耶鲁大学开放课程哲学死亡的26课的英文字幕16Word文档下载推荐.docx

1、s conceivable that somebody could, at some level, not really believe theyre going to die. But I also take it that Tolstoy means to be putting forward more than just a claim that there could be such a person. Look how bizarre he is. Let me describe him for you. But rather, the suggestion is meant to

2、be that Ivan Ilyichs case is rather typical. Maybe all of us are in his situation, or at least most of us are in his situation. Or, at the very least, many of us are in his situation. Thats a stronger claim, though I think its not the sort of claim thats unique to Tolstoy, that all of us or most of

3、us or many of us at the fundamental level dont really believe that were going to die.You might ask, what kind of evidence could be offered for that? Offering a realistic scenario, a realistic description of such a person-Ivan Ilyich-doesnt give us any reason to think that most of us or many of us ar

4、e in his situation. So, is there any reason to think that? You might ask, what kind of argument could be offered for a claim like that?What wed be looking for, I take it, would be some kind of behavior on our part that calls out for explanation. And the best explanation is to be had-This is how the

5、argument would go. The best explanation is to be had by supposing that those people who behave this way-Lets suppose many of us who behave this way. The best explanation of that behavior is to be found by claiming that at some level, at some fundamental level, we dont really believe what we claim to

6、 believe. We dont really believe what we give lip service to.Take somebody who perhaps suffers from some sort of compulsion to wash his hands. We ask him, Are your hands dirty? He might say, No, of course not. And yet, there he is, going back to bathroom, washing his hands again. You might say, the

7、only way to explain the behavior is to say that at some level, he really does believe his hands are dirty, despite the fact that he says theyre not. Well, in the same way, if we could find some behavior on our part that calls out for explanation, that the best possible explanation would be that at s

8、ome level we dont believe were going to die, then we might say, look, this gives us some reason to think that we dont really believe were going to die, even though we say we believe it.Suppose, for example, that if you really did believe, fundamentally, unconsciously, all the way down-however we sho

9、uld put it-if you really did believe you were going to die, the horror of that would lead you to start screaming and just keep screaming. Of course, this example reminds us again of Ivan Ilyich, who screams and screams and screams almost till his death. Well, suppose this was true. Suppose that if y

10、ou-Suppose we believed-we had good reason to believe-if you really took seriously the thought that you were going to die, you couldnt stop screaming. But of course, nobody here is screaming, from which we can conclude none of us really do believe, fundamentally, deep down, that were going to die. Th

11、at would be a good argument if we had good reason to believe the conditional, the if-then claim. If only you really truly believed you were going to die, you would scream and scream and scream. Thats the crucial premise. And of course, we dont have any good-as far as I can see-we dont have any good

12、reason to believe that crucial premise.You might ask though, is there some other behavior, something else that should tip us off, could tip us off, as to whether or not we really do or dont believe that were going to die? Well, heres the best that I can do. This strikes me as the most plausible cont

13、ender for an argument like this. As we know, there are people who have brushes with death. They might be, for example, in an accident, and come close to being killed, but walk away without a scratch. Or suffer a heart attack and be on the operating table for some number of hours and then, thanks to

14、cardiac surgery or what have you, be resuscitated. When people have these near brushes with death, its easy to believe that the fact of their mortality is more vivid. Its more before their minds eye. Its something that they now really truly do believe. And the interesting point is many people who ha

15、ve this sort of experience, for whom their mortality has become vivid, they often say, Ive got to change my life. I need to spend less time at the office and more time with my family, telling the people that I love that I love them, doing the things that are important to me, spend less time worrying

16、 about getting ahead, making money, getting the plasma TV, whatever it is.Lets suppose that this is true of all of us, or at least most of us. When we find the fact of our mortality is made vivid, when we really truly can see that were mortal, then we change our priorities, stop giving all the time

17、and attention to trying to get ahead in the rat race and spend more time with our loved ones doing whats important to us. Suppose that claim were true. Well, armed with that claim, we might notice, well look, of course, most of us do spend a lot of time trying to get ahead, trying to earn a lot of m

18、oney, dont spend the bulk of our time doing the things that we really truly think are most important to us, dont tell our friends, dont tell our family members how much they mean to us, how much we love them. What are we to make of that fact? Well, maybe the explanation is, although we give lip serv

19、ice to the claim that were mortal, at some more fundamental level, we dont truly believe it. The beliefs not vivid for us. We dont believe it all the way down.Well, this is an argument-at least it seems to me-that has some chance of being right. Im not at all convinced that it is right. But at least

20、 it doesnt seem to be the sort of argument, unlike some of the arguments Ive considered last time about oh, nobody believes theyre going to die because you cant picture being dead or what have you. This argument, I think, has some possibility of being right. It does seem as though people who have br

21、ushes with death change their behavior in significant ways. The fact that we dont behave in those other ways gives us some reason to believe that perhaps at some level we dont completely or fully or fundamentally believe were going to die. As I say, Im not sure whether that arguments right. But at l

22、east its an argument worth taking seriously.Let me turn now to a different claim that sometimes gets made about death. This is the claim-not that nobody believes theyre going to die; thats the one weve been talking about for the last lecture or so-but instead, the claim that everybody dies alone. Th

23、is sounds like one of those deep insights into the nature of death. Its got that kind of air of profundity about it that philosophys thought to have or aspires to have. Everyone dies alone. This is telling us something deep and important and interesting about the nature of death.Now, as it happens,

24、this is one Im going to be completely dismissive of. I think, as far as I can see, that the claim we all die alone, however we interpret it, just ends up being implausible or false. I give it such a hard time each time I teach this class, that Im often tempted to just drop it from the discussion alt

25、ogether. Even though, if youve done the reading of the Edwards paper that I assigned, you have a series of quotes from Edwards in which people say things like, they die alone. I sometimes come away after this discussion thinking, Why am I wasting our time? Nobody really believes this, that we all di

26、e alone. Last year I was virtually ready to drop it and then, I kid you not, that very afternoon, I came across a quote. Ill share this with you in a second. Somebody saying, Oh, we all die alone. And then I think it was two days later, a week later, I came across another quote of somebody saying, I

27、t made me think, Oh, I guess this is a common enough thought.So here are the two quotes. But I think once you start looking for them, you find them everyplace. This 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 alo

28、ne. We die alone. Interesting claim. It seems to say something important about the nature of death. Heres another quote. This is from the childrens book, Eldest by Christopher Paolini, the sequel, of course, to the bestseller Eragon. 鈥楬ow terrible, said Eragon, 鈥榯o die alone, separate, even from the

29、 one who is closest to you. 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鈥? Everyone dies alone.As I say, this is a common enough view. Two quotes. I could cer

30、tainly produce others. Everyone dies alone. The trick-The question were going to ask is, can we find some interpretation of that claim under which, first of all it ends up being true, secondly, it ends up being a necessary truth about death? Suppose everyone happens to die on Monday, due to some cosmic coincidence. It might be sort of interesting, but it wouldnt tell us something deep about the nature of death, if peopl