Death, Philosophical Perspectives

The history of Western philosophy is framed by bold assertions on the relationship between philosophy and death. In his dialogue Phaedo, for example, ancient Greek philosopher Plato famously defined philosophy itself as meletethanatou, the practice or preparation for death, and the 20th-century philosopher and writer Albert Camus insists, equally famously in his Myth of Sisyphus, that the only serious philosophical question is the question of suicide. However, it was not until recently that professional philosophers began to address questions about death at any length. This entry treats only a few of the conceptual, metaphysical, and ethical issues concerning the philosophy of death and dying. These issues include philosophical problems regarding the definition of death, immortality, existential perspectives, and moral and ethical questions concerning death and the dead.

The Definition of Death

The most fundamental philosophical problem regarding death is how to define it. A common starting place is to warn against the ambiguity of the term: Death may refer either to the process of dying, the event of death, or the state of being dead. Rigorous philosophical work distinguishes in just what sense or senses the term is used. When philosophers speak of death, they are primarily denoting the event, the state, or both.

The next task is to provide the definition. Here philosophers distinguish a definition proper from a criterion. A definition tells us what death essentially is, what its necessary and sufficient conditions are; a criterion specifies a procedure for determining whether (and sometimes when) death, as defined, has occurred. A common biological definition of death for mammals identifies it with irreversible cessation of vital organismic functions. Philosophers wrestle with precisely which functions are meant. Traditionally, the permanent loss of respiratory and circulatory function was thought to equal death; today most philosophers prefer to define death as the permanent cessation of brain functioning, though they debate whether this means the whole brain, including the brain stem, or rather just the “higher brain,” the parts that govern consciousness and thinking, particularly the cerebrum and cerebellum.

Conceptual problems related to biological death mainly concern whether the specified physiological functions are both necessary and sufficient for death. The irreversible cessation of the breathing and respiratory functions is arguably not sufficient for death, as some brain function may persist even after breathing and respiration have ceased, nor may it be necessary for death, as someone who lacks any and all brain activity but whose circulation and breathing are artificially sustained may plausibly be regarded as nevertheless dead. Similar problems relate to brain accounts. If cessation of higher brain activity is sufficient for death, this implies that someone in a coma or persistent vegetative state is dead, even when all other vital signs are normal, a conclusion most are unwilling to accept. Similarly, whole-brain death is apparently not necessary for death because trace amounts of brain activity does not qualify one as alive when all other vital processes come to an end. A related question concerns whether death is a threshold concept, that is, whether one may be more orless dead to the extent that the essential vital processes have deteriorated irreversibly or permanently ceased.

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