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，关于死亡对于当事人是否是“邪恶”（即具有负面价值）的问题一直存在争论，根据伊壁鸠鲁的说法，死亡不是：因为当死亡发生时，当事人就不再存在了。伊壁鸠鲁的论点基于这样的前提：快乐是唯一的善，痛苦是唯一的恶。各种形式的所谓剥夺论的支持者对这种“享乐主义”价值理论提出了质疑。他们声称，死亡对当事人来说可能是一种罪恶，因为死亡剥夺了她活得更久时本可以拥有的物品——即使这种剥夺并不伴随着当事人的痛苦，因为死亡时她已经不复存在了。在当前伊壁鸠鲁理论和“致命伤害”的剥夺理论的代表之间的争论中，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，而后者则拒绝接受。这个理论（有很好的该项目的总体目标是探索在不预设享乐主义或经验主义价值理论的情况下，可以在多大程度上捍卫伊壁鸠鲁主义的死亡态度。这个总体目标分为两个子目标，分别对应于该项目的第一部分包括对各种形式的剥夺账户进行全面的批判性审查，除其他外，将询问是否因人 P 的死亡而造成剥夺，即使它是一个人的死亡。作为剥夺的邪恶，严格来说对P来说是一种邪恶。该项目的第二部分旨在部分捍卫伊壁鸠鲁论，即死亡对于有关的人来说不是一种邪恶。某种类型的价值，可以称为“存在价值”，该项目的这一部分的中心论点是：（1）对于相关的人来说，死亡不是一种存在的邪恶；（2）这与死亡是一种邪恶是相容的。在其他方面（例如，作为剥夺）；（3）但它意味着死亡对相关人来说比通常认为的危害要小，因此，该项目的两个部分可以通过展示来导致伊壁鸠鲁立场的深远恢复。死亡本身对于相关的人来说并不是一种存在的邪恶，作为狭义上的剥夺，对于这个人来说并不是一种邪恶，而且一个人自己的死亡比大多数人想象的邪恶程度要小。