Scheffler On The Afterlife

The afterlife is referred to as the remaining human life that exists after an individual’s death. Scheffler uses this in a thought experiment in which a person is asked to imagine that he will live a normal life span. However, thirty days after his death, the earth, along with humanity and any other form of life on earth, would be destroyed. Scheffler argues that certain activities, such as cancer research, all forms of art, and procreation, are considered to matter or are motivated by the idea of continuous human existence after death. Concluding that what matters most to humans is the survival of humanity (p. 751, para 2); Frankfurt, while responding to Scheffler’s proposal, argues that what matters to humans is independent from the existence …show more content…
752, para 3). Activities that a person performs would be valued based on the internal views of that specific person only, causing the importance of those activities to be dependent on the individual and his drive or motivation to do certain activities. Frankfurt refutes Scheffler by presenting the idea that cancer research would still be considered meaningful if the person pursuing the cure was doing it based on his motivation and his individual satisfaction that would arise from solving it the problem or attempting to solve it (p.752, para 1). The same concept, of intrinsic value, can be applied to art, in all its forms, and the idea of procreation since every action, activity, or project, even if there were no successors of the human race, would be purely based on the person’s individual opinions. Because each individual person has his own motives, that cause him to do activities that are valuable to him, then he will also have his own independent way of responding to the annihilation of humanity. Meaning, as Frankfurt concludes, that what would matter most to humans, even when faced with the end of humanity, would be primarily subjective, based on individual feelings, rather than on …show more content…
There are multiple examples of human behavior that factually portray how every human is different from one another, and although there are some similarities and patterns of human behavior, at the end people act to situations in different ways. For example, people who are told that they have cancer have different ways of dealing with that type of emotional stress. Some decide to get informed and attempt to figure out a way to beat it while others fall into a depressive state and give up. There is obviously no right way to handle that type of news, but this example does portray the different views and reactions that people go through when receiving catastrophic news. Being told that humanity would cease to exist after your own death would be a heavy plate to carry, and because of that people would react in various different ways. As Frankfurt proposed, people could stop doing things because they would no longer find it meaningful, much how the cancer patient who gave up, but people could also decide to make the most out of the time left. Since all human beings are different and have different ways of thinking, I believe that the actions of humans would depend on individual