Chapter 16 Further Reading: Death

A note: some of the books listed under "Personal Accounts and the Art of Dying" are explicitly written from the experience of facing death. They are rich but may be difficult reading if you are in a tender place. Take care with what you choose and when.

Primary Sources

Epicurus, "Letter to Menoeceus" The primary source for Epicurus's argument about death. Brief (a single long letter) and accessible. Available free online in multiple translations. The argument is in its most direct form here; reading it in Epicurus's own words is more powerful than reading summaries.

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), Book III Lucretius develops the symmetry argument in poetic form — one of the few philosophical arguments that is also great literature. Book III concludes with an extended meditation on death and the fear of non-existence. Available free online. John Dryden's translation has historic beauty; A.E. Stallings's recent Penguin translation is clearest.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Not a systematic treatise but a private journal — Marcus writing to himself, working through Stoic principles in the face of his actual life, which included military command, plague, political crisis, and the deaths of people he loved. Book IX and X are particularly concentrated on mortality. Available free online; Gregory Hays's Modern Library translation (2002) is the most readable.

Seneca, Letters on Ethics and On the Shortness of Life Seneca is, in some ways, more immediately useful than Marcus for the question of mortality. "On the Shortness of Life" is a short essay arguing that life is not short — it is simply that we waste most of it. Both available free online and in Penguin Classics.

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II, Chapter 1: "Being-Towards-Death" This is the primary source, but it is genuinely difficult. Most readers will benefit from secondary sources first. If you want to read Heidegger directly, read Division I first for context, then approach Division II. Macquarrie and Robinson's translation is standard; Joan Stambaugh's more recent translation is considered clearer.

Philosophy of Death

Thomas Nagel, "Death" (1970) Published in Nous, this essay introduces the deprivation account and its challenge to Epicurus. Five pages, models philosophical argument at its clearest, widely anthologized. Available in Nagel's collection Mortal Questions (Cambridge University Press, 1979).

Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford University Press, 2002) A thorough and technically demanding treatment of why death is bad, what makes death worse or better, and related questions (when does life become not worth living, euthanasia, etc.). For the reader who wants the most rigorous philosophical treatment.

Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife (Oxford University Press, 2013) Unusual and fascinating. Scheffler argues that the existence of an afterlife — or specifically, the continuation of humanity after your death — matters to you even if you don't care about personal immortality. His thought experiments about a world where humanity ends after your death are startling. Accessible and relatively brief.

Shelly Kagan, Death (Yale University Press, 2012) Based on Kagan's hugely popular Yale course (the recorded lectures are available free on YouTube). Clear, systematic, covers all the major philosophical questions about death. The recorded lectures are an excellent companion to reading the book.

Heidegger: Guides and Extensions

Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (MIT Press, 1991) The best English-language guide to Heidegger's foundational work. Division I prepares you for Division II's account of death.

Iain Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education (Cambridge University Press, 2005) More advanced. For readers who want Heidegger's account of authenticity applied to contemporary life.

Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (Yale University Press, 1952) Tillich was a theologian deeply influenced by Heidegger who translated the concept of Angst into practical spirituality. More accessible than Heidegger and directly focused on the courage required to face non-being (death, meaninglessness, guilt).

Buddhist Perspectives

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear (Riverhead Books, 2002) The most accessible Buddhist treatment of death from a contemporary teacher. Thich Nhat Hanh addresses grief directly and offers practices for being with both dying and loss. Deeply compassionate.

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (HarperOne, 1993) A modern commentary on the Tibetan tradition of dying. Offers the metaphysical framework of Tibetan Buddhism but with an eye toward readers from other backgrounds. Some sections are more explicitly Buddhist than others.

Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs (Riverhead Books, 1997) For readers who want the practical and philosophical dimensions of Buddhism without the metaphysical commitments. Batchelor is a former Tibetan Buddhist monk who now advocates for a secular Buddhism rooted in practice and ethical inquiry.

Bhikkhu Analayo, Mindfully Facing Disease and Death (Windhorse Publications, 2016) A scholarly but readable treatment of how early Buddhist texts approach illness and death, with practical meditations. More rigorous than popular treatments.

African Philosophy

John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (Heinemann, 1969 — 2nd edition 1990) The foundational text for the African philosophical tradition as it relates to death, ancestors, and community. Chapter 4 on the concept of time and Chapters 9–10 on death and the living-dead are directly relevant.

Mogobe Ramose, African Philosophy Through Ubuntu (Mond Books, 1999) Develops Ubuntu as a philosophical system and applies it to questions of community, identity, and ethics. The implications for death (as a communal rather than individual event) are significant.

Thaddeus Metz, "African Conceptions of Human Dignity: Can a Communitarian Account Be Defended?" in Human Rights Review (2012) Academic article, but accessible. Examines how African relational philosophy accounts for individual dignity and its intersection with community — relevant to how death is understood in communal terms.

Terror Management Theory and Cultural Psychology

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (Free Press, 1973 — Pulitzer Prize 1974) The foundational text. Argues that human civilization is substantially organized around death denial. Still the most powerful single treatment of the psychological dimension of mortality. Not easy reading but deeply rewarding.

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (Random House, 2015) A popular science treatment of Terror Management Theory — the experimental psychology that grew from Becker's work. Very accessible, well-written, extensive. A good gateway to the research.

Personal Accounts and the Art of Dying

A note: these books are written from experience — by people facing their own death or accompanying others. They are not philosophy textbooks, but they are philosophically serious. Take care with yourself as you read.

Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Random House, 2016) Written by a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at 36. He is a careful, clear writer who thinks philosophically about what it means to face death while still forming an identity, and about what medicine is for. One of the few books about dying that is genuinely beautiful.

Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Metropolitan Books, 2014) A surgeon and writer examines how medicine has come to dominate dying — often badly — and what it means to help people live well until the end. Combines personal stories with systemic analysis. Deeply important for anyone thinking about death in the modern medical context.

Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (Hay House, 2012) The palliative care nurse whose work is referenced in the chapter. Warm and direct. The regrets themselves are worth sitting with; the book provides the human stories behind them.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (1961) Lewis wrote this after the death of his wife, and he did not soften it. It is a record of acute grief — including moments of anger at God, doubt, and the strange ways that grief distorts everything. One of the most honest books ever written about bereavement. Not philosophy in the technical sense, but deeply philosophically engaged.

Death and Society

Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death (Knopf, 1981) A monumental history of Western attitudes toward death from the early Middle Ages to the present. Traces how death moved from a communal, public event to a medicalized, privatized one. Dense but rewarding.

Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death (1963; revised edition 1998) A sharp, darkly funny account of the American funeral industry. Less philosophical but illuminating about how contemporary Western culture manages (and profits from) the hiding of death.

Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory (Norton, 2014) A mortician and death reform advocate describes her early years in the death industry and argues — persuasively — that the Western relationship with death is deeply unhealthy. Accessible and often funny.