This volume, an anthology of modern and ancient philosophical argumentation, has been informed by the philosophy-of-death courses that the editors have themselves taught in their respective universities in the United Kingdom and United States. A selection of briefly excerpted “classical” texts, ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh and a letter of Epicurus to the Buddha, Schopenhauer, and a report from a US presidential commission concerning the exact definition of death, are interspersed with a set of purpose-written philosophical papers. Some 38 chapters are organized under a set of nine questions:
I. When Do We Die?
II. Can We Survive Our Death?
III. Can Death Be Good or Bad for Us? If So When Is It Good or Bad for Us?
IV. Can Lucretius’ Symmetry Problem Be Solved?
V. Would Immortality Be Good for Us?
VI. What Is the Best Attitude to Take Toward Our Mortality?
VII. How Should We React to the Deaths of Others?
VIII. Is Suicide Rationally or Morally Defensible?
IX. How Does Death Affect the Meaningfulness of Our Lives?
Each part begins with a brief introduction, and in some cases also a poetic epigraph relevant to the topic (from Donne, Coleridge, Dickinson, etc.). In each part, there is an implicit or explicit dialogue between the contemporary philosopher and a classic text. For example, Part IV, entitled “Can Lucretius’ Symmetry Problem Be Solved?”, begins with an excerpt from Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things book 3, presenting the famous symmetry argument that death should not disturb us any more than should our non-existence prior to our birth. We then encounter some explorations of the argument from different perspectives: Travis Timmerman’s “If You Want to Die Later, Then Why Don’t You Want to Have Been Born Earlier?” (ch. 14) chips away at the premise that “It is not bad for one to miss out on an earlier birth” (105), while Frederik Kaufman’s “Coming Into and Going Out of Existence” (ch. 15) outlines a deprivationist argument about death and concludes that “I can think my death would be bad without having to think the same about when I was born” (118).
The contemporary responses are cutting edge and up-to-date. See, for example, the stimulating piece by Patrick Stokes, “Death and Survival Online” (ch. 29), which addresses the ontological and ethical implications of such hypothetical scenarios as: “Before I die, I sign up for a service that will analyze my existing social media profile and use the data contained in it to create an AI-driven chat bot with which other people can interact” (203). It is not my purpose here to detail these discussions or enter into their debates. Suffice it to say that the reader receives a series of exciting ideas, arguments, and thought-experiments, with many contrasting perspectives that will provoke further discussion.
At the same time, however, the book prompts some questioning about scope, especially given its intended function as a student resource. In their “Introduction” the editors distinguish between the “times of duress” in which death is on our minds but cannot be addressed separately from events that work on our emotions, on the one hand, and those times “when a person is in a position to be as level-headed as possible” (xv), on the other. It is the latter that the editors have in mind with this volume, having put it together “to help create a space where people can have extended, rigorous, philosophical discussions about death in the classroom” (xv). Yet the classroom space can never be assumed to be one in which personal experience and emotion in relation to death are absent—something with which I am sure the editors would agree and of which they have no doubt accumulated valuable experience. A volume presented as a classroom resource on death could have offered some suggestions on how to give due consideration to student experience—such as the excellent reflections found concerning death and other sensitive topics in From Abortion to Pederasty: Addressing Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom, eds. N. S. Rabinowitz and F. McHardy (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2014).
Another issue is the volume’s relatively circumscribed presentation of its main topic, the philosophy of death. As it is presented here, the sphere of philosophical discourse largely excludes consideration of cultural, social, or historical variation in deathways, and little attention is given to such topics as gender (I would note that 22 of the 26 of the contemporary contributors are identified as male). The fact that such topics have received generous attention in history, literary studies, and the social sciences makes it all the more important to acknowledge them here also, even if they are considered to lie at the margins of the main topic. More serious, perhaps, is that when measured against its own claim to be presenting and engaging with “the origins of the field” (xvi), the volume does not measure up. Plato and Socrates receive scant mention, despite their seminal role in establishing a mutual dependency between the definition of philosophy and mental preparation for death (see Phaedo) as well as on specific topics such as suicide. The main Greco-Roman philosophical texts here are sections from Epicurus (Letter to Menoecus), Lucretius (On the Nature of Things), Epictetus (Enchiridion), and Seneca (Letters to Lucilius 63)—a somewhat fragmentary survey. These texts are treated as fairly fuzzy data-points to be conjured with and reacted to in some of the contemporary essays. They are not given a reliable scholarly framing—for example, there is no reference to philosophical consolation in connection with the Seneca letter, and there is no reference to the abundant literature on Hellenistic philosophy, such as James Warren’s Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006). The translations used are archaic; names are misspelled (“Menoeceus” for Menoecus and “Lucillus” for Lucilius, 179; “Grummere” for Gummere, 181); and discussion is sometimes sloppy, as when “Flaccus”—the deceased in Seneca’s letter—is referred to as the mourner (179). In short, readers of BMCR are likely to find less here than they would have liked, and certainly no substitute for existing resources available through such works as A.G. Long’s Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
These limitations of the volume’s “classical” component amount to a missed opportunity. This does not undermine the contemporary papers that are the core of the presentation, though these could in some cases have been tightened by taking into account more recent translations and scholarship in the history of philosophy. Even so, the volume represents a valuable resource for anyone seeking to explore how recent philosophers have sought to address specific questions about death.