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Inside the Blue Book
Confronting
the Dark Side
November
2001
by Jennifer L. Holley
Philosophy
119b
"Death"
Faculty: Shelly Kagan
Henry R. Luce Professor of Social Thought and Ethics
From
philosophy majors to students who have lost loved ones, people are
flocking to professor Shelly Kagan's course on "Death." He doesn't
promise answers, but describes the goal of the course as an attempt
"to get at what is the truth concerning the nature of death -- and
at what is the truth's significance for our lives."
Kagan began teaching "Death" in the mid-1980s at University of Illinois
at Chicago. After coming to Yale in 1995, he again offered the lecture
course, in which about 230 students enrolled last semester.
| |
An
attempt "to get at what is the truth concerning the nature
of death."
|
The
class spends the first half of the semester on metaphysical issues,
looking at arguments for and against the existence of a soul and
at the relevance of the soul as connected to the death of body.
As to his own view of the issue at hand, Kagan is frank. "I think
you're wrong to believe in a soul, and I believe that fear of death
is misguided," Kagan says. His decidedly biased stance leaves students
calling him everything from "self-righteous" to "a scintillating
lecturer."
The readings include works both philosophical and literary, an example
being the "immortality" chapter in Gulliver's Travels, in
which Jonathan Swift's Struldbruggs live forever, though their physical
frailties accrue.
In the second half of the semester, the class spends time on value
theory: How can death be bad if it's not an experience? Does death
wipe out the value of lives? Is suicide rational or ethical? "I
find this country's moral taboo against suicide irrational," says
Kagan, "and I lay out arguments for the morality of suicide under
certain situations."
Kagan notes that many people seem to hold merely a "semi-belief"
in death, as evidenced by those who have near brushes with death.
These people often change their behavior for a time -- before lapsing
into old bad habits. "Wouldn't it be better," he asks, "if we fully
accepted the fact that we are going to die?"  |
