Levin's dilemma
Posted: 19/08/2025
When I read Anna Karenina three years ago I found it posed a very intriguing philosophical question early in the book (I think just before Levin is rejected by Kitty, who is going after Vronsky, but not because she loves him). Is a person, without access to any of their senses and motor abilities, alive? Or are they effectively a dead person, unable to feel the world or give anything to it?
A dead body is one which cannot make any more impact on the world by virtue of itself because whatever spirit or life it had was interrupted and taken away. Without that life it cannot react. All that is left is the body, the organs and limbs perhaps still intact, but lacking in the fundamental aspect of someone for those organs and limbs to serve. (I don't profess to know much about biology and the effect of death on a body outside of, er, rigor mortis.)
So an alive body is one which still has life or spirit, but that life or spirit cannot be seen past biological functions. It has no senses to take in anything, and so cannot react to anything. It may not know how to use its motor functions, or even it might have no limbs. We would only know it still lived by feeling its pulse and checking it still breathes. But can this be called living? Can someone who has no sense of sight, touch, hearing, no arms to handle objects or legs to move around, be alive? Definitely not the same way we are, but is it too much to say that they might as well be dead, because there's no difference between the two states, of people?
Or perhaps, I'm wrong entirely. There may be a future where your life or spirit can be in another body, one which is more whole (however you want to spin that). Can we bring back peoples' senses? Can those with disorders of the mind be restored? Can my dead person lacking senses and limbs be resurrected? Will that person ever be the same after such a procedure, or are they a trapped spirit in a clone's body, the imperfections which set them apart from the others are now gone?
Death makes so little sense...
P.S. something to consider: Helen Keller's obituary in the New York Times. She was an admirable and talented human being.