I begin by sketching the Epicurean position on death - that it cannot be bad
for the one who dies because she no longer exists - which has struck many
people as specious. However, alternative views must specify who is wronged
by death (the dead person?), what is the harm (suffering?), and when does the
harm take place (before death, when you’re not dead yet, or after death, when
you’re not around any more?). In the second section I outline the most
sophisticated anti-Epicurean view, the deprivation account, according to
which someone who dies is harmed to the extent that the death has deprived
her of goods she would otherwise have had. In the third section I argue that
deprivation accounts that use the philosophical tool of possible worlds have
the counterintuitive implication that we are harmed in the actual world
because counterfactual versions of us lead fantastic lives in other possible
worlds. In the final section I outline a neo-Epicurean position that explains
how one can be wronged by being killed without being harmed by death and
how it is possible to defend intuitions about injustice without problematic
appeal to possible worlds
