For most us, learning which quantum theory correctly describes human bodies will not affect our attitudes towards our loved ones. On the other hand, a child’s discovery of the nature of meat (or an adult’s discovery of the nature of soylent green) can have a great effect. In still other cases, it is hard to say how one would, or should, react to new information about the underlying nature of what we value—think of how mixed our reactions are to evidence (...) of cultural determinism or atheism, or of how mixed our reactions would be to learning that we all live in the Matrix. (Indeed, maybe there is no objective fact about how we should react. Derek Parfit’s (1984, section 95) fear of death diminished when he became convinced of certain theses about the metaphysics of personal identity. Perhaps there is no objective fact of the matter as to whether this was rational; perhaps it was rational for him but would not be for others.) What can metaphysics contribute to the question of the evil of death? It cannot, on its own, settle the question, since there is no simple rule telling us how to adjust value in light of new information about underlying nature. Given a clear view of the nature of death, there will remain the question of its disvalue. However, metaphysics can help us attain this clear view. Moreover, a clear conception of what metaphysical positions do and don’t say, and a clear conception of how metaphysics works in general, can remove impediments to a rational appraisal of the evil of death. (shrink)

In previous work we have defended the deprivation account of death’s badness against worries stemming from the Lucretian point that prenatal and posthumous nonexistence are deprivations of the same sort. In a recent article in this journal, Fred Feldman has offered an insightful critique of our Parfitian strategy for defending the deprivation account of death’s badness. Here we adjust, clarify, and defend our strategy for reply to Lucretian worries on behalf of the deprivation account.

In previous work we have presented a reply to the Lucretian Symmetry, which has it that it is rational to have symmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. Our reply relies on Parfit-style thought-experiments. Here we reply to a critique of our approach by Huiyuhl Yi, which appears in this journal: Brueckner and Fischer on the evil of death. We argue that this critique fails to attend to the specific nature of the thought-experiments (and our associated argument). More (...) specifically, the thought-experiments seek to elicit attitudes about (say) past pleasures per se, and not insofar as such pleasures are connected to more pleasures in the future or a greater total amount of pleasures in one’s life overall. (shrink)

For most us, learning which quantum theory correctly describes human bodies will not affect our attitudes towards our loved ones. On the other hand, a child’s discovery of the nature of meat (or an adult’s discovery of the nature of soylent green) can have a great effect. In still other cases, it is hard to say how one would, or should, react to new information about the underlying nature of what we value—think of how mixed our reactions are to evidence (...) of cultural determinism or atheism, or of how mixed our reactions would be to learning that we all live in the Matrix. (Indeed, maybe there is no objective fact about how we should react. Derek Par t’s ( , section ) fear of death diminished when he became convinced of certain theses about the metaphysics of personal identity. Perhaps there is no objective fact of the matter as to whether this was rational; perhaps it was rational for him but would not be for others.) What can metaphysics contribute to the question of the evil of death? It cannot, on its own, settle the question, since there is no simple rule telling us how to adjust value in light of new information about underlying nature. Given a clear view of the nature of death, there will remain the question of its disvalue. However, metaphysics can help us attain this clear view. Moreover, a clear conception of what metaphysical positions do and don’t say, and a clear conception of how metaphysics works in general, can remove impediments to a rational appraisal of the evil of death. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a discussion of the “Epicurean view” — the view stating that death cannot intelligibly be regarded as an evil for the person who dies because the alleged evil lacks a subject or “recipient.” An argument is then presented in opposition to this view that possesses two key components. The first is an account of the “Values Connect with Feelings” requirement, according to which the connection need not be actual, but merely possible and that (...) the requirement is satisfied provided that the relevant object, state, or event is a possible object, even if it is not a possible cause, of the relevant feelings. The second key component is the employment of a four-dimensional framework that makes it possible to claim that temporally distant events or states, like spatially distant events, exist, and thus are possible objects of relevant feelings. (shrink)

Erratum to: Philosophia 42:741–748DOI 10.1007/s11406-014-9543-9The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. There were two slight text errors. The correct text information are given below.In the second line of the last paragraph in section "Reply to Yi" right before the "Conclusion", the text should read as:“atypical or, as Yi suggests, are more typical than we appear to suppose”.andIn the middle of the same paragraph, the text should read as:“…Note that a proponent of the Brueckner/Fischer approach can accept that (...) it would be rational to regret late birth somewhat, if it really were true that Learning Japanese represents the typical case.”. (shrink)

Four-dimensionalists think that we persist over time by having different temporal parts at each of the times at which we exist. Eternalists think that all times are equally real. Deprivationists think that death is an evil for the one who dies because it deprives them of something. I argue that four-dimensionalist eternalism, conjoined with a standard deprivationist account of the evil of death, has surprising implications for what we should think about the evil of (...) class='Hi'>death. In particular, given these assumptions, we will lack any grounds for thinking that death is an evil for some individuals for whom we would antecedently expect it to be an evil, namely those individuals who cease to exist at death. Alternatively, we will only have some grounds for thinking that death is an evil for certain individuals for whom we might antecedently be more inclined to think death is not an evil, namely those individuals who survive death, in the sense that they continue to exist after death. (shrink)

Abstract According to the Deprivation Approach, the evil of death is to be explained by the fact that death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had lived longer. But the Deprivation Approach confronts a problem first discussed by Lucretius. Late birth seems to deprive us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had been born earlier. Yet no one is troubled by late birth. So it’s hard to see why we (...) should be troubled by its temporal mirror image, early death. In a 1986 paper, Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer appealed to a version of Derek Parfit’s “Bias toward the Future”; they claimed that early death deprives us of future goods that we care about, while late birth deprives us of past goods that we don’t care about. In this paper I show that the Brueckner–Fischer principle is open to several possible interpretations, but that it does not solve the Lucretius problem no matter how we understand it. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9766-6 Authors Fred Feldman, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Most properties have comparatives, which are relations. For instance, the property of width has the comparative relation denoted by `_ is wider than _'. Let us say a property is reducible to its comparative if any statement that refers to the property has the same meaning as another statement that refers to the comparative instead. Width is not reducible to its comparative. To be sure, many statements that refer to width are reducible: for instance, `The Mississippi is wide' means the (...) same as `The Mississippi is wider than most rivers'. But some statements that refer to width are not reducible: for instance, `Electrons have zero width' is not. A property is not reducible to its comparative if it has absolute degrees, and specifically an absolute zero. A property's comparative relation places things in an order from those that have the property least to those that have it most. If there is an absolute zero point somewhere in this ordering, the property is not reducible to its comparative. For width, there is an absolute zero at one end of the ordering, so width is not reducible. The property of goodness is reducible to its comparative, betterness. In particular, there is no absolute zero of goodness. Things are ordered by betterness – some things are better than others – but nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad. This is an exaggeration. In certain applications, goodness does have absolute degrees of a sort, and an absolute zero. For instance, it makes sense to say an event is good, and another event bad. These are absolute degrees of a sort, but they are themselves reducible to betterness. To say an event is good simply means the event is better than what would otherwise have happened. The goodness of lives has a different sort of absolute zero. Lives are ordered by betterness; some lives are better than others. We can make sense of the question `Where in this ordering is the division between lives that are good and those that are bad?' The division between good and bad lives is again reducible to betterness. To say a person's life is good means it is better that the person should continue living, rather than that she should die. Or it may mean it is better that her life should be lived rather than that it should never have been lived at all. As it is often put: a good life is a life worth living. Derek Parfit appears to attach a different sense to the idea of a good life. He appears to mean a life that contains a preponderance of good things (such as pleasure) over bad things (such as pain). If a life contains no good things and no bad things, it has zero goodness in this sense. In this sense, absolute goodness and the absolute zero of goodness are not reducible to betterness. However, this is a naturalistic sense of goodness, and it is subject to the open-question objection. If a life contains no good things and no bad things, it is an open question whether it has zero goodness. It might, for instance, be a bad thing that this life should be lived. In discussing the evil of death, some philosophers seem to have been searching for an absolute goodness that is not reducible to betterness. Thomas Nagel speaks of an asymmetry between what is good about life and what is bad about death. But if a person's life is good, that only means it would be better that she should continue living than that she should die. And if a person's death would be bad, that only means it would be worse that she should die than that she should continue living. So there can be no asymmetry. (shrink)

In his article 'The Evil of Death' (henceforth: ED) Harry Silverstein argues that a proper refutation of the Epicurean view that death is not an evil requires the adoption of a particular revisionary ontology, which Silverstein, following Quine, calls 'four-dimensionalism'.1 In 'The Evil of Death Revisited' (henceforth: EDR) Silverstein reaffirms his earlier position and responds to several criticisms, including some targeted at his ontology. There remain, however, serious problems with Silverstein's argument, and I shall (...) highlight five major ones below. I conclude that Silverstein has not shown that an appeal to four-dimensionalism facilitates a refutation of Epicurus, although a consideration of some of Silverstein's points helps to indicate the limited scope of the Epicurean thesis. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the growing block theory of time has rather surprising, and hitherto unexplored, explanatory benefits when it comes to certain enduring philosophical puzzles concerning death. In particular, I claim the growing block theorist has readily available and convincing answers to the following questions: Why is it an evil to be dead but not an evil to be not yet born? How can death be an evil for the dead if they (...) no longer exist to suffer it? When is death an evil for the one who dies? The ability to give such answers is a significant, but by no means decisive, advantage for the growing block view of time. (shrink)

A primary argument against the badness of death (known as the Symmetry Argument) appeals to an alleged symmetry between prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. The Symmetry Argument has posed a serious threat to those who hold that death is bad because it deprives us of life’s goods that would have been available had we died later. Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer develop an influential strategy to cope with the Symmetry Argument. In their attempt to break the symmetry, they (...) claim that due to our preference of future experiential goods over past ones, posthumous nonexistence is bad for us, whereas prenatal nonexistence is not. Granting their presumption about our preference, however, it is questionable that prenatal nonexistence is not bad. This consideration does not necessarily indicate their defeat against the Symmetry Argument. I present a better response to the Symmetry Argument: the symmetry is broken, not because posthumous nonexistence is bad while prenatal nonexistence is not, but because (regardless as to whether prenatal nonexistence is bad) posthumous nonexistence is even worse. (shrink)

This paper is a short presentation of the Deprivation Account of the Evil of Death. According to this account, death is not an evil to us due to any of its positive features, but only due to some good, valuable and desirable things it deprives us of.Departing from Epicurus’ famous argument against the fear of death, I briefly reconstruct the Deprivation Account, as proposed by Thomas Nagel, and then discuss one important objection against it – (...) that it is implausible to judge the evil of death from the standpoint of “subjective immortality”. Finally, I distinguish two levels within the Deprivation Account – an “absolute” one, and a “relative” one, which enables us to judge some deaths as lesser evil or “negative good”. (shrink)

Asking, How could they do it? about the many ordinary people who have been perpetrators and those who resist extensive evils – genocide, human trafficking, endemic sexualized violations of females, economic exploitation -- the book delves into historic, contemporary, national, and international examples. The author, a moral philosopher, draws also on literature, psychology, economics, journalism, pop culture. Reversing Arendt’s banality of evil, she finds that mind-deadening banality, thoughtless conventionality, ambition, greed, status-seeking enable the evil of banality.

The age-old philosophical problem of evil, especially prominent in Western philosophy, as resulting from the intellectual irreconcilability of some appellations of God with the presence of evil – indeed, of myriads of evil – in the world, has been debated upon by many African religious scholars; particularly, philosophers. These include John Mbiti, Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, E. B. Idowu and E.O. Oduwole. While the debate has often been about the existence or not of the problem of (...) class='Hi'>evil in African theology, not much philosophical discussion has taken place regarding death and its implications for African conception(s) of God. This paper attempts to contribute to the discussion of those implications. It explores the evilness of death, as exemplified in the African notion of “evil death,” and argues that the phenomenon of death presents itself in complex but interesting ways that do not philosophically ground its characterization as evil. Therefore, the problem of evil would not arise in African thought on account of the phenomenon of death. (shrink)

If humans are to have the opportunity to choose to love God, they must have the opportunity to choose to reject him—to sin. Agnosticism gives humans, the opportunity to choose freely to do good or evil without any awareness of God's presence making it too easy to do good. Death is not a bad state, but the end of a good state; and there are considerable advantages in human mortality. Though it is good that death should be (...) followed by a life after death, it is good that this should not be too evident to humans. (shrink)

Introduction : death, metaphysics, and morality / John Martin Fischer Death knocks / Woody Allen Rationality and the fear of death / Jeffrie G. Murphy Death / Thomas Nagel The Makropulos case : reflections on the tedium of immortality / Bernard Williams The evil of death / Harry S. Silverstein How to be dead and not care : a defense of Epicurus / Stephen E. Rosenbaum The dead / Palle Yourgrau The misfortunes of the (...) dead / George Pitcher Harm to others / Joel Feinberg Reasons and persons / Derek Parfit Why is death bad? / Anthony L. Brueckner and John Martin Fischer Death and the value of life / Jeff McMahan Annihilation / Steven Luper-Foy Epicurus and annihilation / Stephen E. Rosenbaum Some puzzles about the evil of death / Fred Feldman Well-being and time / J. David Velleman. (shrink)

The Epicurean view is that there is nothing bad about death, and we are wrong to loathe it. This paper distinguishes several different such views, and shows that while some of them really would undermine our loathing of death, others would not. It then argues that any version that did so could be at best vacuously true: If there is nothing bad about death, that can only be because there is nothing bad about anything.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Epistemology of Murder Violence and Human Nature The Gestation of Terrorists and Serial Killers Conclusions.

War lays bare death and our relation to it. And in the wars—or more precisely the memories of war—of the twentieth century, images of the deaths of countless faceless or nameless others eclipse the singularity of each victim’s death as well as the end of the world as such that each death signifies. Marc Crépon’s _The Thought of Death and the Memory of War_ is a call to resist such images in which death is no (...) longer actual death since it happens to anonymous others, and to seek instead a world in which mourning the other whose mortality we always already share points us toward a cosmopolitics. Crépon pursues this path toward a cosmopolitics of mourning through readings of works by Freud, Heidegger, Sartre, Patocka, Levinas, Derrida, and Ricœur, and others. The movement among these writers, Crépon shows, marks a way through—and against—twentieth-century interpretation to argue that no war, genocide, or neglect of people is possible without suspending how one relates to the death of another human being. A history of a critical strain in contemporary thought, this book is, as Rodolphe Gasché says in the Foreword, “a profound meditation on what constitutes evil and a rigorous and illuminating reflection on death, community, and world.” The translation of this work received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (shrink)

What is death? Do people survive death? What do we mean when we say that someone is "dying"? Presenting a clear and engaging discussion of the classic philosophical questions surrounding death, this book studies the great metaphysical and moral problems of death. In the first part, Feldman shows that a definition of life is necessary before death can be defined. After exploring several of the most plausible accounts of the nature of life and demonstrating their (...) failure, he goes on to propose his own conceptual scheme for death and related concepts. In the second part, Feldman turns to ethical and value-theoretical questions about death. Addressing the ancient Epicurean ethical problem about the evil of death, he argues that death can be a great evil for those who die, even if they do not exist after death, because it may deprive them of the goods they would have enjoyed if they had continued to live. Confrontations with the Reaper concludes with a novel consequentialist theory about the morality of killing, applying it to such thorny practical issues as abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. (shrink)

The powers of intellect and will, possession of which is constitutive of having a mind, are not powers of the mind, but of the being that has a mind. The Platonic metaphysical conception of the soul is of great interest irrespective of its informing both ancient and Renaissance neo‐Platonist ideas about the soul and its immortality, and, via Augustine, ultimately moulding the misconceived Cartesian conception of the soul. The dividing line between the soul and the flesh is quite different from (...) that between the mind and the body. The soul is associated with aesthetic sensibility and with the appreciation of beauty and pathos, with which conscience has no connection. The evil‐doer commonly aims, explicitly or implicitly, to destroy the moral order of humanity and the moral restraints on behaviour that are constitutive of moral beings. Evil‐doers have to suppress the voice of conscience. (shrink)

I begin by offering an account of two key strains in the history of philosophical dealings with death. Both strains initially seek to diminish fear of death by appealing to the idea that death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. According to the Platonic strain, death should not be feared since the soul will have a prolonged existence free from the bodily prison after death. With several dramatic modifications, this is the (...) strain that is taken up by much of the mainstream Christian tradition. According to the Epicurean strain, death should not be feared since the tiny pthesiss that make up the soul leave the body and are dispersed at the moment of death, leaving behind no subject to experience any evil that might be associated with death. Although informed by millennia of further scientific discovery, this is the strain picked up on by contemporary atheistic, technologically advanced mankind. My primary goal is to demonstrate that philosophy has an often-overlooked alternative to viewing death in terms of this ancient dichotomy. This is the alternative championed by Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Although both thinkers arise from the Christian tradition, they clearly react to Epicurean insights about death in their work, thereby prescribing a peculiar way of living with death that the Christian tradition seems to have forgotten about. Despite the association of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, there is a fundamental difference between them on the subject of death. In Being and Time Heidegger seems to rely on the phenomenology of death that Kierkegaard provides in texts such as "At a Graveside." It is interesting to notice, however, that this discourse, especially when seen in the light of Kierkegaard's more obviously religious works, might only be compelling to the aspiring Christian. If so, then perhaps there is a tension in both Heidegger's "methodologically atheistic" appropriation of Kierkegaard's ideas about death, and Heidegger's attempt to make these ideas compelling to the aspiring human. My secondary goal is to determine whether Heidegger takes the "existential philosophy of death" too far when he incorporates it into his early ontological project. (shrink)

Those who endorse the view that death is in some cases bad for the deceased—a view that, as I shall explain, has considerable bearing on many bioethical issues—need to address the following, Epicurean question: When is death bad for the one who dies? The two most popular answers are "before death" (priorism) and "after death" (subsequentism). Part of the support for these two views consists in the idea that a third answer, "at no time" (atemporalism), makes (...) death unsatisfyingly different from other evils. I argue that this objection is mistaken, and that priorism and subsequentism face problems that atemporalism avoids. Moreover, I argue that if it is nonetheless insisted that we must find a time at which my death is bad for me, we can appeal to periods that begin before my death and end after my death. I end with some implications for posthumous harm. (shrink)

There is a common intuition that genocide is qualitatively distinct from, and much worse than, mass murder. If we concentrate on the most obvious differences between genocidal killing and other cases of mass murder it is difficult to see why this should be the case. I argue that many cases of genocide involve not merely individual evil but a form of collective action manifesting a collective evil will. It is this that explains the moral distinctiveness of genocide. My (...) view contrasts with one put forward by Claudia Card, though we both agree that the notion of ‘‘social death’’ plays a significant role here. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a case for an intercultural philosophy of religion from an African perspective. I focus on the philosophical underpinnings of the various meaningful religious practices and beliefs that give rise to the concepts of God, death and the problem of evil. A philosophical study of African traditional religions, based on anthropological findings across African cultural orientations, gives us a good starting point in understanding African worldviews and religious experiences. It also reveals that the various (...) world religions may all be seen as offering different perspectives on the same reality. Specifically, I argue that traditional African conceptions of God, death and the problem of evil could make significant contributions to global discourses in the philosophy of religion. First, I articulate points of convergence and divergence between African traditional religions with Saint Aquinas’ proofs for God’s existence; Second, I question the phenomenon of death and one’s life’s meaning. And third, I approach the problem of evil and attempt an African solution to the Epicurean dilemma. (shrink)

"Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it takes to change the world in this comprehensive biography that tells the complete life story of internationally renowned peacemaker Nelson Mandela. Civil rights activist. World leader. Writer. Throughout his life, Nelson Mandela took on many roles, all in the pursuit of peace. Born in 1918 in South Africa, he grew up in a culture of government-enforced racism and became involved in the anti-apartheid movement at a young age. Deeply committed to nonviolent activism, Mandela (...) directed a peaceful campaign against the racist policies of his South African government, and spent twenty-seven years in prison as a result. In the years following his emergence as a free man, he continued his efforts to dismantle the country's apartheid system and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside South African President F.W. de Klerk. In 1994 he was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president and served until his retirement from active politics in 1999 at the age of eighty-one. He continued to promote global peace until his death in 2013, and his legacy lives on. From Nelson Mandela's childhood to his monumental impact on race relations and nonviolent activism, this comprehensive biography shares the truth about the man behind the iconic smile: his struggles, his triumphs, and the sacrifices along the way"--. (shrink)

This fourth installment of Harry Redner's tetralogy on the history of civilization argues that intellectuals have a brilliant past, a dubious present, and possibly no future. He contends that the philosophers of the seventeenth century laid the ground for the intellectuals of the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. They, in turn, promoted a fundamental transformation of human consciousness: they literally intellectualized the world. The outcome was the disenchantment of the world in all its cultural dimensions: in art, religion, ethics, (...) politics, and philosophy. In this fascinating study, Redner demonstrates how secularization took the sting out of both the dread and promise of an afterlife and intellectuals learned to die without the hope of immortality popularized by philosophy and religion. Ultimately, they produced the ideologies that generated the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, which subsequently exterminated these intellectuals through mass murder on a scale never before experienced. The book traces the sources of this fatal entanglement and goes on to examine the contemporary condition of intellectuals in America and the world. Wherein lies the future of the intellectuals? Redner suggest that in the present state of globalization, dominated by technocrats, experts, and professionals, their fate remains uncertain. (shrink)

The Triumph and Tragedy of the Intellectuals is the final volume in a tetralogy dedicated to portraying “the human predicament and what historically led up to it”. Whereas the first two volum...

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 The Cry of Rachel -- Maritain's 1942 Marquette Aquinas Lecture -- Maritain's The Person and the Common Good -- Camus's The Plague -- ch. 2 Joy -- Being as the Good and the Eruption of Willing -- Being and Philosophical Psychology -- An Ordinary Knowledge of God and Metaphysics -- Metaphysics as Implicit Knowledge -- Being and the Intellectual Emotions -- ch. 3 Quandoque Evils -- Aquinas's Rationale for the Corruptible Order -- The Corruptible (...) Order and Quandoque Evils -- Bracketing Quandoque Evils between Goods -- A Caveat in Understanding the Subject of the Consequent Good -- The Effect of Human Providence upon the Frequency of Quandoque Evils -- ch. 4 Natural Corruptions -- Death as a Natural Corruption -- Natural Corruption as Nondefinitive -- Ambiguity of "Praeter Intentionem" and "Per Accidens" -- God and the Evil of Punishment (Poena) -- Other Interpretations -- Abraham and Isaac -- Conclusion -- ch. 5 Preliminaries to Aquinas and the Contemporary Discussion -- C.G. III, 71: "If Evil Exists, God Exists" -- William Rowe on Cosmological Reasoning -- De Ver. X, 12, ad 10m: "If not God from Justice, then God from Some Other Effect" -- Summary of Aquinas on the Existence of Evil -- A Strategy -- ch. 6 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Personalist Theodicies -- Marilyn McCord Adams and "Horrendous Evils" -- William Hasker: Personal Satisfaction and World Approval -- John Hick: Creation as a Gymnasium for the Development of Our Virtues -- David Ray Griffin and the Denial of Genuine Evils -- The Brothers Karamazov -- Thomistic "Natural Desires" of the Human Person -- ch. 7 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Cosmological Theodicies -- Diogenes Allen and Suffering as an Experience of God -- David Hume and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, X and XI -- William Rowe and "Pointless Evils" -- J. L. Mackie and Further Objections to a Cosmological Theodicy -- Mackie's Fourth Criticism and Aquinas on the Causality of Human Choices -- Aquinas and Plantinga -- The Avoidance of Determinism -- The Avoidance of Divine Culpability -- A Thomistic Free Will Defense? -- Richard Swinburne: Nature as a Necessary Display Case for Our Knowledge of Good and Evil -- Bruce Reichenbach: Developing Plantinga and Swinburne -- ch. 8 Conclusion and Comparison to Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump -- Brian Davies's Apophatic Treatment of the Evil Problem -- Eleonore Stump and the Love of God -- The Consolation of Rachel. (shrink)

Scholarship in the multidisciplinary field of genocide studies often emphasizes body counts and the number of biological deaths as a way of measuring and comparing the severity and scope of individual genocides. The prevalence of this way of framing genocide is problematic insofar it risks marginalizing the voices and experiences of victims who may not succumb to biological death but nevertheless suffer the loss of family members and other loved ones, and suffer the destruction of relationships, as well as (...) the foundational institutions that give rise to and sustain those relationships. The concept of social death, which Claudia Card offers as the central evil of genocide, marks a radical shift in conceptualizing genocide and provides space for recovering the marginalized voices of many who suffer the evils of genocide but do not suffer biological death. Here her concept of social death is explored, defended, and criticized. (shrink)

The Holocaust is one of the most intractable and challenging tragedies of moral evil to understand, assuming the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving God, and it has important implications for all theists. This paper critically examines the problem of evil in the philosophical theologies of two prominent Jewish philosophers: Emil Fackenheim and Richard Rubenstein. The article defends their view that the six million deaths are existentially meaningless because no justifiable reason exists why God permitted this. Thus, (...) a Jewish theodicy is not possible for them. Fackenheim attempts to salvage traditional Judaism, and urges Jews not to lose their faith, lest Hitler be given a posthumous victory. Rubenstein rejects Fackenheim’s position and encourages Jews to accept the death of God and his mystical radical theology, and still continue traditional religious practices. I question both these responses, and hold that it is more plausible that God is not perfectly loving. (shrink)

In the twenty-first century, with steadily increasing production and consumption of the zombie genre, academic interest in it is also growing. Scholars seek to explain the phenomenon, frequently focusing on the living dead and mostly seeing the figure of the zombie as an expression of the anxieties besetting contemporary society. In particular, its popularity can be interpreted as a response to the escalating climate of terror since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, after which media reporting has routinely been permeated with (...) images of death and destruction,1 constantly drawing attention to the insecurity that threatens to turn the American dream into a nightmare.2There is no shortage of authors who have emphasized the... (shrink)

The evil of the holocaust demands a radical rethink of the traditional Christian understanding of Judaism. This does not mean jettisoning Christianity's deepest convictions in order to make it conform to Judaism. Rather, Richard Harries develops the work of recent Jewish scholarship to discern resonances between central Christian and Jewish beliefs. This thought-provoking book offers fresh approaches to contentious and sensitive issues. A key chapter on the nature of forgiveness is sympathetic to the Jewish charge that Christians talk much (...) too easily about forgiveness. Another chapter on suffering in Judaism and Christianity rejects the usual stereotypes and argues for important common ground, for example in the idea that God suffers in the suffering of his people. There are also chapters on the state of Israel and the place of Jerusalem in Christian and Jewish thought. Richard Harries argues that the basic covenant is not with either Judaism or Christianity but with humanity. These, like other religions, are different, distinctive voices in response to God's primal affirmation of human life, which for Christians is achieved and given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the light of this the author maintains - controversially - that Christians should not be trying to convert Jews to Christianity. Rather Jews and Christians should stand together and build on the great amount they have in common to work together for a better world. (shrink)

This chapter philosophically examines the transformation of “Walter White” into “Heisenberg,” as depicted in the television series Breaking Bad, in terms of Søren Kierkegaard’s “stages of life” and Carl Jung’s “process of individuation.” Though Walt’s transformation is an oft-discussed topic regarding Breaking Bad, there has yet to appear in the philosophical literature an examination of this transformation in terms of Kierkegaard and Jung. Such an examination is important since it also addresses a number of the questions regarding the shift in (...) Walt’s moral compass given his terminal prognosis. That is to say, Walt’s transformation into Heisenberg in terms of Kierkegaard and Jung provides a moral account of his decisions without sacrificing a notion of his free-will or accepting the imminence of death as justification for the perpetration of evil. (shrink)

The work of Claudia Card has received far less attention in the field of genocide studies than it deserves. The atrocity paradigm, first introduced in her book by that title published in 2002, offers rich insights that can serve to enhance the understanding of genocidal violence. Her book Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide, after offering revisions to her secular theory of evil, does speak directly to the evils of genocide, claiming "genocide is social death". This chapter shows that (...) genocide scholarship as well as accounts of genocide by journalists often frame genocide in terms of biological death and body counts. It argues that the atrocity paradigm and especially Card's conception of social death are better able to capture the complex realities of genocidal violence, particularly the experiences of women. The chapter describes that the idea of social death enriches the understanding of genocide but question whether her term has juridical implications. (shrink)

This is an edited collection containing papers on intrinsic value, consequentialism, the evil of death, among others.

Extent health humanities readings of Gabriel García Márquez’s _Love in the Time of Cholera_ have focused on the doctor-patient relationship, the physician-scientist as a model for aspiring practitioners, and how individuals relate to the novel’s health themes of death, disease, and disability. However, such medicine-focused readings neglect the population-level public health concerns of the novel as they relate to contagion, community, and quarantine. This paper contributes to the growing field of public health humanities by using a close reading method (...) to explore how the competing endemic and epidemic public health issues shape the plot and metaphors of the novel. (shrink)

Adherents of the Abrahamic religions have traditionally held that God is morally perfect and unconditionally deserving of devotion, obedience, love, and worship. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell us that God is compassionate, merciful, and just. As is well-known, however, these same scriptures contain passages that portray God as wrathful, severely punitive, and jealous. Critics furthermore argue that the God of these scriptures commends bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia, condones slavery, and demands the adoption of unjust laws-for example, laws that (...) mandate the death penalty for adultery and rebellion against parents, and laws institutionalizing in various ways the diverse kinds of bigotry and oppression just mentioned. In recent days, these sorts of criticisms of the Hebrew Bible have been raised in new and forceful ways by philosophers, scientists, social commentators, and others. This volume brings together eleven original essays representing the views of both critics and defenders of the character of God as portrayed in these texts. Authors represent the disciplines of philosophy, religion, and Biblical studies. Each essay is accompanied by comments from another author who takes a critical approach to the thesis defended in that essay, along with replies by the essay's author. (shrink)