Fellow Travelers

A synoptic account of the ontology of death developed in the book is offered, according to which the dead (and the unborn) are seen to be nonexistent objects that possess being but lack existence, and that retain their essential natures as living beings that are now no longer actually alive. This approach has points of contact with the approaches offered by several other philosophers, only one of whom, however, is engaged in the philosophy of death, which helps to confirm the thesis that philosophers of death have failed to take into account the insights achieved in other branches of philosophy. The approach taken by each of these “fellow travelers”—Niall Connolly, Timothy Williamson, Nathan Salmon, Kit Fine, David Kaplan, Derek Parfit—is considered, in turn, and the places where there is agreement, and also disagreement, with the views advanced in this study are delineated.

Death and Nonexistence

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’s 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’re still there, where, exactly, is “there”? We’re 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 at the same time resolve the paradox of nonexistence. That is the aim of this study. At the same time, the ontology of death, i.e. of ceasing to exist, must serve as an account of birth, i.e. coming to exist, and the primary thesis of this book is that this requires expanding one’s ontology beyond existence and nonexistence to include what underlies both, namely, “being.” The dead, along with the unborn, are nonexistent objects which retain their identity before, during, and after their transition to, and from, existence. The nonexistent are what are “there” that can be counted when we count the dead. The dead and the unborn are thus the same kind of beings as the living. What separates the living from the dead is only their existence.

Nonexistence and Death

Since, as most philosophers of death agree, death implies nonexistence (the corpse is not the dead person, who is essentially a living being), it follows that the mystery of death is due in no small part to the paradox of nonexistence. Failing to recognize this, philosophers of death have failed to engage with the literature on the logic of nonexistence, and thus have failed to appreciate Russell’s 1902 distinction between existence and being in relation to the ontology of death. By contrast, it is maintained here that the dead are nonexistent objects that have forfeited their existence, but not their being. More generally, one of the principal goals of this study is to draw attention to the fact that the left hand of philosophy has ignored what the right hand is doing. The mysteries of death and nonexistence, which should have been approached together, have been kept apart.

Peter Auriol on the Intuitive Cognition of Nonexistents

This paper looks at the critical reception of two central claims of Peter Auriol’s theory of cognition: the claim that the objects of cognition have an apparent or objective being that resists reduction to the real being of objects, and the claim that there may be natural intuitive cognitions of nonexistent objects. These claims earned Auriol the criticism of his fellow Franciscans, Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham. According to them, the theory of apparent being was what had led Auriol to allow for intuitive cognitions of nonexistents, but the intuitive cognition of nonexistents, at its turn, led to skepticism. Modern commentators have offered similar readings of Auriol, but this paper argues, first, that the apparent being provides no special reason to think there could be intuitions of nonexistent objects, and second, that despite his idiosyncratic account of intuition, Auriol was no more vulnerable to skepticism than his critics.

The question of Fiction – nonexistent objects, a possible world response from Paul Ricoeur

The question of fiction is omnipresent within the work of Paul Ricoeur throughout his prolific career. However, Ricoeur raises the questions of fiction in relation to other issues such the symbol, metaphor and narrative. This article sets out to foreground a traditional problem of fiction and logic, which is termed the existence of non-existent objects, in relation to the Paul Ricoeur’s work on narrative. Ricoeur’s understanding of fiction takes place within his overall philosophical anthropology where the fictions and histories make up the very nature of identity both personal and collective. The existence of non-existent objects demonstrates a dichotomy between fiction and history, non-existent objects can exist as fictional objects. The very possibility of the existence of fictional objects entails ontological status considerations. What ontological status do fictional objects have? Ricoeur develops a concept of narrative configuration which is akin to the Kantian productive imagination and configuration frames the question historical narrative and fictional narrative. It is demonstrated that the ontological status of fictional objects can be best understood in a model of possible worlds.