New Philosopher – July 2019

NewPhilosopher

Barbara Ehrenreich

Old enough to die

I had a different reaction to ageing:

I gradually came to realise that I was

old enough to die, by which I am not

suggesting that each of us bears an

expiration date. There is of course no

fixed age at which a person ceases to

be worthy of further medical invest-

ment, whether aimed at prevention or

cure. The military judges that a person

is old enough to die – to him- or her-

self in the line of fire – at age eighteen.

At the other end of life, many remain

world leaders in their seventies or even

older, without anyone questioning

their need for lavish continuing test-

ing and care. Zimbabwe’s president,

Robert Mugabe, who is ninety-two,

has undergone multiple treatments for

prostate cancer.

Ben Bradley, et al.

The badness of death

Epicurus seemed to think that since a

person goes out of existence when she

dies, death cannot be bad because the

dead person can have no painful ex-

periences. But those who think death

is bad are not moved by this line of

reasoning. The standard way to ac-

count for the badness of death is to

endorse some sort of deprivation ac-

count. According to the deprivation

account, death is bad for someone if,

and to the extent that, it deprives that

individual of a more valuable life. Thus

it is possible for death to be bad with-

out involving any painful postmortem

experiences.

Paul Kalanithi

Innumerable tumours

I flipped through the CT scan images,

the diagnosis obvious: the lungs were

matted with innumerable tumours,

the spine deformed, a full lobe of the

liver obliterated. Cancer, widely dis-

seminated. I was a neurosurgical resi-

dententeringmyfinalyearoftraining.

Over thelastsix years, I’dexamined

scoresofsuchscans,ontheoffchance

thatsomeproceduremightbenefitthe

patient.Butthisscanwasdifferent: it

was my own. I wasn’t in the radiology

suite, wearing my scrubs and white

coat. I was dressed in a patient’s gown,

tethered to an IV pole, using the com-

puter the nurse had left in my hospital

room, with my wife, Lucy, an internist,

at my side.

Our library

Food for thought from the New

Philosopher library. We discover

books that can change the way you

view the world.

Natural Causes

When Breath

Becomes Air

Philosophy of

Death