One's Own Death: Deprivation and Existential Value

自己的死亡：剥夺与存在价值

• 批准号: 497527071
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Marcus Willaschek
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Philosophie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/497527071?language=en
• 关键词: Own; Death; Deprivation; Existential; Value

Since Plato, there has been a debate about the question of whether death is an 'evil' (i.e. has negative value) for the person concerned. According to Epicurus, it is not: since the person concerned no longer exists when death occurs, her death cannot be bad for her. Epicurus bases his argument on the premise that pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil. Proponents of the so-called deprivation account, which comes in various forms, dispute this "hedonistic" theory of value. They claim that death can be an evil for the person concerned by depriving her of goods that she would have had if she had lived longer – even if this deprivation is not accompanied by pain in the person concerned, since she is no longer alive when the deprivation occurs. In the current debate between the representatives of an Epicurean account and a deprivation account of ‘mortal harm’, the former rely on a broadly empiricist theory of value, which links values to actual or possible experience, while the latter reject this theory (with good reason) as too narrow. The overall aim of the project is to explore how much of an Epicurean attitude to death can be defended without presupposing a hedonistic or empiricist theory of value. This overarching goal is divided into two sub-goals, which correspond to two project parts. The first part of the project consists in a comprehensive critical examination of the deprivation account in its various forms. Among other things, it will be asked whether the deprivation caused by the death of a person P, even if it was an evil qua deprivation, can strictly speaking be an evil for P. The second part of the project aims at a partial defence of the Epicurean thesis that death is not an evil for the person concerned. In doing so, the Epicurean thesis is restricted to a certain type of value, which can be called 'existential value'. The central theses of this part of the project are: (1) death is not an existential evil for the person concerned; (2) this is compatible with death being an evil in other respects (e.g. qua deprivation); (3) but it implies that death is a lesser evil for the person concerned than is commonly assumed. Taken together, both parts of the project can thus lead to a far-reaching rehabilitation of the Epicurean position by showing that death itself is not an existential evil for the person concerned, that qua deprivation it is not in the narrow sense an evil for that person, and that one's own death is insofar a lesser evil than most people assume.

自柏拉图以来，关于死亡对相关人来说是否是一种“邪恶”（即具有负价值）的问题一直存在争论。依伊壁鸠鲁的观点，事实并非如此：因为当死亡发生时，相关的人已经不存在了，所以她的死亡对她来说不可能是坏事。伊壁鸠鲁的论点是基于这样一个前提：快乐是唯一的善，痛苦是唯一的恶。所谓的剥夺说的支持者，以各种形式出现，质疑这种“享乐主义”的价值理论。他们声称，死亡对有关的人来说可能是一种罪恶，因为它剥夺了她如果活得更久本可以拥有的财产-即使这种剥夺并没有伴随着有关的人的痛苦，因为在剥夺发生时她已不再活着。在当前伊壁鸠鲁学派和剥夺学派关于“致命伤害”的代表之间的争论中，前者依赖于一种广泛的价值理论，将价值与实际或可能的经验联系起来，而后者（有充分的理由）拒绝这一理论，认为它过于狭隘。该项目的总体目标是探索伊壁鸠鲁对死亡的态度在多大程度上可以在不预设享乐主义或享乐主义价值理论的情况下得到辩护。这一总体目标分为两个次级目标，分别对应于项目的两个部分。该项目的第一部分是对各种形式的剥夺说进行全面的批判性审查。除其他事项外，它将被问到是否剥夺所造成的死亡的人P，即使它是一个邪恶的剥夺，可以严格地说是一个邪恶的P。第二部分的项目旨在部分辩护伊壁鸠鲁的论点，即死亡不是一个邪恶的有关的人。在这样做的时候，伊壁鸠鲁的论点被限制在某种类型的价值上，这种价值可以被称为“存在价值”。这部分研究的中心论点是：（1）死亡对有关的人来说不是一种存在的恶;（2）这与死亡在其他方面是一种恶（例如作为剥夺）是相容的;（3）但它意味着死亡对有关的人来说是一种比通常假设的更小的恶。把这两个部分合在一起，就可以对伊壁鸠鲁的立场进行一次意义深远的恢复，因为它表明，死亡本身对有关的人来说并不是一种存在上的罪恶，作为剥夺，它对那个人来说并不是一种狭义上的罪恶，一个人自己的死亡在某种程度上比大多数人所认为的罪恶要小。