One's Own Death: Deprivation and Existential Value

自柏拉图以来，关于死亡是否对有关的人来说是一种‘邪恶’(即具有负价值)的问题，一直存在着争论。根据伊壁鸠鲁的说法，事实并非如此：因为当死亡发生时，相关的人已经不存在，她的死亡对她来说不会是坏事。伊壁鸠鲁的论点基于这样一个前提：快乐是唯一的善，痛苦是唯一的恶。所谓剥夺帐户的支持者对这种“享乐主义”的价值理论提出了异议。他们声称，死亡对当事人来说可能是一种邪恶，因为剥夺了她如果活得更久就会拥有的物品--即使这种剥夺没有伴随着当事人的痛苦，因为当剥夺发生时，她已经不再活着。在伊壁鸠鲁学派和剥夺学派之间的争论中，前者依赖于广泛的经验主义价值理论，将价值与实际或可能的经验联系起来，而后者则以过于狭隘(有充分的理由)而拒绝接受这一理论。该项目的总体目标是探索在不预设享乐主义或经验主义的价值理论的情况下，有多少伊壁鸠鲁式的死亡态度可以得到捍卫。这一总体目标分为两个子目标，分别对应于两个项目部分。该项目的第一部分是对各种形式的剥夺说明进行全面的批判性审查。在其他方面，人们会问，一个人P的死亡造成的剥夺，即使是作为一种邪恶的剥夺，严格地说对P来说也是一种邪恶。该项目的第二部分旨在为伊壁鸠鲁学派的论点进行部分辩护，即死亡对有关的人来说不是一种邪恶。在这样做的时候，伊壁鸠鲁的命题被限制在某种类型的价值上，这可以被称为存在价值。该项目这一部分的中心论点是：(1)死亡对有关人来说不是一种存在的邪恶；(2)这与死亡在其他方面是一种邪恶是一致的(例如，所谓的剥夺)；(3)但它意味着死亡对有关人来说是一种比通常认为的更轻的邪恶。综上所述，该项目的两个部分可以导致伊壁鸠鲁观点的深远恢复，表明死亡本身并不是有关人的生存邪恶，作为剥夺，它不是狭义上的邪恶，并且一个人自己的死亡在一定程度上是比大多数人想象的更轻的邪恶。

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.