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Acknowledgments -- 1. Thinking about Death -- 2. Dualism versus Physicalism -- 3. Arguments for the Existence of the Soul -- 4. Descartes' Argument -- 5. Plato the Immortality of the Soul -- 6. Personal Identity -- 7. Choosing between the Theories -- 8. The Nature of Death -- 9. Two Surprising Claims about Death -- 10. The Badness of Death -- 11. Immortality -- 12. The Value of Life -- 13. Other Aspects of Death -- 14. Living in the Face of Death -- 15. Suicide -- 16. Conclusion: An Invitation -- Notes -- Suggestions for Further Reading -- Index.

Thinking about Death
This is a book about death. But it is a work of philosophy, and what that means is that the topics that we're going to discuss are not identical to the topics that other books on death might try to cover. So the first thing I want to do is to say something about some of the subjects that we won't be discussing, things that you might reasonably expect or hope that a book on death would talk about, so that if this is not the book you were looking for, you'll realize that right away.

What I primarily have in mind are psychological and sociological questions about the nature of death, or the phenomenon of death. For example, a book on death might well have a detailed discussion of the process of dying or coming to reconcile yourself with the fact that you're going to die. We're not going to talk about that. Similarly, we're not going to talk at all about the process of grieving or bereavement. And we're not going to discuss the funeral industry in America, or the troubling attitudes that we take toward the dying, or how we tend to try to keep the dying hidden from the rest of us. These are all perfectly important topics, but they're not, as I say, topics that we're going to be talking about in this book.

So what will we talk about? We will be discussing philosophical questions that arise as we begin to think about the nature of death. Questions like, what happens when we die? Actually, though, to get at that question, the first thing we're going to have to do is think about this question: what are we? What kind of an entity is a person? In particular, do we have souls?

I might as well explain―right here at the start―that in this book I am going to be using the term "soul" as a bit of philosophical jargon. By "soul" I'm going to mean something immaterial, something distinct from our bodies. So one thing that we will be asking is, do we have immaterial souls, something that might survive the death of the body? And if not, what does that imply about the nature of death? What happens when we die?

Here's another question we'll be asking: what would it take for me to survive my death? Indeed, we need to ask more generally, what is it for me to survive at all? For example, what does it mean for me to survive, say, tonight? Here, roughly, is what I mean by that question. At some point tomorrow afternoon somebody is going to be sitting here at my computer, working on this book. I certainly presume (and hope!) that it will be me. But what exactly is it for that person, who will be sitting here typing tomorrow, to be the very same person as the person who is sitting here typing today? That's a question about the nature of personal identity across time. Pretty clearly, if we are going to think properly about death and survival, and the possibility of my continued existence after my death, we first have to get clear about the very nature of personal identity.

These sorts of questions―questions about the existence of souls and the nature of death and the possibility of surviving death―will occupy us for roughly the first half of the book. And then we'll turn to value questions. If death is really the end, can death be bad? Of course, most of us are immediately and strongly inclined to think that death is bad. But there are philosophical puzzles about how death could be bad.

Let me try to give you a quick feel for one of these puzzles. Suppose that after my death I won't exist. If you stop to think about it, then, it becomes hard to see how death can be bad for me. After all, it seems that death can't be bad for me when I am dead: how can anything be bad for something that doesn't even exist? But if death can't be bad for me when I am dead, how can it be bad for me at all? After all, it certainly doesn't seem that it can be bad for me now, while I'm still alive!

Don't worry. I am not going to try to convince you that death isn't bad. But as we'll see, it actually takes a bit of work to pin down precisely what it is about death that's bad, so as to see how death can be bad. (It's also worth asking whether there is more than one thing about death that makes it bad.) Now if death is indeed bad, then one might wonder, would immortality be a good thing? That's another question that we'll think about. And more generally, we need to ask: how should the fact that I'm going to die affect the way that I live? What should my attitude be toward my mortality? Should I, for example, be afraid of death? Should I despair at the fact that I'm going to die?

Finally, we'll turn to questions about suicide. Many of us think that given the valuable and precious thing that life is, suicide never makes sense. After all, you're throwing away the only life you're ever going to have. So we'll end the book by examining the rationality and morality (or, perhaps, the irrationality and immorality) of suicide.

That's where we're going. For those of you familiar with the relevant philosophical jargon, we can say that, roughly speaking, the first half of the book will be metaphysics, and the last half of the book will be value theory.

Now there are, I think, two different ways to write a philosophy book, especially an introductory book like this. In the first approach, you simply lay out the various alternative positions, pro and con, and you try to remain neutral. You don't openly take a stand; you avoid letting on which particular positions are the ones you actually accept. That's approach number one. But there is a rather different approach you can take instead, and I should warn you that in this book it is this second approach I will be taking. In the second approach, you do tell the reader which views you accept, and you argue for them―you do your best to defend them. That's closer to what I will be doing here. There is a particular line of thought that I am going to be developing and defending. That is to say, there's a set of views I hold about the issues that we'll be discussing, and what I'm going to try to do in this book is to convince you that those views are correct.

To help give you a quick sense of what those views are, let me start by describing a different set of views―one that many other people accept. As you'll see in a moment, this common point of view involves a number of logically distinct claims. Logically speaking, then, you could believe some of these things and not all of them. But lots of people do believe all of them, and I imagine that it's pretty likely that you too believe at least some of these things.

So here's the set of common views. First of all, we have a soul. That is to say, we are not just bodies. We're not just lumps of flesh and bone. Instead, there's a part of us, perhaps the essential part of us, that is something more than physical―it's the spiritual, immaterial part of us. As I say, in this book we'll call that a soul. Most of us believe in souls. Maybe you do too. Certainly most people in America believe in some sort of immaterial soul. And given the existence of this immaterial soul―the common view continues―it's a possibility, indeed a fair likelihood, that we will survive our deaths. Death will be the destruction of my body, but my soul is immaterial, and so my soul can continue to exist after my death. Of course, there is much that we can't know about death; death is the ultimate mystery. But whether or not you do believe in a soul, you probably at least hope that there's a soul, because then there would be a serious possibility of surviving your death. After all, death is not only bad, it is so horrible that what we would like is to live forever. Immortality would be wonderful. And armed with a soul, as it were, there's at least the possibility of immortality. At any rate, that's certainly what we hope is the case―that we are immortal souls―whether or not we know that it's the case. And if there is no soul, if death really is the end, then this is such an overwhelmingly bad thing that the obvious reaction, the approp

What should we believe about the nature of death?

How should the knowledge of our mortality affect the way we live?

There is one thing we can be sure of: we are all going to die. But once we accept that fact, the questions begin. In this thought-provoking book, philosophy professor Shelly Kagan examines the myriad questions that arise when we confront the meaning of mortality. Do we have reason to believe in the existence of immortal souls? Or should we accept an account according to which people are just material objects, nothing more? Can we make sense of the idea of surviving the death of one’s body? If I won’t exist after I die, can death truly be bad for me? Would immortality be desirable? Is fear of death appropriate? Is suicide ever justified? How should I live in the face of death?

Written in an informal and conversational style, this stimulating and provocative book challenges many widely held views about death, as it invites the reader to take a fresh look at one of the central features of the human condition-the fact that we will die.