Fear of Death and the Symmetry Argument

Abstract

According to the Symmetry Argument against the fear of death, our attitudes towards birth and death should be identical. In this paper I defend the Deprivation Account of the badness of death, according to which death is bad because it deprives one of future goods. After rejecting previous attempts to explain and justify the asymmetry in our attitudes towards birth and death I argue that the asymmetry in our attitudes is both explained and justified by the fact that contrary to birth, death is not viewed as a nomologically necessary condition for life, and therefore death is viewed as an unnecessary limitation of life.