Death
This meeting will be about attitudes to death - attitudes of society generally, of ourselves and people we know - and about how those attitudes may affect the way we live.
Questions to ask:
What is a healthy attitude to death?
How should we teach children about death, and to what extent should we expose them to, or shield them from it?
How should we talk to people who are dying?
How should we talk to people who have recently lost a loved relative or friend?
Are all deaths misfortunes, or only some?
What constitutes a 'good death', and does the quality of one's death matter?
Should the fact that we will certainly die affect how we live? How?
What if any preparations should we make for our death, both practical and psychological?
Everyday Ethics podcast episode, discussion of attitudes to death and how we relate to the dying
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ethics
Download the podcast from the link under 'Death & Defamation'
Discussion of modern attitudes to death
http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/meinwald/meinwald1.html
Two journal articles that discuss the history of Western attitudes to death, and how death is now a taboo subject, similar to how sex was regarded in Victorian Britain.
Geoffrey Gorer - "The Pornography of Death"
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1955oct-00049
Philippe Aries - "The Reversal of Death: Changes in Attitudes Toward Death in Western Societies"
[the latter needs a library membership login]
One possible explanation for the current morbid fear of death in society (brilliant acting by Karl Malden):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UKhVRIi_yY
And a non-fictional sermon along similar lines:
http://www.preachtheword.com/sermon/gospel082-neglectedhell.shtml
Stanford: general discussion of the philosophical aspects of death
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/
The death of David Hume, by Boswell.
isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.../Boswell.Last.Interview.with.Hume.pdf
The following discussion of Hume's death captures, in an interchange between Boswell and Johnson, the indignation some Christians feel when a non-Christian fails to be terrified at the prospect of death.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397089§ion=1
Here is a modern piece demonstrating that that indignation is still alive and well:
http://www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au/the-end-of-david-hume-and-the-fear-of-death/
Boswell had something of a terrified fixation with death and a fair part of his writing was an attempt to deal with this. This is analysed in the following essay by Katherine Ellison:
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ecf/vol21/iss1/4/
Some other inspiring deaths:
Death of Socrates
http://socrates.clarke.edu/aplg0190.htm
Death of Seneca
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/tacitus-ann15a.asp
Karen buries a mouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgP8L8Gzokc
Frank Woodley explains death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6_HuhfbNTs
Epicurus and Lucretius on death and why we should not fear it:
www.pitt.edu/~kis23/EPICURUS-LUCRETIUS.pdf
Thomas Nagel's essay "Death". To some extent he is disagreeing with Epicurus's view that death is harmless. I disagree with Nagel's conclusion that death at any age is a misfortune, but his views are influential.
Walter Kaufman "Death without Dread". A selection of short poems, translated from German, about death. Kaufman discusses what they teach us. Definitely worth reading.
http://taimur.org/kaufmann/death-without-dread/
Michel de Montaigne "That to study philosophy is to learn to die"
In the collected essays of Montaigne:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm
His main points are that death is always present and possible and that we delude ourselves if we believe otherwise; that people fear death unreasonably, and too much; and that we should regularly remind ourselves that we will die, so as to become comfortable with the notion.
Gulliver's Travels. Chapter 10 of Part 3. (p414 of 613 in my version). Or chapter 26 in a version not divided into parts.
About the Struldbrugs who are immortal, and not enjoying it at all.
http://www.online-literature.com/swift/gulliver/26/
Shelley Kagan "Philosophy of Death" course at Yale: podcasts and videos.
These podcasts are easy listening and Kagan is a great speaker. I got frustrated with how slowly it progresses though. He took about twenty minutes to explain the concept of 'area under a curve' when talking about maximising the value of your life.
Course home page:
http://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176
List of lectures:
http://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176#sessions
Fear of death:
http://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176/lecture-22
How to live with the certainty of death: