Unfortunately, few contemporary theorists revisit the implications and possible problems with Levenbook’s approach. Levenbook motivates her view with two intuitions: (1) people cease to exist at the point of death (407-408) and (2) murder harms its victim (407, 412). accounts of the harm of death (and killing) often accept her claim that one can best account for (2) by acknowledging one can lose something at the time of death despite (1). Such views do not mean to thereby commit themselves to the possibility of posthumous harms, but that possibility lingers and creates tensions between (1) and (2). According to Levenbook, one cannot account for (2) without acknowledging the possibility of posthumous harms. There is no reason to believe that one can lose something at the moment of death but not after death (417). Thus, claims about the badness of death and the badness of posthumous events are interrelated. If Levenbook’s claims about the interrelatedness of the harm of death and posthumous events and the particular harm of murder are true, one cannot explain why one can be harmed by death but not harmed after death. One can only hold a view that murder harms its victim at the time of death by depriving him/her of something in tandem with beliefs that the dead can lose things posthumously and these losses are harms. The specter of the problem of the subject returns. There are several potential solutions to this puzzle. First, one can deny that the harms concerning death are related and provide alternative explanations of the badness of death or posthumous events. For instance, John Broome and Jeff McMahan adopt deprivation-based accounts of the harm of death but each suggests (bad) posthumous events affect the deceased’s lives retroactively; they thereby avoiding the problem of the subject. Yet arguments for the how two harms concerning death are unrelated remain largely absent. Second, one can show how one’s account of the harm of death is consistent with posthumous harms and further claim that posthumous harms are unproblematic. One can show how posthumous harms can exist without
Unfortunately, few contemporary theorists revisit the implications and possible problems with Levenbook’s approach. Levenbook motivates her view with two intuitions: (1) people cease to exist at the point of death (407-408) and (2) murder harms its victim (407, 412). accounts of the harm of death (and killing) often accept her claim that one can best account for (2) by acknowledging one can lose something at the time of death despite (1). Such views do not mean to thereby commit themselves to the possibility of posthumous harms, but that possibility lingers and creates tensions between (1) and (2). According to Levenbook, one cannot account for (2) without acknowledging the possibility of posthumous harms. There is no reason to believe that one can lose something at the moment of death but not after death (417). Thus, claims about the badness of death and the badness of posthumous events are interrelated. If Levenbook’s claims about the interrelatedness of the harm of death and posthumous events and the particular harm of murder are true, one cannot explain why one can be harmed by death but not harmed after death. One can only hold a view that murder harms its victim at the time of death by depriving him/her of something in tandem with beliefs that the dead can lose things posthumously and these losses are harms. The specter of the problem of the subject returns. There are several potential solutions to this puzzle. First, one can deny that the harms concerning death are related and provide alternative explanations of the badness of death or posthumous events. For instance, John Broome and Jeff McMahan adopt deprivation-based accounts of the harm of death but each suggests (bad) posthumous events affect the deceased’s lives retroactively; they thereby avoiding the problem of the subject. Yet arguments for how the two harms concerning death are unrelated remain largely absent. Second, one can show how one’s account of the harm of death is consistent with posthumous harms and further claim that posthumous harms are unproblematic. One can show how posthumous harms can exist without
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