Philosophy and Death | Thomas Nagel

Why is death bad? Because life is good. Thomas Nagel offers what's sometimes known as a "deprivation account" of the badness of death. Nagel argues that having a life is intrinsically good and so being deprived of the good of life by death is bad. This argument raises some questions. Why should we think that having a life is intrinsically good? Is there any limit to how much life it would be good to have? And how does Nagel respond to the arguments of Epicurus and Lucretius that death is not something that should trouble us?

We consider these questions and more in the second week of my online course, Thinking about the End: Philosophy and Death.

https://eganphilosophy.com/thinking-a...
https://eganphilosophy.com/

#philosophy #death #thomasnagel #deprivation

0:00 Introduction
0:39 Nagel's deprivation account
2:27 Answering the Epicurean arguments
6:31 Is having a life intrinsically good?
8:46 Is there a limit to how much life it would be good to have?
10:42 Closing