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« Is this funny only to me? | Main | Checks and disasters » Friday, March 9, 2007Can I give you a nickname?The Bookseller/Diagram Prize, given in England, goes to the book that, according to voters, has the most bizarre title of the year. (Thanks to a Metafilter tipster for noting it.) "Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan" is up there this year, as is "How Green Were the Nazis?" My personal favorite of this year's shortlist, however, is "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence." This, I assume, touches on a debate that is in fact very much alive in philosophical circles. Some ethicists -- no, not that one -- have wondered whether it is permissible to abort a fetus of a child who will have Down Syndrome or an even more debilitating condition. Then there are the Terri Schiavos, at the other end of life. Is it true that some people are better off dead? And, more difficult to answer, who gets to decide? Noted philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a paper called "Death," collected in "Mortal Questions," whose first sentence opens, "If death is the unequivocal and permanent end of our existence, the question arises whether it is a bad thing to die..." Nagel spills some elegantly arranged ink and arrives at the following stunner: it is, in fact, bad to die. I like that paper. Posted by Evan Hughes at 06:23 PM
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