Sam Dresser writes for Aeon: Two puny words shoulder a substantial, if diffuse, philosophical outlook: as if. Epicurus was perhaps the first to put this unexceptional construction to good use. He felt that life was about attaining whatever passing happiness we might find, while avoiding as much pain and suffering as we can. In neither … Read more“As If”
Michael Cholbi writes for Aeon: Freedom is a notoriously complex and contested philosophical notion, and I won’t pretend to settle any of the big controversies it raises. But I believe that a type of freedom we can call freedom over death – that is, a freedom in which we shape the timing and circumstances of … Read more“Freedom over death”
Adam Lee writes for OnlySky on the potential of New York becoming the eleventh US state to legalize Medical Assistance in Dying, and on the secular Humanist ethical underpinnings of MAID: If we have a freedom, we can choose how to exercise it. That choice necessarily includes the right not to exercise it. Freedom of … Read more“The Future of Dying”
Alexis Shotwell writes for Psyche on Ursula K. LeGuin’s practical philosophy:
The Two Dudes Philosophy YouTube channel offers a cogent summary and analysis of Ernest Becker’s “Denial of Death” thesis.
Thomas Moynihan writes for the BBC on a novel immortality project proposed by the English historian and freethinker Frederic Harrison in 1890: With posterity on his mind, Harrison decided to write an article titled “A Pompeii for the Twenty-Ninth Century”. Leaping off from a forecast that London may one day be as “desolate” as the … Read more“If a Victorian historian had his way, there’d be a giant time capsule under Stonehenge”
Emma Goldberg writes for The New Yorker: The gray Oklahoma skies opened into a drizzle. Moss wondered what he had to offer Hancock in these final hours, when ordinary wisdom seemed to fail and prayers, in this case, were irrelevant. Heaven, hell, salvation: He had talked about it all with Hancock, but neither of them … Read more“An Atheist Chaplain and a Death Row Inmate’s Final Hours”
Mihika Agarwal writes for Vox on the rise of AI-assisted grief processing: In the spring of 2023, Sunshine Henle texted her mother. She asked where she had gone, told her that she missed her, and soon received a response: “Honey, I wish I could give you a definite answer, but what I do know is … Read more“The race to optimize grief”
Jared Morningstar writes for Medium in memoriam of his friend Liam, and on the intrinsic value of life in relation to death: To be is also to experience, and the conscious experience of human life is something of both irreducible individuality and incomparable richness. In merely experiencing life as ourselves — in all its complexity … Read more“What Justifies a Life? In Memory of Liam McCarty”
Dr. Lindsay Ryan writes for The Atlantic: One doctor told us of a landscape architect who drank the fatal cocktail while exulting in her garden in full bloom. It sounded perfect—except that in all my years as a doctor, I’ve never seen a perfect death. Every time, there’s some flaw: physical discomfort, conversations left unfinished, … Read more“How Do I Make Sense of My Mother’s Decision to Die?”