Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death

Published 2012, Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson (eds.)
book can be found here

A review can be found here in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

First paragraph of the review:
"The editors have chosen to emphasize work on death from an analytical and metaphysical perspective. Not all of the 21 articles in this 500-page collection reflect this approach to the same degree. As we shall see, the editors' methodological orientation brings out some distinctive and interesting work. This volume will be of particular interest to philosophers who want to explore the way death challenges our commitments to concepts and theories of personal identity, time, and harm, as well as the way in which metaphysical possibility can help us explore some of the questions we want to ask about death. The latter include "When do things die?" (also the title of the first article) and "Is there anything about me that could survive death?". Questions about the kinds of harm that death causes or can cause arise in a number of articles, including Steven Luper's, "Retroactive Harms and Wrongs." Another theme in the text, which reflects the continuing importance of Epicurean thought to a philosophy of death, is Epicurus' challenging thesis that "Death is nothing to us." A very interesting article by Alastair Norcross near the end of the collection asks whether death has the same significance for animals and humans."

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