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Death & Morality

Are There Duties To The Dead?

Walter Ott doesn’t think so.

Mrs White devoted much of her working life to her business, a small laundromat. Upon her death, her son Jimmy wonders what to do with it. Would he be harming Mrs White if he were to sell it? Does he have some kind of duty to keep it going, no matter what? If so, to whom does Jimmy have this duty, given that Mrs White no longer exists?

I shall argue that we have no duties to the dead because there is no good answer to this last question. Where we have duties to one another, we can harm or benefit one another. But ‘to harm’, for instance, is a transitive verb.

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