Abstract: The most popular views about the prudential badness of death (i.e., how bad death is for the one who dies) claim that the badness of death varies, roughly, with the amount of well-being one would have were she not to die. I think these views are mistaken. In this paper, I present a new view of the prudential badness of death: death is always maximally prudentially bad (i.e., there is no greater single loss than death). Death is always maximally prudentially bad because the prudential value of what is lost – that is, one’s life as a whole – is, I suggest, equal to the amount of well-being that one had or might have throughout her life. The prudential value of one’s life is equal to the amount of well-being that one had or might have throughout her life because she exists as the subject to whom these goods had accrued or might accrue.
When someone dies, she loses her life in the sense above. That is, her loss is equal to the prudential value of her life as a whole. We can say that she loses all the well-being she’s had or might have in the sense that, prior to her death, there is a relation between herself and all the well-being she had or might have. There exists a subject to whom those goods accrue. Whenever someone dies, that subject no longer exists. There is no longer any relationship between that individual and the welfare goods that she had or might have. In other words, there is no longer anyone for whom any such goods are prudentially valuable. And, since there is no greater single loss than that incurred by losing all the goods in one’s life, death is always maximally prudentially bad.
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DPhil Seminar Convenor: Oscar Monroy Perez
