Philosophy of Death (Open Yale Course)

About the Course

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

About Professor Shelly Kagan

Shelly Kagan is Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale. After receiving his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1976, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1982, he taught at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Illinois at Chicago before coming to Yale in 1995. He is the author of the textbook Normative Ethics, which systematically reviews alternative positions concerning the basic rules of morality and their possible foundations, and The Limits of Morality, which challenges two of the most widely shared beliefs about the requirements of morality. He is currently at work on The Geometry of Desert.

Table of Content:

1. Course introduction
2. The nature of persons: dualism vs. physicalism
3. Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part I
4. Introduction to Plato's Phaedo; Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part II
5. Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part III: Free will and near-death experiences
6. Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part IV; Plato, Part I
7. Plato, Part II: Arguments for the immortality of the soul
8. Plato, Part III: Arguments for the immortality of the soul (cont.)
9. Plato, Part IV: Arguments for the immortality of the soul (cont.)
10. Personal identity, Part I: Identity across space and time and the soul theory
11. Personal identity, Part II: The body theory and the personality theory
12. Personal identity, Part III: Objections to the personality theory
13. Personal identity, Part IV; What matters?
14. What matters (cont.); The nature of death, Part I
15. The nature of death (cont.); Believing you will die
16. Dying alone; The badness of death, Part I
17. The badness of death, Part II: The deprivation account
18. The badness of death, Part III; Immortality, Part I
19. Immortality, Part II; The value of life, Part I
20. The value of life, Part II; Other bad aspects of death, Part I
21. Other bad aspects of death, Part II
22. Fear of death
23. How to live given the certainty of death
24. Suicide, Part I: The rationality of suicide
25. Suicide, Part II: Deciding under uncertainty
26. Suicide, Part III: The morality of suicide and course conclusion

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