Death and Nonexistence

A successful attempt to provide a metaphysics of death must at the same time resolve the paradox of nonexistence--that there must be something "there" that fails to exist. This is the aim of Palle Yourgrau's Death and Nonexistence, which provides an ontology of death, i.e. of ceasing to exist, and at the same time, an ontology of birth, i.e. coming to exist. The primary thesis of this book is that this requires expanding one's ontology beyond existence and nonexistence to include what underlies both, namely, "being". The dead lack existence, but not being. Moreover, though they have forfeited their existence, they maintain their essence as human beings, just like the living.