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A Question Of Endings, Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy Faculty Research

What is the nature and meaning of death? As a philosophical question, the answer is surely, as it is for every such question: “It depends.” On the context of the asker, among other things: social, cultural, historical, existential…whether young or old, whether under duress or at leisure, whether in harms way or secure, whether in pain or depression or in the bloom of health. We are inclined to think of death, abstractly as well as referentially, as an event, something that happens, or as a state, something that has happened.