Perversion and Death

When philosophers recommend an attitude to death, no less than when they recommend the correct attitude to sex, we presume such advice to be grounded in rational considerations about what is natural and proper. Two things must follow: first, that there will be room for perverted attitudes to death; second, that some objective facts about death can be found to justify such an evaluation. I explore a parallel between the duality of psychological and biological approaches to erotic desire, regarded as the paradigm of all desire, and a similar duality in the fear of death, regarded as the paradigm of all aversion. Each invokes an objective teleological fact about their respective objects, and a consequent norm of correctness in our attitudes towards them. The exploration of these two related ideas requires that we yield as generously as possible to the temptation to believe them. Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych can be read as a meditation that makes the temptation vivid. None of this succeeds in vindicating a concept of perversion. Rather, it throws into relief both the attraction and absurdity of countenancing any notion of perversion. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. (Philip Larkin, “Aubade”) 1. The Correct Attitude Toward Death. Philosophers like to warn against fools' paradises: not places where fools can safely cavort, but rather conditions in which fools mistakenly think themselves happy. The warning presupposes that real and merely apparent happiness can be told apart. Of course that claim is not altogether disinterested, since philosophers have a professional investment in the distinction. Thus they have endorsed this or that attitude to death, holding up promises of ultimate comfort or threats of excruciating regret, to be dispensed at the last hour, just when the money-back guarantee expires. Is the philosopher's counsel any better than the threats and comforts of religion, Larkin's “old moth-eaten musical brocade/ created to pretend we never die”? At least the philosophical provenance of the advice should entitle us to expect some grounding in reasoned standards of rationality. But what sort of rationality? There are three broad strands. Practical rationality aims at success in action and the promotion of happiness. Epistemic rationality aims at maximizing correct beliefs. Axiological rationality aims at something that partakes of both but is reducible to neither: appropriateness of emotional attitudes. Before heeding a philosopher's advice, we might wish to know whether the rational standard in question is practical, epistemic, or axiological. Does it regard one form of rationality as trumping all