p.MSOBODYTEXT
{mso-bidi-font-size:7.5pt;} li.MSOBODYTEXT {mso-bidi-font-size:7.5pt;}
div.MSOBODYTEXT {mso-bidi-font-size:7.5pt;} p.MSOBODYTEXT2
{mso-bidi-font-size:12pt;} li.MSOBODYTEXT2 {mso-bidi-font-size:12pt;}
div.MSOBODYTEXT2 {mso-bidi-font-size:12pt;} p.MSOBODYTEXT3
{mso-bidi-font-size:12pt;} li.MSOBODYTEXT3 {mso-bidi-font-size:12pt;}
div.MSOBODYTEXT3 {mso-bidi-font-size:12pt;}
Why a course on death?
Pieter Brueghel The
Triumph of Death
1560
1. Death is everywhere
detail of above
2. --and we are all vulnerable to it, sooner or later.
Jacques Louis David The
Death of Socrates1787
3. We don’t think and talk enough
about death.
The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein, 1533
4. Because we don’t talk about it enough, death shows up in odd ways.
Jacques Louis David The
Death of Marat 1793
5. Our information on causes of death is arbitrary,
inconsistent and variously overdramatizes and minimizes.
Mortality, balsawood. Collection of the
Isamu Noguchi Foundation, Inc 1959. Photo: Rudolph Burckhardt
http://www.noguchi.org/mortality.htm
6. In terms of ethics and public policy – death is an ultimate stake, and hence an ultimate criteria.
7. Although we might disagree on philosophical and ideological grounds about many things, we are likely to agree that involuntary death is a bad thing, a bad card to be dealt.
8. For empirical purposes, and unlike many other criteria for policy evaluation, deaths are relatively easy to count.
Gustav klimt-death-and-life 1911
cf. http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Death-And-Life-Gold-Posters_i1206427_.htm
9. Death (mortality rate) is a robust indicator of other public policy concerns.
The Four Cases:
Health
Insurance
detail of Triumph of Death
Edvard Munch Death in
the Sickroom 1893
Physician
Assisted Suicide
Capital
Punishment
detail of above
Allen Lee Davis ("Tiny") in Florida's electric
chair on July 8, 1999
http://www.ccadp.org/tinydavis.htm
Oil
Hans Baldung Grien - Eve,
Serpent and Death, 1512
