Recalcitrant Fears of Death

According to what I will refer to as judgmentalist approaches to the fear of death (JFD), the fear of death conforms to the structure implied by judgmentalist theories of emotion. JFD holds that fears of death are constituted in part by evaluative judgments or beliefs about one’s own death. Although many philosophers endorse JFD (explicitly or implicitly), there is good reason to believe that it may be problematic. For, there is a troubling (and, for the purposes of this discussion, rather interesting) objection to judgmentalist theories of emotion; if judgmentalism is false, then so too is JFD. In brief, the worry with judgmentalist theories is this: it is sometimes the case that one has an emotion, but holds a belief (or beliefs) that is in tension with the emotion. For example, I sometimes fear flying despite the fact that I believe flying is not dangerous. Emotions of this sort are often referred to as recalcitrant emotions, and they are widely thought to pose a serious challenge to judgmentalist theories. In this paper, I consider an objection to JFD based on the existence of recalcitrant bouts of the fear of death. I include in this discussion an Epicurean-inspired solution to the problem of emotional recalcitrance. Although I argue this solution may be ultimately unsuccessful, I believe it is still worth considering. For, in most discussions of the problem of emotional recalcitrance, philosophers abandon judgmentalism in favour of some other theory of emotion. The Epicurean-inspired solution I discuss in this paper, however, may allow one to retain one’s commitment to judgmentalism.