Death

Death is Shelly Kagan's Spring 2007 philosophy course PHIL 176, available on Open Yale Courses as 26 lectures of about 50 minutes. The first half asks what a person is and whether anything survives death, contrasting dualism with physicalism, examining arguments for the existence of the soul, reading Plato's Phaedo closely and then testing several theories of personal identity. The second half turns to death itself: what it means to say someone has died, whether death is bad and for whom, whether immortality would be desirable, the value of life, fear of death, and how to live in the knowledge that one will die. The final three lectures take up the rationality and morality of suicide.

Each session comes as streaming or downloadable video, audio and a searchable transcript, and the syllabus lists the texts and course packet readings. Everything is free and unregistered; there is no certificate, credit or graded work. Kagan later turned the lectures into a book, which is optional.