Death by Shelly Kagan

Author:Shelly Kagan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780300180848
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Dying Alone

Let me turn now to a different claim that sometimes gets made about death. This is the claim that everybody dies alone. That is to say, although we are able to eat meals together, take vacations together, and listen to music together, death is something we all have to do by ourselves: we all die alone. That’s the claim. If it’s true, it seems to be offering a deep insight into the nature of death. It has an air of profundity about it. Everyone dies alone. It seems that this is telling us something deep and important and interesting about the nature of death.

As far as I can see, however, it’s just not true. Of course, here too, it isn’t altogether clear how the claim in question is to be interpreted. But however we interpret it, it seems to me, it just ends up being implausible, or simply false, or uninteresting. So I am going to give this claim a very hard time.

I’m going to give it such a hard time that sometimes I am not even sure it is worth discussing this claim. A few years ago, in fact, I had pretty much decided that I would stop discussing this claim in my course on death. I had decided that people don’t really think that we all die alone—so why waste any time examining that view? And then, I kid you not, that very afternoon I came across a quote that seemed to express exactly that thought! And then, a day or two later, my daughter showed me another. And the fact of the matter is, once you start looking for it, you can find this idea expressed in all sorts of places. So I guess it really is a common enough idea after all, and it does deserve to be examined.

Here are the two quotes. The first one is from the folk singer Loudon Wainwright III, from his song “Last Man on Earth”: “We learn to live together and then we die alone.”2 We die alone. That’s undeniably an interesting claim. It seems to say something important about the nature of death. Here’s another quote. This one is from the children’s book Eldest, by Christopher Paolini. “ ‘How terrible,’ said Eragon, ‘to die alone, separate even from the one who is closest to you.’ ” And the answer given to Eragon? “Everyone dies alone, Eragon. Whether you are a king on a battlefield or a lowly peasant lying in bed among your family, no one can accompany you into the void.”3 Everyone dies alone.

As I say, this is a common enough view. I’ve only given you two quotes, but I could certainly produce others. So the question we’re going to ask is this: can we find some interpretation of this claim—that everyone dies alone—where this actually turns out to be true?

Actually, it is going to take a bit more than that to satisfy me. Suppose that by some bizarre coincidence people always die on Mondays. There is no reason why they couldn’t die on some other day, they just don’t happen to do that.

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