What Is Bad About Death? (Column 270)

First of all, happy birthday—long life and a painless death.
That’s a blessing I’ve been using for some time for service providers of all kinds, and it usually amuses them, at least for a moment.
Second, I read almost to the end, and I admit I haven’t read Nagel, but this is a topic I’ve thought about quite a bit.
Let me add a few nice quotations. Regarding the first claim, Woody Allen once said that he isn’t afraid of death, because he had been dead for a very long time before he was born, and it was perfectly fine.
As for the moment of death, I seem to recall that in Meir Shalev’s book At Home in the Desert (which I haven’t read all of), there’s a story about someone who is killed, and his wife is told that he died instantly and didn’t feel it, but the possibility is raised that the moment of death may have lasted a very long time in his consciousness, and he suffered for an eternity.
I admit that the fact that our lives have undergone long-term optimization with respect to many parameters, by means of evolution, whereas the process of dying has undergone no quality control at all, worries me a bit.
But on the other hand, everyone goes through it, and no one has yet died from it or come back to tell us how awful it is. Besides, there isn’t much I can do about it.
As a religious believer, I remember having been afraid of the day of death, lest it come before I merited to return in complete repentance, refine my character traits, and cease being a slave to my body.
But I think there is no obstacle to thinking that fear of death is a property of the body and not something rational.

Fear is never a property of the body. Perhaps you meant that it is a psychological phenomenon. That is a possible view, as I wrote, but it comes with a moral price tag. It seems to me that the value of life and the prohibition of murder would also have to be put in that category. True, as I noted, from the materialist’s perspective all values are like that.

“He said to him: For this beauty that will rot in the dust, I weep. He said to him: For that indeed it is right to weep. And the two of them wept.” Both Rabbi Eliezer (Eleazar) and Rabbi Yohanan agree that it is fitting to weep over beauty itself that decays in the dust, beyond the question of the suffering or fear of the dying person. It seems to me that what they formulate here is a grief that is neither personal nor psychological but philosophical. They weep over the fact that “there was a man, and behold, he is no more”; the beautiful living body will become worm and maggot. In that itself there is great sadness, without further reasons or philosophizing, and for that they weep together.
By the way—I recommend an excellent book by Amia Lieblich called Death Café. http://www.kinbooks.co.il/page_30241
“A description of actual meetings that took place in Professor Amia Lieblich’s home in order to talk together about the last great taboo of Western society: the unavoidable death of each and every one of us.”

In the article, the rabbi brought the claim that fear of death is the fear of annihilation, and I didn’t see that he rejected it.
This claim seemingly explains well the fact that a person who has been born is fortunate, but the fact that he had not been born before is not bad in the same way death is: a person wants the experience to continue, but the fact that in the past he did not experience is not all that bad. (We all sleep and lose experience for a period of time, but since it is continuous, we see that as wasted time and not a tragedy—at least not a tragedy on the scale of death.)
One can use betrayal as a test case. It is bad for a person if he is betrayed, and the fact that if he knew he would be upset is a sign that this state of affairs is bad for him now, even if he does not know it. So too, it is bad for a person that he will die, and the fact that knowledge of the approaching death saddens him is a sign that it is bad for him now as well, even if he is not fully aware of it (if someone told a person that in a moment he would be in an accident and die, he would be very distressed).
Perhaps indeed the badness of death with respect to the dead person has no meaning, and the claim against a murderer, for example, is the harm done to the person while he was alive.

I didn’t understand: a person can claim that the statement “Reuven died” is true because the idea of Reuven exists even after his death, being eternal, even though he is not that idea but mere matter.

Since we’re already talking about “death” and “Rav Kook,” let’s mention this quotation:

“Death is an illusory phenomenon; its impurity is its falsehood. What human beings call death is only the intensification of life and its power.” (Shemonah Kevatzim 8:23)

Also, I recommend reading the chapter “Death” in Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s book Soul. I was very impressed by that chapter (by the rest of the book somewhat less).

It seems to me that this parallels what I suggested in the note: to measure the lack from the perspective of the world and not on the personal level (after Reuven’s death there is a world without Reuven. That is a state of the world, not of Reuven). I think our sorrow and fear, and the value of life, are not exhausted by the state of the world. There is something personal here.

The question is what is bad about annihilation. If this is merely a psychological proposal, I raised it and explained what its (moral) cost is. When a person is betrayed, that is bad because there is a person who has been betrayed. But death is not a state of the person (without assuming dualism). Harm to the living person does not explain it. Because the state after death is not a state of the person, so how do you define harm (where is the comparison?).

Right. I wrote that. But I explained that this may perhaps give some meaning to the statement “Reuven died,” but not to fear of death. Is a person afraid of the non-realization of his idea (which itself is not an actually existing entity)?

And yet we all fear it, including great righteous people (I mentioned Rabbi Soloveitchik). What he says, for me, is nothing more than the dualist claim that gives meaning to the statement “Reuven died.” But we still need an explanation for the fear and the evil in death. If it is an intensification of life, then why not murder and intensify it even more?

With God’s help, 23 Tevet 5780

Perhaps column 15b will help answer the question of column 270—“What is bad about death?”

In column 15b, the song is discussed that says happiness passes while sadness is permanent. Perhaps what lies behind this feeling is the fear hovering over life. Even when things are good, a person is accompanied by the worry that it will stop. And when things are bad, the fear grows—the fear that things may become much worse. This is one reason for fear of death: fear of an unknown state, a state the person has never experienced.

Another reason for fear exists in a person who has set goals for himself that he aspires to fulfill, and fears death because it will cut off the “song of his life” halfway through. And who knows whether those who come after him will continue in his path, and perhaps everything he built in his life will be lost. Another kind of fear of missing out is the fear that a person will discover that his entire path in life was one great mistake, that his whole life was one great missed opportunity. Something like this is Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s dread: “I do not know on which path they are leading me.”

And another fear is the fear of separation. Death brings an absolute separation of a person from his friends and loved ones. He will stand alone; they will stand alone. Happiness is shared, in Tolstoy’s words, because it is bound up with sociality. By contrast, sadness is bound up with loneliness and inward withdrawal: “Let him sit alone and be silent, for it has been laid upon him.”

The remedy for fear of death is for a person to see himself as part of a great idea, an idea that did not begin with him and will not end when he departs. To feel that he is one of the runners in a “relay race,” advancing and moving the world forward in a certain segment and passing the completion of the task on to those who come after him. Not for nothing do we bless God for the Oral Torah with the words, “and implanted eternal life within us,” when passing the mission from a previous generation to the next—for then we become part of “eternal life.”

Regards, Shatz

And fear of cessation, loneliness, and missing out—it is what drives a person to make maximal use of life, to do good, and to leave behind a more beautiful and pleasant world. Fear of destruction—it is what brings fuller and better life: “and behold, it was very good.”

Regards, Shatz

I think differently. This is not a specific sorrow over Reuven’s death, but a general and essential sorrow over the end and death of every human being. A principled sorrow over the transience of things. The philosophical is personal. (I assume that with this, of all things, you would agree.)

I once thought that only people in torment long for death, simply because the present difficulty wears them down and the great rest at the end of the road beckons to them as the end of suffering.
I grew older and saw that it is not only people in torment, but also people who feel they have completed their tasks and have nothing more to do here, who long for the end. This is a somewhat tautological definition, because the reason they feel this way now at eighty, whereas in the past people in their sixties were old, is that people usually die at that stage and they internalize it and prepare for it. But in the end, there really are people who until the very last moment, no matter at what age, were energetic and active; others, and perhaps most, begin a process of withdrawal and inward absorption. It is not only in the face of the inevitable, although of course it is inevitable. Many give up a struggle that could prolong their lives.

Most of this discourse about death is by people in midlife, mature enough to internalize more deeply that death is inevitable, but not to internalize it completely. “A person goes about in this world and thinks that it belongs to him for generations” is not age-limited. Fear of death passes—or at least diminishes—at some stage; even the bitterness of death passes after internalization, in Agag’s case. This teaches us that the fear is because perhaps death can be postponed, that it is not final. One can ask people who are really close to that point; their answers are different. Some of them simply sit and wait. They even ask why they were forgotten…

It seems that fear of death is closely tied to life itself—to the use or waste of it. One who goes with a sense of having acted is calmer. One who goes with a sense of having missed out feels regret over the greatest thing possible—life itself. The fear is not (only) of death, but of the fact that life is ending and there is no second chance. Some kind of heroic death is sometimes not frightening, not even the “nothingness” afterward, because it is a more reasoned death and easier to contain. Well known are the Vilna Gaon’s words about the four regrets and the greatest regret of all, the one at the end of life or shortly after death. Even without reaching death, a feeling of senseless missed opportunity, of missing something great because of trivialities, of a wrong turn that exacted an enormous price—all these arouse in us great frustration, and in that sense death carries on its wings the greatest missed opportunity. Perhaps I made no use of anything, nothing at all; my life was meaningless; I will leave it as I came. Perhaps this is the deeper reason for fear of death: the absolute ending of life before a sufficiently satisfying meaning has been found for it.

After annihilation there is no person for whom that is his state, but as long as he exists, it is a state of the person that he will cease to exist (assuming he really will cease to exist, of course). That state is bad. Why? I do not know, but that is no different from the question why betrayal is bad (is it bad for a person that tomorrow he will be betrayed?).
And therefore a living person whose existence was shortened is harmed while still alive; after he is annihilated he of course is no longer there, but we will charge the murderer for the harm he did to the living person who existed.
And in general, if a future event can be bad for a person now, it seems to me there is no problem explaining why annihilation is bad.

If one adds the dimension of relation to the three cardinal sins:
A) Forbidden sexual relations are a transgression concerning the body (between a person and himself) – “done with his own body itself”
B) Idolatry is a transgression concerning the spirit (between a person and God) – “done with his own soul itself”
C) Bloodshed is a transgression concerning the hyphen between spirit and matter (between one person and another) – “done to someone else’s body and spirit”

The first two transgressions have an “essential” aspect (from the side of the soul or from the side of the body), unlike bloodshed, which has an “other-related” aspect.
If so, continuing from what you wrote—“fear of death can be defined in two ways”:
1) Fear of remaining as a spirit without a body (or without a soul). Fear of a state of death (an ongoing state / without change) ~ “essential fear.”
2) Fear of the disconnection between spirit and body, fear of the moment of death (the moment the spirit separates from the body / a change) ~ “other-related fear” (after all, the body is the other of the soul).

The first fear seems closer to a metaphysical distinction, meaning that there is not really evil; evil is only the absence of good (“the badness of death as the negation of the good” – in Thomas Nagel’s article / “death is an illusory phenomenon; its impurity is its falsehood” – Rav Kook). “Essentiality” does not grant truth-value to death, because in the end the “soul intensified through its knowledge” is not sorry to remain by itself.

The second fear seems closer to a moral distinction: the fear “of the living person, and the concern is about the moment when he passes from life to death and is annihilated (and not about the state that comes after the moment of death) but about the severing of the connection between soul and body.” From this perspective, the soul is very grieved by separation from its other, and longs for a shared future-to-come, to go from strength to strength.

If so, perhaps it would also fit, going forward, to use, instead of the word “dualist,” the word “other-related,” and say:
“…if I am right, then behind this view lies an ‘other-related’ assumption, according to which the human being is a combination of body and soul… except that according to this interpretation, fear of death, and in fact every attitude toward death, presuppose an ‘other-related’ metaphysics… in order to give philosophical meaning to fear of death (and not only meaning to statements about death), it seems to me that there is no escape from an ‘other-related’ assumption…”

To me this still sounds like something psychological. Why does it bother me that things are transient? Their absence is not a property of them.

Although the human being is a complex and mixed-up creature, I still think there is a “pure” sorrow here. Does one really need to explain why a person grieves in the face of cessation and destruction? I return to the language of Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Eleazar: “for this beauty that rots in the dust.” From their words it is clear that they are weeping over the matter itself and not over themselves. Earlier they certainly spoke about themselves and their private difficulty in the face of suffering: “neither they nor their reward”—that is indeed something personal. In mentioning beauty that rots in the dust, they add to the personal aspect the general human aspect.

With God’s help, 24 Tevet 5780

The post quoted Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik’s statement that “the halakhic man” desires life. This seems to be required by the fact that life itself is a supreme halakhic obligation before which even severe commandments are set aside; after all, one desecrates Shabbat even to prolong a short while of life, as it says, “and live by them.” If the Creator of the world and Giver of the Torah desires human life in this world and sees it as a central value—then one who desires His commandments is obligated to desire life.

Regards, Shatz

And as is known, many of man’s value-laden obligations are embedded in him as natural instincts. The strong life instinct implanted in man is a clear sign that life is a central value.

With God’s help, 24 Tevet 5780

The grief over a person’s death is not only personal grief. One must rend one’s garments at the time a righteous person’s soul departs just as one rends them over a Torah scroll that has been burned. There is Torah written in a scroll, and there is Torah that a person writes in his life.

Regards, Shatz

As someone who works in a hospital in a ward for terminally ill patients… my insight is simple and unequivocal, without unnecessary philosophizing… among intelligent secular people (who do not believe in eternal life and the World to Come), fear of death does not stem from cessation or the loss of life’s pleasures, etc. (when you die you do not feel any loss). A terminal patient’s fear of death stems solely from the certain knowledge that he is going to die in a day or two, and from fear of the suffering of the moment of death, which is a terrible feeling, God forbid—like a condemned man who is going to be executed in a few hours… That is to say: fear of death stems solely from the patient’s knowledge that the moment of death has arrived. In other words: if human beings did not die from illness but instead died in their beds suddenly with a “kiss of death,” the concept of “fear of death” would not exist. Good and healthy life to everyone.

Hayuta, I repeat again that this is exactly my proposal—to see death as a state of the world and not of the person.

Eliyahu, I did not understand your claim. The question here dealt precisely with the nature of that fear of going to die.
The remark that one who does not know he is about to die does not fear death is also unrelated to the discussion here in any way that I can see.

Perhaps one of the reasons for fear of death is a person’s fear that all his glory lies in his being active and creative, possessed of choice and control, and behold he arrives at a state in which he has no control at all over his fate. In essence, a person reaches a kind of such state when he goes to sleep, for then he is devoid of control, and all his hope is: “Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, Lord, God of truth.”

Regards, Shatz

With God’s help, 24 Tevet 5780

To Rabbi Michael Abraham—greetings,

Before the learned philosophical analyses, it is worth becoming acquainted with the feelings that are being analyzed, and Eliyahu’s description conveys what his ears hear from the mouths of people experiencing approaching death. The description has been given, and now let the philosopher or psychologist come and analyze it.

Regards, Shatz

An important comment of this sort is David’s comment (above), which presents another type of person experiencing the approaching end, but מתוך השלמה ותחושה של מיצוי החיים.

The part about souls not yet born reminded me of the Gemara:
Rabbi Yosei said: The son of David will not come until all the souls in the guf are exhausted, as it is stated (Isaiah 57:16), “For the spirit that wraps itself is from Me, and the souls I have made” (13b). Rashi explains: “In the guf”—a chamber, for “guf” is the name of the place designated for the souls that are destined to be born.

But we still did not understand what is bad about death;
we only understood why someone who is not a dualist probably has little meaning in that claim and feeling.

What is bad about death is apparently the feeling of destruction. The soul wants to be in a state in which it can act and repair.

Do you mean because of the understanding of man’s role in the world, which is connected to free choice so that we may repair something?
But there are two possibilities here:
1. The first possibility is to see the thing we need to repair as something within us, and the fruits of that repair are our reward.
2. The second possibility is to repair something external to us.
So if you mean the first possibility (service not for its own sake?), fine—but as is known, in your notebooks you wrote that the goal is external to us, otherwise we could simply not have been created.
But insofar as the goal is external to us, we have no reason to fear that we will fail to fulfill it and thus “disappoint” that external factor we are supposed to repair.
But here you wrote in the article that if the whole reason a person is afraid is because of a reality unrelated to him at a time when he is altogether annihilated, then he has no reason to fear that.

Even if I skip all the problems I see in the argument itself [the excessive use of the concept “idea,” the failure to address the claims Quine raises in his article On What There Is (you identify the meaning of a word with the idea of a word), and the ignoring of reasonable people who think consciousness is not a physical thing but are not dualists] and jump straight to the conclusion—I don’t see at all how it follows from the premises. For if you are a dualist who believes in a soul, why should you fear the state of a soul separated from a body? Why should such a state arouse fear (naturalistic fallacy)? And if you say that this is fear of failing to realize potential, then this is not fear of a state of separation (which it is not clear why one should fear at all) but fear of unrealized potential—and that exists quite well and is philosophically grounded even among complete materialists. And if you challenge me and say that here too there is a naturalistic fallacy (and there is), then I will answer: on the contrary, at the end of the reduction we arrive at the psychological plane and have to say that there are simply things that for some reason arouse fear. And if in the bottom line the philosophical plane is also, in practice, psychological, one can give up the whole move and begin straight with the psychological claim.
What is more, I do not see at all why people who believe in the soul and in the persistence of consciousness would fear death, given that they do not die—they move from one state of existence to another. Why do even the most believing people cry at their loved ones’ funerals, although they too are in practice going to die in a few years and they will “meet them in heaven”? Why not relate to it like a person who has taken a vacation and whom you will meet later along the way? Rather, one must say that even the most devout religious people—deep in their hearts—do not believe in survival of the soul. And therefore Thomas Nagel does not address this dualist option.
A few more remarks on the argument:
For some reason you say there is an essential problem with a wrongful-birth claim. Your criticism can be translated into “if the damage had not occurred, there would have been no claim.” But that is so in every claim. I fail to see the problem.
Regarding your remark about the prohibition “You shall not murder”—one can definitely say that this is a law intended to prevent the suffering of society (in your death it is not you who suffers but your loved ones who suffer). A society that has such a law is better in that sense. There is no need to connect this to the argument under discussion.

Seidler. You leap, without batting an eye, to hasty conclusions that believers don’t really believe. Come on. You don’t believe, and that’s fine, but casting aspersions on all mourners just so you can feel that you alone are aware, and therefore you are a heretic while everyone who believes is a heretic in disguise, just sounds like a copy-paste of Rabbi Michi on the issue of prayer. Not everyone who wants to take the crown may come and take it. Believing people cry over separation from their loved one despite believing in the survival of the soul. But who guarantees them that they will “meet in heaven”? That is like finding a needle in a haystack. And who casts lots that they will be in the same compartment of Gehenna? Do you really think that a conscious heretic will necessarily sit next to his unconscious heretic relative?… (all in good humor and joking spirit)

Even though, with a Torah scroll that is burned, “the letters fly in the air,” the idea remains alive and existent. But the idea alone is not enough. We were sent into the world in order to realize the idea in the world of reality. And this condition, in which for the time being the connection between idea and reality is not permanent—is a painful condition, whose repair will come only with the repair of the world and its return to the state of “before the sin.”

Regards, Shatz

Dear Gil, I am unable to see where the leap is. In my view, a person’s beliefs are expressed not in what he says but in how he behaves (and one may look at Peterson’s lecture “Who Dares Say He Believes in God?”). And in extreme situations (where such things are measured), no one—except for people whom both you and I would call crazy—behaves as though the state of affairs is that there is a world beyond in which your eternal soul will exist forever. (By the way, regarding your odd comment, mathematically it is easy to prove that if the soul exists there forever, then necessarily at some point you will “meet” whomever you want even if it is “like finding a needle in a haystack,” and note this well.) I am not saying what I am saying because “I am aware and therefore cool and condescending to everyone,” as you are trying to present me. It is clear to me that belief in the World to Come is very effective and reduces suffering in the world, and therefore I support people who need it—and rightly so (99% of the population)—believing in it (and one may look in the Guide for the Perplexed, Part III, chapter 28, on Maimonides’ distinction between true beliefs and useful beliefs). But to try to say that it is necessary for philosophical consistency and that everyone believes in it at the root of his heart—that is far from the heart and far from the intellect. The opposite is more plausible.

I did not understand the question. Even if it is to repair something in us, that repair is beneficial to the world too and not only to us. Both sides of your inquiry can converge. I did not understand what all this has to do with the last question, which I did not understand at all.

Some of the slogans here I did not understand, and the other part that perhaps I did understand I do not know how it relates to what I wrote. If there is a specific argument, please present it and explain exactly what you mean and what error in my words you intend. I have difficulty with riddle-writing.

At the margins of my remarks, I would only be happy to see your mathematical proof that if someone exists for an infinite amount of time then necessarily he meets everyone he wants to. If you have such a proof, you are on your way to Stockholm for a prize for a tremendous innovation in ergodic theory. You have turned ergodic mathematics into all of mathematics—there is none besides it (I am sure that in such a case they would found a Nobel Prize in mathematics for you).

You said that a believer in duality has a reason to fear because there is a state (separation between body and soul) that can be feared. And in the end you changed this and said that the thing feared is the non-realization of the soul’s potential (because of the state of separation). And this is evidence that whoever fears implicitly believes in duality. To that I said in my first message here that if the fear is of unrealized potential, then complete materialists too have justification for fear. In addition, I said that in general there is a naturalistic fallacy here that says there is a state of affairs that one ought to fear—but it is not clear why one “ought” to fear unrealized potential or a state of separation. In the end one has to reduce this to the statement, “psychologically speaking, there are simply things we fear.” But if the philosophical argument reaches, at its root, a psychological argument—one can give it up and make the psychological argument from the start.
Regarding infinity, no need to exaggerate—I didn’t innovate anything huge; this is material taught already in Calculus 1. If there is a finite number of human beings and you have an infinite amount of time that allows you to meet people—over infinity you will meet them all (even if the encounters are random, which of course would greatly lengthen the process). And the probability that at some point along the axis you will meet a specific person is one hundred percent. But that is really not the topic here… I was merely replying to Gil’s argument that searching for your friends in the world of souls is like searching for “a needle in a haystack” and it could be that you never meet.
I would be glad if the rabbi would also respond to the 2 specific questions I raised at the end of my first message here.

I already wrote that I did not understand the points you want me to respond to.

As for your clarification here, I changed nothing. The soul’s disconnection from the body is the state that is feared, because in such a state the soul cannot act. What changed here? How can a materialist make such a claim when he does not exist after death? There is no point going back once more over what I wrote at length in the column itself.:

As for ergodicity, you are completely mistaken. The question is what the distribution of the lottery is, or if you look at this as a partition in a space you can immediately understand that Calculus 1 has nothing to do with us. This is a completely unfounded statement (and certainly cannot be mathematically proved). Certainty is no substitute for proof. On the contrary, in many cases it stems from the fact that proving is hard or impossible.

To Seidler
A few comments:
A. Of course regarding infinity you are right if for every person there is some finite probability, within some finite time, that you will meet him. If, for example, the space is infinite, or there are rules that prevent you from meeting someone or reduce (to zero) the chances of meeting him, or if the probabilities vary according to the states, there is no reason to think you will indeed meet. In general, it is ridiculous to use probabilistic tools regarding the world of souls, whose rules we do not know at all.
B. Regarding your psychological explanation, the fact that people are afraid to die can in any case be explained psychologically, and there is no reason to assume this is because they do not believe in eternal life. The fact that people grieve over the death of a loved one certainly has nothing to do with the question whether he exists or not, and not even with the question whether things are good for him or not. He has gone to an unknown place for the entire duration of the lover’s life, and that is sufficient reason to grieve.
C. On the margins, regarding wrongful birth, the claim is not “if the damage had not occurred, there would have been no claim,” as you say, but rather that if the damage had not occurred there would have been no plaintiff.

The fact that there is a state of separation does not mean there is reason to fear. To explain the fear, one has to justify it psychologically. The materialist will say he is afraid even though he cannot say such a sentence and even though the state does not concern him at all because he does not exist—why? Psychological. (The fact that the state does not concern you does not mean there is no fear of it.) And there is no difference in the justification for the two kinds of fear. Also, in the post you raised a great option for materialists—fear of the transition from a state of life (which does concern me) to a state of death (which does not concern me)—the fear is of the transition, and the transition certainly exists and concerns me, at least a little.

To Yair
A. Obviously it is ridiculous to use probabilistic tools regarding the world of souls. This way of thinking was only a criticism of what GIL said: “searching for your friend in the world of souls is like searching for a needle in a haystack,” which is also a ridiculous way of looking at the world of souls (you walk around as a soul and ask other souls, “Say, any chance you know how to get to 4 Arlozorov Street?”). Since he anthropomorphized the world of souls, I went along with him and anthropomorphized it too.
B. That is exactly the point. Is your attitude toward a person who died that he “went to an unknown place for the entire duration of the loved one’s life”? If your beloved uncle were to move to Finland and cut off contact with the family, would you mourn him as you would mourn him if they told you he had died, God forbid? I don’t think so. And I don’t think anyone thinks so.
C. Granted. Not only would the damage not have occurred; there also would have been no plaintiff (there would have been no person who could sue), and that is true both in the case under discussion (the person would not have been born) and in every other case (there would not exist “the person whose car I smashed,” because I didn’t smash any person’s car).

And regarding ergodicity, of course you are right that one must first assume there exists some probability that they will meet. But I was responding to GIL, who said that searching for loved ones in the world of souls is like “searching for a needle in a haystack” (that is, there exists a small probability). I showed that even on his own view (which assumes a small probability), in the end, even with that small probability, he will eventually meet his loved ones and be able to spend an infinite amount of time with them, and therefore, philosophically, he has nothing to be sad about.

With God’s help, 25 Tevet 5780

Solomon already said in his wisdom: “A good name is better than fine oil, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” The Sages offered a parable for this, about two ships. Birth is likened to a ship setting out onto the stormy sea, this world full of difficulties and trials. By contrast, at life’s end, the “ship” comes home from the stormy sea.

This does not spare the pain and anxiety. The pain of parting from a dear and beloved person who will no longer stand beside us on the “stormy sea” to encourage and guide us; the pain over hopes and abilities that have faded and will no longer be realized and no longer help improve our world, which so badly needs them; and the anxiety lest the person not have prepared enough “provisions for the road,” lest the lamp go out before he managed to repair “while the lamp was still burning.”

And like physical pain, spiritual pain too should arouse examination, soul-searching, and corrective action. Those who remain are called to take up the heritage of good that their loved one began and continue it with even greater vigor. When one reflects and asks, “What would so-and-so have done in this or that situation?”—then his spirit continues to live within us.

Regards, Shatz

Following up on my previous comment, I wanted to add that from my experience I can testify that I found no difference at all between people (secular people who do not believe in the survival of the soul or eternal life) who had supposedly “fully lived” life in this world (pleasures, a brilliant career, health, longevity, family, dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc.) and those who had “not fulfilled” their lives, or those whose whole lives had passed in suffering and misery. Both types of people fear the moment of death equally, and even people in their nineties who “fully exhausted life” are unable to come to terms (internally at least…) with their approaching death, just like terminal thirty-year-olds whose entire lives were suffering. That is to say: the thesis that the sense of having fulfilled one’s life in this world somehow eases the process of parting from life has no grip on reality.

Regarding claims of “wrongful birth”—they gave a parable about this, of a deaf man and a blind man whom a doctor came and cured. Then the blind man discovered that his wife was very ugly, and the deaf man discovered that his wife cursed him terribly, and they argued to the doctor: “Why did you harm us?” and therefore refused to pay the doctor. The rabbi heard the claim and ruled: “Indeed, they are right. The doctor must restore them to their ‘peaceful’ state without sight and hearing.” The patients, of course, refused the offer to take away their sight and hearing, and from this the rabbi proved that they were pleased with their cure and therefore had to pay the doctor’s fee. One may assume that someone crying out over his wrongful birth—if they were to offer that the wrongful giver of birth take his life and release him from his suffering—then it would become clear that in the depths of his heart he is pleased to be alive 🙂

Regards, Shatz

Last line
… and release him from his suffering, and then it would become clear that in the depths of his heart he is pleased…

Fascinating. Thank you very much.
Regarding the halakhic man—actually, the halakhic people I know strike me as very material and earthy people for whom spiritual matters are of less interest. But perhaps I am mistaken in my diagnosis.
Regarding philosophical explanations of the fear of death—I just saw a video about a 97-year-old philosopher who wrote a book on this in his youth (at age 70). He argued there that there is no reason to fear, etc., but today he understands that he was mistaken and that the fear exists whether it has a reason or not. https://youtu.be/qX6NztnPU-4

C:\Users\Secretary\Desktop\Looking death in the eye_ the nurses who accompany patients to their death – Channel 7 news, politics, culture, Judaism, and more_files

Different approaches to coping with the finitude of life are described in the article “Happy End: The Awakening Power of Death,” on the Globes website.

With God’s help, 5 Shevat 5780

One of the things described in the interview as easing fear of death is a person’s being surrounded and enveloped in love. Perhaps at its root, fear of death is fear of loneliness. When a person feels that his “I” is not exhausted by his private “I,” and that he is well connected also to a “collective I”—death does not constitute for him a total ending and severance. Different approaches to coping with the finitude of life are described in the article “Happy End – The Awakening Power of Death,” on the Globes website.

With blessings for length of days and years of life, Shatz

Regarding note 4: once, in some context, I asked a blind person what exactly he sees. He answered that just as I see with my ear, he sees with his eye..

Wow. A fascinating answer. I’m still not entirely sure he can answer that. If he has been blind from birth, he has no idea at all what sight is. So from his perspective he sees nothing, even though perhaps that is what we call the color black. Someone not blind from birth would be able to answer that better, but of course it may depend on the kind of impairment he has.

With God’s help, 9 Shevat 5780

It may be that the aversion implanted in man toward death is meant to internalize in him the insight that man’s natural state should have been eternal life. Had man not sinned by eating from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” he could have remained forever in the Garden of Eden and eaten from the fruit of the Tree of Life.

The Torah preserves, by defining death as “impurity,” so that any contact with it distances a person from holiness, and through the prohibition against “inquiring of the dead,” the view of death as a painful wound—a wound from which humanity will be healed only through the repair of sin, at whose climax we will once again merit the realization of the original destiny, as in Isaiah’s prophecy: “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will remove from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken” (25:8).

Regards, Shatz