A Study On The Harm Thesis Of Death And Its Controversy

This article focuses on the Harm Thesis of death and its controversies,which refers to the controversy between the Harm Thesis of death and Epicurean Challenge.The Harm Thesis of death claims that death would harm the subject of death;Epicurean Challenge points out that death wouldn’t harm the subject of death,on the basis of questioning the Harm Thesis.According to the Harm Thesis,the harm caused by death includes the intrinsic harm and the extrinsic harm.The intrinsic harm occurs when death is intrinsically bad for the subject of death;the extrinsic harm occurs when death deprives the subject of death of the good intrinsic value that he or she could have had otherwise.The Harm Thesis is based on Egoism,Standard Comparativism,and the Welfare Theory.Explanations of extrinsic harm are also known as the Account of Deprivation.The Epicurean challenge is: how to locate the time when the subject of death is incurring the harm caused by death? When the subject is dead,the subject ceases to exist,and things that do not exist cannot be harmed.When the subject is alive,death has not yet happened,let alone caused harm to the subject.The positive argument of the Epicurean challenge is to propose an Epicurean definition based on Passive Hedonism and Bifurcated Comparativism,and to demonstrate the view that death is harmless according to this definition.Faced with the Epicurean Challenge of time,proponents of the Harm Thesis have offered five answers: Eternalism,Indefinitism,Priorism,Concurrentism,and Subsequentialism.Faced with Epicurean harmless account,proponents of the Harm Thesis also pointed out the problems of its theoretical basis,thus constituting a refutation of Epicurean harmless account.I insist that the Harm Thesis is more convincing.Based on Steven Luper’s interpretation of this controversy,I will reframe the Harm Thesis argument,the Epicurean Challenge,and the responses of the Harm Thesis proponents,in order to illustrate reasons for support.These reasons are as follows: In terms of argumentation,Epicurean harmless account is counterintuitive,while the Harm Thesis has comparative theoretical advantages;in terms of response,the Harm thesis has provided a persuasive response to questioning.