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Articles

Our Duty to the Dead

Stamatina Liosi enlists the help of Immanuel Kant to discover why we have a duty to treat the dead with dignity.

Among all the other indignities Syrian refugees have endured during the last seven years, from poor treatment at the borders and residency offices to humiliation and abandonment by immigration-hostile countries, they have also faced the indignity of not always finding a place for those who have died. Out of sheer necessity, corpses are abandoned in morgues, or cardboard boxes, or even in the backs of taxis.

I thought of them when, about six months ago, the day before my father’s funeral, my mother remarked that we all have a duty to treat the dead with dignity. For those of us who think that intuitions or widely held beliefs aren’t enough to explain why things should be done in a certain way, deeper reasons must be found. So let’s ask ourselves, why do we have the duty to treat the dead with dignity?

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