Death and Happiness Class

Lecture Notes: Death and Happiness Class, April 17, 2007

Introduction

• The Philosophy Bird,
• St. Jerome, and
• UVA Killings

Some Initial Distinctions

1. Distinctions among: Thinking about (preparing for) your own death, Responding to the death of others, helping others with their experience of death (their own or others). Critical Quesitons: Which way to does the inference go? from our own understanding of death to the others, right?

1. Distinct yet overlapping concerns in different religious traditions treatment of death: 1) Islam and Christian; 2)Tibetan Buddhist. (Montaigne's point about the need to conquer death.)

1. Distinction between cognitive knowledge of death and experience knowledge, felt responses. Critical Question: Are our responses to death trainable? What is the goal of such traning? Does it come with the pursuit of wisdom?

To the Best of Our Knowledge

Dave Meyers, psychologist: Durability bias. We're bad at predicting our future happiness: tenure study, physical tragedies, (cancer patients), mentions his own impending hearing loss (a kind of death).