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<p>The badness of death is often understood in counterfactual terms: a person’s death is bad for her to the extent that it deprives her of the benefits of life, which she otherwise would have enjoyed. However, things that are&#xa0;bad in this sense do not always seem to be&#xa0;<i>misfortunes</i>&#xa0;or&#xa0;<i>worthy of negative emotional responses</i>. Kaila Draper (1999) raises a challenge for proponents of this counterfactual understanding of badness: given that both death and, say, not winning the lottery are bad in the same way, explain why only the former is a misfortune. The first aim of this paper is to argue, despite the ingenuity of suggested solutions, that the solutions fail. Second, I show that the discussion of death’s misfortune teaches us valuable lessons about the concept of&#xa0;<i>harm</i>: parallel to Draper’s challenge, a new challenge targets the prominent Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm (CCA).</p>

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Misfortune and Missing Out

  • 期刊论文

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月27日

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  • Anna Folland

摘要

The badness of death is often understood in counterfactual terms: a person’s death is bad for her to the extent that it deprives her of the benefits of life, which she otherwise would have enjoyed. However, things that are bad in this sense do not always seem to be misfortunes or worthy of negative emotional responses. Kaila Draper (1999) raises a challenge for proponents of this counterfactual understanding of badness: given that both death and, say, not winning the lottery are bad in the same way, explain why only the former is a misfortune. The first aim of this paper is to argue, despite the ingenuity of suggested solutions, that the solutions fail. Second, I show that the discussion of death’s misfortune teaches us valuable lessons about the concept of harm: parallel to Draper’s challenge, a new challenge targets the prominent Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm (CCA).