Analyzes the badness of death for those who die. Argues that our intuitions about the comparative badness of different deaths are best justified if we abandon the idea that death should be evaluated in terms of its effect on the value of life as a whole. Instead, death should be evaluated in terms of the effect that it has on what the victim has reason to care about from an egoistic point of view at the time of death. Only in this way can we adequately explain why the death of a fetus or newborn infant is less bad than the death of an older child or adult.

Analyzes the badness of death for those who die. Argues that our intuitions about the comparative badness of different deaths are best justified if we abandon the idea that death should be evaluated in terms of its effect on the value of life as a whole. Instead, death should be evaluated in terms of the effect that it has on what the victim has reason to care about from an egoistic point of view at the time of death. Only in this way can we adequately explain why the death of a fetus or newborn infant is less bad than the death of an older child or adult.