To think clearly about death we need to draw some distinctions, fix some terminology, and catalog the various questions that can arise. Herewith, a modest contribution to that end.
1. Process, event, state. There is first of all the process of dying and that in which it culminates, the event of dying. Both are distinct from the 'state' of being dead. The inverted commas signal that there is a question whether there is such a state. A state is a state of something which is 'in' the state. Call it the subject of the state. But if bodily death is annihilation of the self, then it is arguable (though not self-evident) that there is no subject of the state of being dead, and hence no such state. And if there is no such state, then it cannot be rationally feared.
The process of dying can be so short as to be indistinguishable from the event of dying, but no one can be in the 'state' who has not suffered the event. You cannot become dead except by dying.
2. All three (process, event, state) can be objects of fear. But it does not follow that each is an object of rational fear. It is clearly sometimes rational to fear the process of dying. But it is a further question whether it is ever rational to fear the 'state' of being dead.
3. Fear is an intentional state whose object is a future harm, evil, or 'bad.' Process/event and state are rationally feared only they are indeed evils. So the axiological questions are logically prior to the empirical-psychological question of fear and the normative-psychological question of the rationality of fear.
4. Ontological questions would seem to be logically prior to the axiological questions. Whether death is good, bad, or neutral depends on what it is. For example, the 'state' of being dead cannot be evil unless there is such a state. A state is a state of something. But if death is annihilation, then there is no subject after death which seems to imply that there is no state of being dead. If so, it cannot be an evil state. And if being dead is not an evil state, then it cannot be rationally feared.
5. This raises the question whether bodily death is indeed annihilation of the self.
6. And what exactly is it for an animal to die? One will be tempted to say that x dies at time t iff x ceases being alive at t. But an animal that enters suspended animation at t ceases to be alive at t without dying! Or suppose a living thing A splits into two living things B and C. Since B and C are numerically distinct, neither can be identical to A. So A ceases to exist at the time of fission. Ceasing to exist, A ceases to be alive. But one hesitates to say that A is dead. Similarly with fusion.
Defining 'dies' is not easy. See Fred Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper (Oxford 1992, ch. 4).
7. Mortality. In addition to the question whether being dead is evil and the question whether dying (process or event) is evil, there is also the question whether it is evil to be subject to death. This is a question about the axiological status of mortality: is being mortal good, bad, or neutral? If mortality is evil, then, given that we are mortal, we cannot fear it, fear being future-oriented, but we can, for want of a better word, bemoan it. And so the question arises whether it it rational to bemoan our mortality. Is mortality perhaps a punishment for something, for Original Sin perhaps?
But we need to think more carefully about what it is to be mortal. First of all, only things that are alive or once were alive can be properly said to be mortal. My car is not mortal even if it 'dies.' It is also worth noting that being mortal is consistent both with being alive and with being dead. My dead ancestors have realized their mortality; I have yet to realize mine. But my mother did not cease being mortal by dying. (Or did she? If she is now nothing, how can she have any property including the property of being mortal?) For a living thing to be mortal is for it to be subject to death. But this phrase has at least two senses, one weak the other strong.
WEAK sense: X is mortal =df x is able to die, liable to die, has the potential to die. Mortality as posse mori.
STRONG sense: X is mortal =df X has to die, is subject to the necessity of dying, cannot evade death by any action of its own, is going to die, will die in the normal course of events. Mortality as necessitas moriendi.
Correspondingly, there are strong and weak senses of 'immortal':
STRONG sense: X is immortal =df x is not able to die.
WEAK sense: X is immortal =df x is able to die, but is kept alive forever by a factor distinct from x.
For example, in Christian theology God is strongly immortal: he cannot die, so 'deicide' is not an option for him. The immortal souls of humans, however, are weakly immortal, not immortal by 'own-power' but by 'other-power.' Prelapsarian Adam was weakly, not strongly, mortal whereas postlapsarian Adam and his descendants are strongly, not weakly, mortal.
Christian theology aside, we are strongly mortal: we are subject to the necessity of dying whether this necessity be nomological or a metaphysical. Is our mortal condition evil? Or is mortality perhaps a condition of life's having meaning and value?
8. Mortality and Brevity. Related question: Is the brevity of life a condition of its meaningfulness, as many maintain? Mortality is not the same as brevity because (i) one could be mortal in the weak sense even if one lived forever and (ii) a short life is consistent with the necessity of dying.
9. Why is sooner worse than later? So far we have distinguished the following questions: Is dying (whether process or event) evil? Is being dead evil? Is being subject to death evil? Is the brevity of life evil? But there is also the question why, if dying is evil, dying sooner is worse than dying later. Intuitively, dying at 20 is worse than dying at 60 ceteris paribus. But why? Because the one who dies at 20 'misses out on more' than the one who dies at 60? But how can the one who dies at 20 miss out on anything if death is annihilation? The dead cannot be deprived of their future because they are not there to be deprived of anything.
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