Whole Lives and Good Deaths

Metaphilosophy 45 (3):331-347 (2014)
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Abstract

This article discusses two views associated with narrative conceptions of the self. The first view asserts that our whole life is reasonably regarded as a single unit of meaning. A prominent strand of the philosophical narrative account of the self is the representative of this view. The second view—which has currency beyond the confines of the philosophical narrative account—is that the meaning of a life story is dependent on what happens at the end of it. The article argues that the connection between these two views is more tentative than often supposed: philosophical narrativists that see life as a single unit of value and meaning nonetheless provide grounds for arguing that the end of life is not the best and may be a particularly bad time to approach and intervene in the matter of how well one's life as a whole has gone.

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Kathy Behrendt
Wilfrid Laurier University

References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
After virtue: a study in moral theory.Alasdair C. MacIntyre - 2007 - Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
After Virtue.A. MacIntyre - 1981 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 46 (1):169-171.
The Constitution of Selves.Marya Schechtman (ed.) - 1996 - Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Well-being and death.Ben Bradley - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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