O MAL DA MORTE NO PESSIMISMO: CONSIDERAÇÕES A PARTIR DE ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER E DAVID BENATAR

Abstract

In this paper I address the possibility of compatibility between philosophical pessimism and the claim that death is an evil for the one who dies. By philosophical pessimism, I mean the philosophical doctrine that maintains as its fundamental thesis that non-existence is preferable to existence, so that pessimism is taken as the philosophy that life is not worth living. By the evil of death, I am referring to the understanding of death as a harm to the one who dies, whose assumption in different contemporary accounts is that death is only an evil if continuing to exist is preferable to ceasing to exist. Thus, the problem discussed is the apparent incompatibility between the thesis that non-existence is preferable to existence and the thesis that continuing to exist is preferable to ceasing to exist. I aim to show that this (in)compatibility depends on the way we base philosophical pessimism. In order to do so, I examine two arguments for philosophical pessimism and their implications for the evil of death: Arthur Schopenhauer's a priori argument and David Benatar's asymmetry argument.  I conclude that the former argument leads us to the conclusion that death is not an evil, but the latter argument reconciles philosophical pessimism and the claim that death is an evil for the one who dies.