What is Death?

The term ‘death’ is ambiguous. The ending of life is one thing, and the condition of having life over is another. ‘Death’ can refer to either. Let us add that ‘the ending of life’ is itself potentially ambiguous. In dying, our lives are progressively extinguished, until finally they are gone, in a process that stretches out over a period of time. This is true even if death is a threshold concept, so that a sufficiently substantial extinction of life must occur before death takes place. ‘The ending of life,’ hence ‘death,’ can refer either to this entire process, or solely to its very last part — the loss of the very last trace of life. Thus death can be a state, the process of extinction, or the denouement (final completion) of that process. Death in all of these senses can be further distinguished from events — such as being shot with an arrow — that cause death.