Most attempts to console us about death begin by denying that it is an evil. But what if it is an evil—and our task is not to deny this, but to prevent the fear of death from spoiling the life that remains to us?

Is Death an Evil?

In 1970, the philosopher Thomas Nagel published a short paper entitled “Death,” in which he asked: If death is the permanent end of our existence, is it an evil?

There are, at least for the non-believer, only two possible answers. Either death is an evil because it deprives us of life, or it is a mere blank because there is no one left to suffer this deprivation.

If death is an evil, it is not because of any unpleasant attribute that it has, such as eternal torment, but because of what it takes away: life itself. For Nagel, the bare experience of life is intrinsically valuable, regardless of the balance of its good and bad elements.

The longer we live, the more life we accumulate. Death, in contrast, cannot be accumulated. It is not, as Nagel puts it, “an evil of which Shakespeare has so far received a larger portion than Proust.” If death is an evil, this is not because it condemns us to a longer or shorter period of non-existence, but because it deprives us of the life that we might otherwise have lived.

Nagel’s Straw Men

Nagel raises three objections to this view, but only so as to overturn them. The two most important had been made more than two thousand years earlier by Epicurus.

First, there is no subject left to suffer it. So long as we are alive, death has not arrived; as soon as death arrives, we are no longer alive. There seems, therefore, to be no time at which the evil of death can befall us.

Second, we do not regard the infinitely long period before our birth as an evil. Why, then, should we regard the period after our death any differently?

These arguments are known respectively as the “no subject of harm” argument and the “symmetry” argument.

Nagel answers that the good or evil that befalls us depends not only on our momentary experience, but also on our history and possibilities. Something can harm us even if we never become aware of it. If people betray or ridicule us behind our backs, their actions may constitute a misfortune for us even if we never discover what happened.

Similarly, death can harm us without leaving anyone behind to experience the harm. Its evil consists in the cancellation of our possibilities: the relationships, projects, pleasures, and discoveries that might otherwise have formed part of our life.

The period before our birth did not deprive us of anything because our life had not yet begun. But death interrupts a life already in progress. The symmetry between prenatal and posthumous non-existence is therefore less perfect than it first appears.

Death Kills Us Twice

If Nagel is right, death is an evil insofar as it deprives us of life. But it gets worse.

Death not only deprives us of life; it also compels us to spend that very life in the mostly unconscious fear of being deprived of it. Much of our anxiety, and much of the frantic activity with which we seek to escape it, may stem from our fear of death.

We pursue wealth, status, achievement, or youth as though they might protect us from mortality. We keep ourselves busy so that we need not think about where all our busyness is leading. Yet the more life we sacrifice to the fear of losing life, the more completely death has already defeated us.

Death, therefore, kills us twice: once when it ends our life, and again, by anticipation, when it prevents us from making the most of the life that we have.

A Necessary but Dangerous Fear

The fear of death is not irrational. If life is valuable, then it is reasonable to fear being deprived of it. The problem is not that we fear death, but that the fear becomes so great, so diffuse, or so deeply buried that it diminishes the very thing it seeks to preserve.

We may be able to postpone death by a few years, but there is nothing we can do to avoid it. In the words of Epicurus, “It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.”

All that we can do is come to terms with death in the hope of preventing it from preventing us from living.

You may be interested in my companion piece, Should You Want to Live Forever?