Death and Nonexistence by Palle Yourgrau

Death and Nonexistence by Palle Yourgrau

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Death and Nonexistence by Palle Yourgrau

The dead are gone. They count for nothing. Yet, if we count the dead, their number is staggering. And they account for most of what is great about civilization. Compared to the greatness of the dead, the accomplishments of the living are paltry. Which is it then: are the dead still there to be counted or not? And if they are still there, where exactly is "there"? We are confronted with the ancient paradox of nonexistence bequeathed us by Parmenides. The mystery of death is the mystery of nonexistence. A successful attempt to provide a metaphysics of death, then, must resolve the paradox of nonexistence. That is the aim of this study. At the same time, the metaphysics of death, of ceasing to exist, must serve as an account of birth, of coming to exist; the primary thesis of this book is that this demands going beyond existence and nonexistence to include what underlies both, which one can call, following tradition, "being." The dead and the unborn are therefore objects that lack existence but not being. Nonexistent objects - not corpses, or skeletons, or memories, all of which are existent objects - are what are "there" to be counted when we count the dead.
Palle Yourgrau is Harry A. Wolfson Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University. He is the author of Simone Weil (2011), A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein (2005), and Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in the Gödel Universe (1999).
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780190247478
ISBN 10 0190247479
Title Death and Nonexistence
Author Palle Yourgrau
Condition Unavailable
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Year published 2019-08-22
Number of pages 232
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note Unavailable