Death has long been a pre-occupation of philosophers, and this is especially so today. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death collects 21 newly commissioned essays that cover current philosophical thinking of death-related topics across the entire range of the discipline. These include metaphysical topics--such as the nature of death, the possibility of an afterlife, the nature of persons, and how our thinking about time affects what we think about death--as well as axiological topics, such as whether death is bad for its victim, what makes it bad to die, what attitude it is fitting to take towards death, the possibility of posthumous harm, and the desirability of immortality. The contributors also explore the views of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato and Epicurus on topics related to the philosophy of death, and questions in normative ethics, such as what makes killing wrong when it is wrong, and whether it is wrong to kill fetuses, non-human animals, combatants in war, and convicted murderers.With chapters written by a wide range of experts in metaphysics, ethics, and conceptual analysis, and designed to give the reader a comprehensive view of recent developments in the philosophical study of death, this Handbook will appeal to a broad audience in philosophy, particularly in ethics and metaphysics.

Introduction: The Philosophy of DeathBen Bradley, Fred Feldman, Jens Johansson1. When Do Things Die?Cody Gilmore2. Death and the Disintegration of PersonalityFred Feldman3. The Person and the CorpseEric Olson4. Personal Identity and the Survival of DeathDean Zimmerman5. The Evil of Death: What Can Metaphysics Contribute?Theodore Sider6. Death and Eternal RecurrenceLars Bergstr?m7. Death in Socrates, Plato, and AristotleGareth B. Matthews8. When Death Is There, We Are Not: Epicurus on Pleasure and DeathPhillip Mitsis9. The Badness of Death and the Goodness of LifeJohn Broome10. The Symmetry ProblemRoy Sorensen11. The Timing ProblemJens Johansson12. Death, Value, and DesireChristopher Belshaw13.Death and Rational EmotionKai Draper14. Retroactive Harms and WrongsSteven Luper15. ImmortalityJohn Martin Fischer16. The Makropulos Case Revisited: Reflections on Immortality and AgencyConnie Rosati17. The Wrongness of Killing and the Badness of DeathMatthew Hanser18. Abortion and DeathDon Marquis19. The Morality of Killing in WarFrances Kamm20. The Significance of Death for AnimalsAlastair Norcross21. Capital PunishmentTorbj?rn T?nnsj?Index