We normally take it for granted that other people will live on
after we ourselves have died. Even if we do not believe in a
personal afterlife in which we survive our own deaths, we assume
that there will be a "collective afterlife" in which humanity
survives long after we are gone. Samuel Scheffler maintains that
this assumption plays a surprising - indeed astonishing - role in
our lives. In certain important respects, the future existence of
people who are as yet unborn matters more to us than our own
continued existence and the continued existence of those we love.
Without the expectation that humanity has a future, many of the
things that now matter to us would cease to do so. By contrast, the
prospect of our own deaths does little to undermine our confidence
in the value of our activities. Despite the terror we may feel when
contemplating our deaths, then, the prospect of humanity's imminent
extinction would pose a far greater threat to our ability to lead
value-laden lives: lives structured by wholehearted engagement in
valued activities and pursuits. This conclusion complicates
widespread assumptions about human egoism and individualism. And it
has striking implications for the way we think about climate
change, nuclear proliferation, and other urgent threats to
humanity's survival. Scheffler adds that, although we are not
unreasonable to fear death, personal immortality, like the imminent
extinction of humanity, would also undermine our confidence in the
values we hold dear. His arresting conclusion is that, in order for
us to lead value-laden lives, what is necessary is that we
ourselves should die and that others should live. Scheffler's
position is discussed with insight and imagination by four
distinguished commentators - Harry Frankfurt, Niko Kolodny, Seana
Shiffrin, and Susan Wolf - and Scheffler adds a final reply. "This
is some of the most interesting and best-written philosophy I have
read in a long time. Scheffler's book is utterly original in its
fundamental conception, brilliant in its analysis and argument, and
concise and at times beautiful in its formulation." Stephen
Darwall, Yale University "[Scheffler's] discussion of the issues
with which he has concerned himself is fresh and original.
Moreover, so far as I am aware, those issues are themselves pretty
much original with him. He seems really to have raised, within a
rigorously philosophical context, some new questions. At least, so
far as I know, no one before has attempted to deal with those
questions so systematically. So it appears that he has effectively
opened up a new and promising field of philosophical inquiry. Not
bad going, in a discipline to which many of the very best minds
have already devoted themselves for close to three thousand years."
-Harry Frankfurt, Princeton University, from 'How the Afterlife
Matters' (in this volume)" "A truly wonderful and very important
book." - Derek Parfit, Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College,
University of Oxford
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