has died?at which
time, she is no longer controlling anything, and (equally) nothing is still being controlled
by her.20
Thus, in a sense, a person's being dead car?
ries nothing of her?and, more specifically,
nothing of her agency?into or within it. My
being dead is beyond my reach qua agent;
your being dead is beyond you qua agent. Once a given person is dead, there is no more
that-person-agency. This remains so, even if
the dying is itself an act of agency (as occa?
sionally it is, most notoriously in some cases
of suicide).21 Once she is dead, the person qua
agent has been left behind. Correlatively, we
might even regard any instance of being dead
per se as metaphysically of a piece with any other instance of being dead per se. No one's
state of being dead will be at all different from
anyone else's. (In this sense and respect, we
merge metaphysically into each other.) And that signifies a metaphysical difference
between dying and being dead. Particular
instances of dying are personally distinc?
tive; cases of being dead are not. (Distinct instances of dying are distinct due to their
details?of time, place, method.) And in?
stances of dying at least can express or cur?
tail?affect?agency, whereas cases of being dead cannot. Accordingly, granting agency an
explanatory centrality in our attempt to un
derstand this issue allows us to leave open the
possibility that one's dying can harm one (by
harming one qua agent) even if one's being dead cannot.22 Qua agent, it can be rational
to fear losing that agency?to fear ceasing to
be what, most fundamentally in that mode, one is.23 Nevertheless, this does not entail that
it is rational, even qua agent, to fear having lost the agency or to fear having ceased to
be an agent. To have lost the agency is to
have lost the categorial basis?namely, one's
metaphysical status as an agent?upon which
it was rational to fear losing the agency in the
first place. A person can be harmed by losing the agency, by her life ending?even if she is
never harmed by having lost the agency and
by the life having ended. And the pertinence of these distinctions follows from its being the
person qua agent about whom the question of
death's possible harm ever arises.
12.
Lucretius denied only that being dead?not
that dying?could harm one. This paper has
found a way to supplement his reasoning. The supplementation includes (1) a refine?
ment of what Lucretius was noticing, which
is that there is no relevant metaphysical
asymmetry between prenatal nonexistence
and posthumous nonexistence, along with (2)
part of what Nagel was seeking to explicate, which is that there is a relevant metaphysical
asymmetry between prenatal nonexistence
and posthumous nonexistence.
Is there an insuperable tension in endorsing both (1) and (2)? Can this combination be coherent? This paper has sought to bypass that tension, by qualifying each of (1) and (2),
along the following lines. The asymmetry to
which attention should be paid is not what
Nagel claimed to describe?which concerned
the essentiality or accidentality to a person as such of her prenatal nonexistence and of
her posthumous nonexistence. Rather, the
vital asymmetry is in how those two states
are related to the person qua agent. One of
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LUCRETIAN DEATH: ASYMMETRIES AND AGENCY / 217
them?via birth?gives way to the agent; but this gaining of agency as such cannot be
a harm to the agent as such. The agent?via
dying?gives way to the other of those two
states; and this losing of agency as such can
be a harm to the agent as such. Conversely, insofar as we are not agents (either prenatally or posthumously) there is indeed a Lucretian
symmetry?the one he described himself. And
there is a consequent lack of harm to us, too.
We can be harmed by death, therefore, only insofar as it can affect us as agents?which
is to say, by our dying and by our agency
thereby ending. Otherwise, insofar as we are
not agents, death?specifically, our being dead?cannot harm us. A strengthened argu?
ment for Lucretius's core conclusion is thus
derived: Being dead cannot harm one (even if dying can). This paper's agency analysis reveals what kind of harm there can be?and
what kind of harm there cannot be?in one's
death. The harm is the ending of one's ability to perform actions?to do things.24
University of New South Wales
NOTES
The editor and two referees made many very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
1. It is to be found in De rerum natura. See the selections in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hel?
lenistic Philosophers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), at p. 151.
2. For an attempt to defend the most distinctive component in Epicurus's reasoning, see Stephen Heth
erington, "Deathly Harm," American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 38 (2001), pp. 349-362.
3. And?we might wish to say, extending Lucretius's reasoning?if neither of these was or will be
bad for you when you were not, or will not be, alive, then neither of them is bad for you while you are
alive.
4. "Death," in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 1-10, at pp. 7-8. This paper's otherwise unattributed page references will be to Nagel's essay.
5. Frederik Kaufman uses a memory criterion of personal identity in order to support this strategy of
Nagel's: "An Answer to Lucretius' Argument Against the Fear of Death," Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 29 (1995), pp. 57-64; "Death and Deprivation; Or, Why Lucretius' Symmetry Argument Fails," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 74 (1996), pp. 305-312. Kaufman's general point in "Death and Deprivation" (pp. 308-309) is that, in thinking about this issue, a psychological rather than merely biological criterion of personal identity is what matters. The suggestion to be developed in this paper is consistent with that recommendation.
6. This use of "almost" accommodates what Nagel calls "the brief margin permitted by premature labor" (p. 8).
7. For Kripke's argument concerning this example, see Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 112-113.
8. Here, for simplicity and for the sake of argument, the relevant details of timing that are involved in the actual act of sexual intercourse that brought that sperm into contact with that egg are being held constant. The same is true of the competing presence of those other sperm that that act brought into the vicinity of that egg. Otherwise?without those assumptions?there is even more leeway in when this sperm and this egg might have met and interacted. For example, it should not be forgotten that even with that same egg and same sperm, a method such as in-vitro fertilization will allow the time of
conception to be delayed greatly.
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218/ AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
9. This paper will therefore continue to follow Lucretius (and, for that matter, Nagel) in formulating the Lucretian challenge in terms of birth rather than those of conception.
10. Indeed, for an argument against its being true, see Stephen Hetherington, "Deathly Harm," pp. 356-358.
11. Others to have noticed this include Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer, "Why is Death
Bad?" Philosophical Studies, vol. 50 (1986), pp. 213-223.
12. It is a simple asymmetry, too. Part of Nagel's worry about his own time-directed and asymmetry based deprivation analysis is "that it is too sophisticated to explain the simple difference between our
attitudes to prenatal and posthumous nonexistence" (p. 8 n.).
13. Perhaps at first it is not very much agency. Then again (and unfortunately), in many instances the
same is true of a person just before she dies, as her capacities and opportunities wither. Those are ways in which we often speak about agency. And is the concept of agency therefore gradational, so as to
accommodate these ways of speaking? Can a person's agency wax and wane in strength? This paper's
argument will not require that question to be answered.
14. The "or in recognition of our being" covers the possibility that our fear is involuntary?and therefore
not a manifestation of agency as such.
15. We can even fear an aspect of our agency itself, as it impels us towards the end of our agency.
16. Consequences of those past events might do so, as Walter Glannon would observe: "Temporal
Asymmetry, Life, and Death," American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 31 (1994), pp. 235-244, at pp. 239-241. But in that case it is these new events that are now causally active, not the previous ones.
17. Such interaction need not be initiated by her. One's being an agent can include one's being acted
upon or affected (being a subject)?so long as one has an associated capacity to act in at least one way that somehow (even if unwittingly) reflects that experience. A newly born child will generally possess some such capacity. A coma victim probably lacks it.
18. This future-directedness is metaphysical, not merely attitudinal. An agent need not be thinking
about the future in order to be acting into it. On the supposed asymmetry in people's respective attitudes
towards past, and towards future, suffering, see Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984), at pp. 165-167. On that supposed agency, as applied to the case of death considered as a
potential future harm, see Brueckner and Fischer, "Why is Death Bad?" For criticism of their respective
arguments, see Glannon, "Temporal Asymmetry, Life, and Death," at pp. 237-238.
19. Epicurus talked of the person fs being no more. This is generally called the problem of the subject?the
conceptual difficulty of locating a continuing subject both to have been alive and, subsequently, to be
harmed by being dead. If this paper is right, Epicurus's challenge might usefully be renamed?so as to
be referred to instead as the problem of the agent.
20. Her agency, while ever it exists, can set in motion various actions which will?after her dying?result in her legal will and her 'dying wishes,' say, being acted upon. But whenever those actions are occur?
ring, she is not thereby controlling them. Her agency, while she is alive, is necessary without being sufficient for such posthumous occurrences.
21. "Doesn't your treating the loss of agency as being tantamount to the loss of life commit you to the
implausible idea that a person who is placed into an irreversible coma?thereby losing all agency?is, in effect, dead? Doesn't this also commit you to the implausible claim that such a person is not harmed
by being in a coma?" It is common to say that there is harm in such a case. But suppose we know with
total certainty that a particular person's coma is irreversible. And suppose that another person?upon
dying?is neither buried nor cremated, instead remaining in a bed, connected to the same sort of equip? ment as is keeping the coma victim both alive and visibly whole (non-decayed). Should we regard
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LUCRETIAN DEATH: ASYMMETRIES AND AGENCY / 219
these two people as being in substantially different states? It is not obvious that we should. The person in the coma is in a state of living death (it might be said, and often is, perhaps regrettably reflecting some possible conceptual confusion and at least indecision). There is harm insofar as there is living; yet there is no harm insofar as there is a state of being dead; which, if either, is it to be? Do we know? This paper's argument entails that entering a coma can be harmful, but that being in a coma is harmful
only insofar as the person is still an agent.
22. It is manifest that painful, or unwanted and noticed, dying can harm one. But this paper is talking just about dying that is painless, and unexpected or unannounced?while asking whether that sort of
dying can harm one. For an answer related to the one being advocated here, see Stephen Hetherington, Reality? Knowledge? Philosophy! (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), pp. 59-60.
23. That fundamentality is why this paper's analysis focuses upon agency in particular, from among the various other benefits that there can be in living. Qua agent, a person can fear dying. Qua lover-of chocolate-cakes or qua writer-of-philosophy, too, she can fear dying. In general, however, agency is more
explanatorily fundamental to people's attitudes to death than is chocolate-cake-adoration or a desire to
continue writing philosophy. A person will rationally fear dying, because it will end her capacity to do or experience X, only insofar as she is an X-capable agent in the first place. Agency is the underlying categorial feature whose presence allows these more specific features to flourish. (In any case, this paper's agency analysis does not imply that only agency per se, abstracted from its potential exemplifications, reveals to us that dying can?while being dead cannot?harm one. The agency analysis implies that, if
anything more specific reveals this, then agency as such also does so. Whenever it is talking generally of agency, this paper's analysis may also be applied to particular actions or experiences, so long as these are understood to be manifestations of agency per se. Agency as such is just the pertinent explanatory category or determinable.)
24. Can other animals, too, be harmed in that way by dying? Yes, insofar as they have agency. Beyond that observation, though, the agency analysis is leaving this open for now (just as the corresponding question is standardly left open by discussions of the deprivation analysis).
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