A Defence of Dying

In Book IX of The Iliad, Achilles tells Ajax and Odysseus that his mother, the goddess Thetis, has revealed to him a choice of fates: if he stays in Ilium and continues the siege of Troy, his life will be cut short but his fame will live forever; if he returns home, he will live a long life but his name will die with him.

The choice Achilles makes—to go out in a blaze of glory—is emblematic of one of the ways humans try to make peace with death. After all, failing the existence of a spiritual afterlife, having one’s name live on is about the closest thing to immortality we can hope for. And yet, even if, like Achilles, we could secure some guarantee that posterity will remember us, how much consolation does this really offer in the dark existential hours of night? If our bodies do not house an immortal soul that will survive us, how can any thought of death not be, at the very...