This chapter contains sections titled: Existential‐Ontological Analysis of Death Reorientation of the Concept of Death Drawing Inspiration from the Doctrine of Death of Chinese Philosophy Endnotes.

If we are aware of what indicates life, which everyone may be supposed to know, though perhaps no one can say that he truly and clearly understands what constitutes it, we at once arrive at the discrimination of death. It is the cessation of the phenomena with which we are so especially familiar—the phenomena of life. [J. G. SMITH, Principles of Forensic Medicine (London, 1821)].

Although it is commonly believed that the concept of brain death was developed to benefit organ transplants, it evolved independently. Transplantation owed its development to advances in surgery and immunosuppressive treatment; BD owed its origin to the development of intensive care. The first autotransplant was achieved in the early 1900s, when studies of increased intracranial pressure causing respiratory arrest with preserved heartbeat were reported. Between 1902 and 1950, the BD concept was supported by the discovery of EEG, (...) Crile’s definition of death, the use of EEG to demonstrate abolition of brain potentials after ischaemia, and Crafoord’s statement that death was due to cessation of blood flow. Transplantation saw the first xenotransplant in humans and the first unsuccessful kidney transplant from a cadaver. In the 1950s, circulatory arrest in coma was identified by angiography, and the death of the nervous system and coma dépassé were described. Murray performed the first successful kidney transplant. In the 1960s, the BD concept and organ transplants were instantly linked when the first kidney transplant using a brain-dead donor was performed; Schwab proposed to use EEG in BD; the Harvard Committee report and the Sydney Declaration appeared; the first successful kidney, lung and pancreas transplants using cadaveric donors were achieved; Barnard performed the first human heart transplant. This historical review demonstrates that the BD concept and organ transplantation arose separately and advanced in parallel, and only began to progress together in the late 1960s. Therefore, the BD concept did not evolve to benefit transplantation. (shrink)

Comparative thanatologists study the responses to the dead and the dying in nonhuman animals. Despite the wide variety of thanatological behaviours that have been documented in several different species, comparative thanatologists assume that the concept of death is very difficult to acquire and will be a rare cognitive feat once we move past the human species. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is based on two forms of anthropocentrism: an intellectual anthropocentrism, which leads to an over-intellectualisation (...) of the CoD, and an emotional anthropocentrism, which yields an excessive focus on grief as a reaction to death. Contrary to what these two forms of anthropocentrism suggest, we argue that the CoD requires relatively little cognitive complexity and that it can emerge independently from mourning behaviour. Moreover, if we turn towards the natural world, we can see that the minimal cognitive requirements for a CoD are in fact met by many nonhuman species and there are multiple learning pathways and opportunities for animals in the wild to develop a CoD. This allows us to conclude that the CoD will be relatively easy to acquire and, so, we can expect it to be fairly common in nature. (shrink)

Although it is commonly believed that the concept of brain death was developed to benefit organ transplants, it evolved independently. Transplantation owed its development to advances in surgery and immunosuppressive treatment; BD owed its origin to the development of intensive care. The first autotransplant was achieved in the early 1900s, when studies of increased intracranial pressure causing respiratory arrest with preserved heartbeat were reported. Between 1902 and 1950, the BD concept was supported by the discovery of EEG, (...) Crile’s definition of death, the use of EEG to demonstrate abolition of brain potentials after ischaemia, and Crafoord’s statement that death was due to cessation of blood flow. Transplantation saw the first xenotransplant in humans and the first unsuccessful kidney transplant from a cadaver. In the 1950s, circulatory arrest in coma was identified by angiography, and the death of the nervous system and coma dépassé were described. Murray performed the first successful kidney transplant. In the 1960s, the BD concept and organ transplants were instantly linked when the first kidney transplant using a brain-dead donor was performed; Schwab proposed to use EEG in BD; the Harvard Committee report and the Sydney Declaration appeared; the first successful kidney, lung and pancreas transplants using cadaveric donors were achieved; Barnard performed the first human heart transplant. This historical review demonstrates that the BD concept and organ transplantation arose separately and advanced in parallel, and only began to progress together in the late 1960s. Therefore, the BD concept did not evolve to benefit transplantation. (shrink)

Although it is commonly believed that the concept of brain death was developed to benefit organ transplants, it evolved independently. Transplantation owed its development to advances in surgery and immunosuppressive treatment; BD owed its origin to the development of intensive care. The first autotransplant was achieved in the early 1900s, when studies of increased intracranial pressure causing respiratory arrest with preserved heartbeat were reported. Between 1902 and 1950, the BD concept was supported by the discovery of EEG, (...) Crile’s definition of death, the use of EEG to demonstrate abolition of brain potentials after ischaemia, and Crafoord’s statement that death was due to cessation of blood flow. Transplantation saw the first xenotransplant in humans and the first unsuccessful kidney transplant from a cadaver. In the 1950s, circulatory arrest in coma was identified by angiography, and the death of the nervous system and coma dépassé were described. Murray performed the first successful kidney transplant. In the 1960s, the BD concept and organ transplants were instantly linked when the first kidney transplant using a brain-dead donor was performed; Schwab proposed to use EEG in BD; the Harvard Committee report and the Sydney Declaration appeared; the first successful kidney, lung and pancreas transplants using cadaveric donors were achieved; Barnard performed the first human heart transplant. This historical review demonstrates that the BD concept and organ transplantation arose separately and advanced in parallel, and only began to progress together in the late 1960s. Therefore, the BD concept did not evolve to benefit transplantation. (shrink)

In this book, Douglas Walton examines the philosophical nature of two issues currently associated with medical ethics. In order to work towards an analysis of the concept of death that could function as a target towards which the medical criteria of death could be directed, he proposes the foundations for a theory free of logical contradictions, paradoxes, and other perplexities. This is the "superlimiting theory" which introduces the notion of a "possible person." The connection of these philosophical (...) ideas with medico-legal concerns like brain death and the Harvard criteria is discussed. Professor Walton then goes on to examine the difference between killing and letting die. Through a close study of the logic of action sentences, he develops a model that is discussed in the light of the ethical and jurisprudential realities of medical ethics to see if the distinction between bringing something about and letting something happen is one that makes a moral difference in the evaluation of actions. Numerous problematic conceptual snags are dealt with, and the author consistently supports the conceptual clarity and respectability of the distinction. Other relevant discriminations of an action-theoretic sort, such as that between "direct" and "indirect" euthanasia, are studied, and the concluding chapter applies the conceptual analysis to a philosophical discussion of attitudes towards death, asking, "Is it rational to fear death?". (shrink)

Since the introduction of the concept of brain death by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death in 1968, the validity of this concept has been challenged by medical scientists, as well as by legal, philosophical, and religious scholars. In light of increased criticism of the concept of brain death, Stephen Napier, a staff ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, set out to prove that (...) the whole-brain death criterion serves as good evidence for death in the Catholic bioethical framework, on the grounds that when whole-brain death has occurred the soul has already departed from the body. Opponents have argued that (1) brain death does not disrupt the somatic integrative unity and coordinated biological functioning of a living organism and (2) clinical tests outlined in the practice guidelines for determining brain death lack sufficient power to exclude persisting function and fail to detect elements of the brain that, although currently functionless, may retain potential for recovery under conditions of optimal medical care. It is therefore possible that heart-beating organ procurement from patients with impaired consciousness is de facto a concealed practice of active euthanasia and physician-assisted death, both of which, either concealed or overt, the Catholic Church opposes. (shrink)

Biomedicine is a global enterprise constructed upon the belief in the universality of scientific truths. However, despite huge scientific advances over recent decades it has not been able to formulate a specific and universal definition of death: In fact, in its attempt to redefine death, the concept of death appears to have become immersed in ever increasing vagueness and ambiguity. Even more worrisome is that bioethics, in the form of principlism, is also endeavouring to become a (...) global enterprise by claiming neutrality. It appears that the discourse within both disciplines have similarly manipulated the boundaries of death to include the “dying”. This paper argues that the redefinition of death debate in biomedicine reveals a concept of personhood which is profoundly western in origin and which is in accordance to the concept adhered to within principlism. Biomedicine and bioethics do not appear to acknowledge the limitations of their own world view and hence lack an understanding of their applicability and appropriateness in diverse social and cultural contexts; a situation which adds credence to claims as to the hegemonic and imperialistic nature of all such global enterprises. (shrink)

Our contribute compares the concepts of Japanese and German primary school children relating to the topic of death, healing in the context of values education and the ethics of care. This is a project of the German-Japanese Research Initiative on Philosophizing with Children (DJFPK), cialis 40mg which aims to facilitate individual autonomy by enhancing philosophical-ethical judgment. It encourages the application and appropriate transfer of values based on philosophical-ethical knowledge and acquired through independent reflection to the situations of daily life.

The definition of death is one of the oldest and most enduring problems in biophilosophy and bioethics. Serious controversies over formally defining death began with the invention of the positive-pressure mechanical ventilator in the 1950s. For the first time, physicians could maintain ventilation and, hence, circulation on patients who had sustained what had been previously lethal brain damage. Prior to the development of mechanical ventilators, brain injuries severe enough to induce apnea quickly progressed to cardiac arrest from hypoxemia. (...) Before the 1950s, the loss of spontaneous breathing and heartbeat were perfect predictors of death because the functioning of the brain and of all other organs ceased rapidly and nearly simultaneously thereafter, producing a unitary death phenomenon. In the pretechnological era, physicians and philosophers did not have to consider whether a human being who had lost certain “vital functions” but had retained others was alive, because such cases were technically impossible. (shrink)

Alpine climbing in the US has increased in popularity since the 1970s and despite the high objective risk involved it has continued to find new devotees. For professionals involved in this sport, the risks are encountered through near‐death experiences and the real deaths of close friends. This essay uses interviews with climbers in the state of Washington, discussing their experiences with death, and uses written accounts. First, I discuss the many risks involved in climbing and how these risks (...) are perceived and accepted by climbers. Next, 1 look at the immediate reaction to alpine deaths, and finally, to the long term effects on the lives and climbing practices of this group. Despite repeated confrontations with death, all informants continue exposing themselves to these risks. Every year more and more acquaintances die while the ideas and values that these climbers hold allow them to resist the fear of their own death and continue to climb. Keywords: death, risk‐taking, sports. (shrink)

One goal of the transplant community is to seek ways to increase the number of people who are willing and able to donate organs. People in states between life and death are often medically excellent candidates for donating organs. Yet public policy surrounding organ procurement is a delicate matter. While there is the utilitarian goal of increasing organ supply, there is also the deontologic concern about respect for persons. Public policy must properly mediate between these two concerns. Currently the (...) dead donor (dd) rule is appealed to as an attempt at such mediation. I argue that given the lack of consensus on a definition of death, the dd rule is no longer successful at mediating utilitarian and deontologic concerns. I suggest instead that focusing on a particular person's history can be successful. (shrink)

From Antiquity to the Postmodern world, the approaches of philosophical and literary thought to death have changed but also remained similar from philosopher to philosopher and from writer to writer. Many of these approaches emphasize the dualities of life/death and soul/body, relying on the argument that everything arises from its opposite through the continuous process of reproduction, just as everything dies. This paper will deal with the concept of death in the work of three authors, Ndre (...) Mjedja, Lasgush Poradeci, and Mitrush Kuteli, who are the main writers and cultural personalities in Albanian literature of the 20th century. The selected authors conceive, create, and promote a plurality of discourses and themes, highlighting the theme of death, through which they reveal the philosophical power of the literary text and the possibilities implicit to literature itself. Their views provide a poetic and cultural background for a theoretical discussion of literary and cultural facets of death. A prelude exploring the concept of death generally will be followed by a discussion of the authors’ works, and finally, a theoretical analysis of these works will round off the investigation of death as a literary and philosophical theme in Albanian letters. (shrink)

The ordinary concept of death is analysed and compared with revisionary medical definitions, especially those based on irreversible loss of brain function. Prior critics of revisionary definitions have focused on the locus, the brain; I am concerned with the irreversibility condition. I argue that 1) the irreversibility condition is ambiguous, 2) it has unacceptable epistemic and other consequences on any plausible construal, and 3) irreversibility is not part of the ordinary concept of death. I conclude that (...) recent medical definitions seek illegitimately to obtain the certainty of a weak construal of 'irreversible' along with the freedom from moral obligation of the strong construal. (shrink)

The Concept of Law is the most important and original work of legal philosophy written this century. First published in 1961, it is considered the masterpiece of H.L.A. Hart's enormous contribution to the study of jurisprudence and legal philosophy. Its elegant language and balanced arguments have sparked wide debate and unprecedented growth in the quantity and quality of scholarship in this area--much of it devoted to attacking or defending Hart's theories. Principal among Hart's critics is renowned lawyer and political (...) philosopher Ronald Dworkin who in the 1970s and 80s mounted a series of challenges to Hart's Concept of Law. It seemed that Hart let these challenges go unanswered until, after his death in 1992, his answer to Dworkin's criticism was discovered among his papers. In this valuable and long-awaited new edition Hart presents an Epilogue in which he answers Dworkin and some of his other most influential critics including Fuller and Finnis. Written with the same clarity and candor for which the first edition is famous, the Epilogue offers a sharper interpretation of Hart's own views, rebuffs the arguments of critics like Dworkin, and powerfully asserts that they have based their criticisms on a faulty understanding of Hart's work. Hart demonstrates that Dworkin's views are in fact strikingly similar to his own. In a final analysis, Hart's response leaves Dworkin's criticisms considerably weakened and his positions largely in question. Containing Hart's final and powerful response to Dworkin in addition to the revised text of the original Concept of Law, this thought-provoking and persuasively argued volume is essential reading for lawyers and philosophers throughout the world. (shrink)

The Thought of Death and the Memory of War examines the career of Martin Heidegger’s concept of Being-toward-death. For Heidegger, the thought of death, the confrontation with the anxiety of death, reveals the path to a life authentically lived. His analysis of Being-toward-death exercised enormous influence over subsequent thinkers, from Sartre to Derrida, who both admired the power and originality of his thinking, but were confounded by its glaring oversight: the trenches and killing fields (...) of a war that had reached its culmination less than ten years before Being and Time’s publication in 1927. Even more glaring was Heidegger’s resolute and dismaying silence regarding the Holocaust in the years following World War II. Marc Crépon examines the efforts of philosophers and writers – Sartre, Levinas, Patocka, Ricœur, Semprun, and Derrida – to contend critically with Heidegger’s thought of death. But Crépon’s project is not simply or even primarily one of intellectual history. Critical engagement with Heidegger’s Being-toward-death reveals the extent to which political frontiers are grounded in mourning and in the demarcation between those who must be mourned and those whose deaths can be overlooked and ignored. The thought of death thus enables us to discern the contours of a moral and political community that, grounded in our shared mortality, is universal in its extension. The book concludes by examining how the media’s representations of death maintain the frontiers of mourning and thus “eclipse,” hide, or discourage the thought of death. (shrink)

“Brain death,” the determination of human death by showing the irreversible loss of all clinical functions of the brain, has become a worldwide practice. A biophilosophical account of brain death requires four sequential tasks: agreeing on the paradigm of death, a set of preconditions that frame the discussion; determining the definition of death by making explicit the consensual concept of death; determining the criterion of death that proves the definition has been fulfilled (...) by being both necessary and sufficient for death; and determining the tests of death for physicians to employ at the patient's bedside to demonstrate that the criterion of death has been fulfilled. The best definition of death is “the cessation of functioning of the organism as a whole.” The whole-brain criterion is the only criterion that is both necessary and sufficient for death. Brain death tests are used only in the unusual case in which a patient's ventilation is being supported. Brain death critics have identified weaknesses in its formulation. But despite its shortcomings, the whole-brain death formulation comprises a concept and public policy that make intuitive and practical sense and that has been well accepted by many societies. (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 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 this book, Douglas Walton examines the philosophical nature of two issues currently associated with medical ethics. In order to work towards an analysis of the concept of death that could function as a target towards which the medical criteria of death could be directed, he proposes the foundations for a theory free of logical contradictions, paradoxes, and other perplexities. This is the "superlimiting theory" which introduces the notion of a "possible person." The connection of these philosophical (...) ideas with medico-legal concerns like brain death and the Harvard criteria is discussed. Professor Walton then goes on to examine the difference between killing and letting die. Through a close study of the logic of action sentences, he develops a model that is discussed in the light of the ethical and jurisprudential realities of medical ethics to see if the distinction between bringing something about and letting something happen is one that makes a moral difference in the evaluation of actions. Numerous problematic conceptual snags are dealt with, and the author consistently supports the conceptual clarity and respectability of the distinction. Other relevant discriminations of an action-theoretic sort, such as that between "direct" and "indirect" euthanasia, are studied, and the concluding chapter applies the conceptual analysis to a philosophical discussion of attitudes towards death, asking, "Is it rational to fear death?". (shrink)

The concept of whole‐brain death is under attack again. Scholars are arguing that the concept of brain death per se—regardless of the focus on “higher,” “stem” or “whole”—is fundamentally flawed. These scholars have identified what they believe are serious discrepancies between the definition and criterion of brain death, and have pointed out that medical professionals and lay persons remain confused about its meaning. Yet whole‐brain death remains the standard for determining death in much (...) of the Western world and its defenders believe this concept best maps onto our everyday conception of death. (shrink)

Professor Cole is correct in his conclusion that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) protocol does not violate requirements of "irreversibility" in criteria of death, but wrong about the reasons. "Irreversible" in this context is best understood not as an ontological or epistemic term, but as an ethical one. Understood that way, the patient declared dead under the protocol is "irreversibly" so, even though resuscitation by medical means is still possible. Nonetheless, the protocol revives difficult questions about our (...) concept of death. (shrink)

What is death? The question is of wide-ranging practical importance because we need to be able to distinguish the living from the dead in order to treat both appropriately; specifically, the permissibility of retrieving vital organs for transplantation depends upon the potential donor's ontological status. There is a well-established and influential biological definition of death as irreversible breakdown in the functioning of the organism as a whole, but it continues to elicit disquiet and rejoinders. The central claims of (...) this paper are that the best way to address the question as to what death is, is to attend closely to our ordinary concept of death; doing so reveals that, whilst our ordinary understanding accommodates the biological definition, it also includes the thought that, for someone who has died, there will never again be anything it is like to be that person. Support for these claims is provided, and their academic and practical implications traced. The important practical implication is that we are left in quandary as to whether certain potential organ donors — for example, anencephalic babies and the permanently vegetative — are dead, a quandary that has serious implications for the relevance of the dead donor rule in transplant ethics. (shrink)

Objections arise to the concept of artistic intention based upon the psychology of a period. Here too we experience trends or volitions which can only be explained by precisely those artistic creations which in their own turn demand an explanation on the basis of these trends and volitions. Thus "Gothic" man or the "primitive" from whose alleged existence we wish to explain a particular artistic product is in truth the hypostatized impression which has been culled from the works of (...) art themselves. Or it is a question of intentions and evaluations which have become conscious as they find their formulation in the contemporary theory of art or in contemporary art criticism. Thus these formulations, just like the individual theoretical statements of the artists themselves, can once more only be phenomena parallel to the artistic products of the epoch; they cannot already contain their interpretation. Here again this parallel phenomenon would, in its entirety, represent an extraordinarily interesting object of humanistic investigation, but it would be incapable of defining in detail a methodologically comprehensible volition. So, too, the view of art which accompanies a period's artistic output can express the artistic volition of the period in itself but cannot put a name to it for us. This view can be of eminent significance when we are seeking a logical explanation for the perception of tendencies dominating at a given time and thus also for the judgment of artistic volition at that time, which must also be interpreted.Erwin Panofsky, the renowned art historian, was professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, until his death in 1968. Among his many books and articles are Meaning in the Visual Arts, Early Netherlandish Painting, and Renaissance and Renascenes in Western Art. Kenneth Northcott is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and the translator of Arnold Hauser's Sociology of Art . Joel Snyder is chairman of the committee on general studies in the humanities at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

The conventional historical account of the concept of brain death credits developments and discoveries of the twentieth century with its inception, emphasizing the role of technological developments and professional conferences, notably the 1968 Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death. This essay argues that the French physician Eugène Bouchut anticipated the concept of brain death as early as 1846. Correspondence with Bouchut’s understanding of brain death and (...) one important contemporary concept of brain death is established then contrasted with current trends of defining death as the death of the brain. The philosophical factors that influenced Bouchut and the later developments of concepts of brain death are considered, with special reference to mechanistic philosophy and vitalism. (shrink)

The individual's reaction to imminent death depends on his concept of the existential meaning of death.There are two main, but opposing, concepts, one positive and the other tragic. The first sees death as a transition to another mode of being. Within that three main modalities are to be distinguished, in which is considered either as an element in the cosmic harmony, the reintegration of the individual into the universal (the `Tagorian' mode); or secondly the possibility of (...) man's external existence through his transfer, together with his entire physical and psychological apparatus, to a realm of legend (the `Mioritic' mode); or thirdly the culmination of life, the moment of maximum existential concentration overflowing into the universe and encircling it (the `Rilkian' mode). The second concept, the tragic concept, sees death either as a desired solution, which puts an end to the nothingness of life (the `Tracklian' mode); or as a nonsense, as an absurd injustice of nature (the `common' mode); or as a necessity of which we do not know the meaning, a dialectical moment of eternal change (the `Stoic' mode). The psychological care of the dying involves identification with the patient's concept of death, in order to maintain his morale and possibly diminish his terror of death. The doctor must therefore be a good psychologist and a genuine philosopher, in the strictest sense of the word. (shrink)

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

Legally defining “death” in terms of brain death unacceptably obscures a value judgment that not all reasonable people would accept. This is disingenuous, and it results in serious moral flaws in the medical practices surrounding organ donation. Public policy that relies on the whole-brain concept of death is therefore morally flawed and in need of revision.

The Concept of Time presents the reconstructed text of a lecture delivered by Martin Heidegger to the Marburg Theological Society in 1924. It offers a fascinating insight into the developmental years leading up to the publication, in 1927, of his magnum opus Being and Time, itself one of the most influential philosophical works this century. In The Concept of Time Heidegger introduces many of the central themes of his analyses of human existence which were subsequently incorporated into Being (...) and Time, themes such as Dasein, Being-in-the-world, everydayness, disposition, care, authenticity, death, uncanniness, temporality and historicity. Starting out by asking: What is time?, Heidegger proceeds to radicalise the concept of time and our relation to it, ending with the question: Are we ourselves time? Am I time? (shrink)

The paper first defines palliative treatment and distinguishes it from symptomatic treatment. Then, the palliative situation is delineated as inseparably linked to the finitude of human life. Given the objectives of palliative treatment — responding to symptoms, damage to the patients' self-image, and the proximity of death — a subjective concept of disease is described, that is regarded as the focus of palliative treatment. The essence of the concept of disease is analysed as the patient's experience with (...) a tendency of reduction of her or his vitality. Palliative medicine is shown not to be symptom-oriented, but disease — directed as other domains of medicine. Implications and practical consequences, especially the status of objective findings, of this concept are discussed and therapeutic opportunities in the palliative situation reconsidered. (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 work seeks to highlight the central role of the concept of death for a theory of non-sense and a psychoanalysis of meaning in Gilles Deleuze. It is important to note that Deleuze summons Blanchotian reflections and gives them centrality, prior to the creation of schizoanalysis with Felix Guattari, in the formation of an idea of psychoanalysis of meaning based on Difference and Repetition and Logic of Meaning. We seek to show how, in this proposal that articulates philosophy (...) and psychoanalysis, there is a transition from genital thinking to thinking about the outside, to which the concept of death also contributes to the elucidation. (shrink)

The President's Council on Bioethics has recently released a report supportive of the continued use of brain death as a criterion for human death. The Council's conclusions were based on a conception of life that stressed external work as the fundamental marker of organismic life. With respect to human life, it is spontaneous respiration in particular that indicates an ability to interact with the external environment, and so indicates the presence of life. Conversely, irreversible apnoea marks an inability (...) to carry out the necessary work of life, an inability which the Council considers an indicator of death. This conception has been conceived to circumvent criticisms of the previous model of loss of somatic integration, a model the Council admits that, in the presence of evidence of continuing functional integration in brain dead patients, was looking less than convincing. Nevertheless, by focusing on external work and ignoring the more essential work of integrative unity, the Council's conception of the nature of life is untenable, and of no assistance in supporting a relation of equivalence between the concepts of brain death and death. Consequently, the Council's conclusions do little to advance the definition of death debate, a potentially intractable debate that may necessitate the investigation of alternate ethical justifications for organ harvesting. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Endnotes.

The relevance of this study is the increased interest of modern researchers in the field of humanities in the problems of interaction between language, culture, and thinking, as well as the need to study in this aspect the interdisciplinary notion of the concept from the position of literature studies. The purpose of the study is to investigate the concepts of “power” and “death” as key units in the conceptual framework of Kazakh writer Yessenberlin’s novel The Nomads: The Charmed (...) Sword, and to determine the features of their reflection in the individual author’s language picture of the world. The leading method is the method of conceptual analysis, which makes it possible to identify and comprehensively consider concepts in both individual authors and the national picture of the world of the Kazakh people. Within the research, the hierarchical structure of the conceptual framework of Yessenberlin historical novel is presented. The authors calculated associative rows of the concepts composing the novel’s conceptual framework and made conclusions concerning the relationships between the studied concepts, as well as the meaning of the central concepts “power” and “death” and the distinction between historical facts and artistic fiction. The main statements and conclusions can be used in the process of teaching philological disciplines in higher education institutions. (shrink)