YAM November 2001 - Inside the Blue Book

Previous Columns

Summer 2001 Exploring "girl power."

May 2001 Learning the ins and outs of e-commerce.

April 2001 Delving into depression.

February 2001 A Tercentennial team explores the nature of democracy.

December 2000 Geologists study old shells to learn the art of observation.

November 2000 "Dr. Curveball" teaches the physics of the national game.

October 2000 A writer teaches the art of creating a sense of place.

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 -- and the truth's significance for our lives."

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?"

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