Phil mentioned: " What I don't see is the identification of 'subject to death' with 'a point in time when someone dies'.
Just to introduce another quibble about "point in time."
Death itself is often a spectrum of points in time, some of which are determined by arbitrary medical conventions, i.e., "calling the time of death." Death is also subject to legal wranglings, such as cases where "brain death" is taken to validate "pulling the plug."
Consider Hermann Broch's _Der Tod des Vergil_ which devotes hundreds of pages to the last 18 hours of Virgil's life. The concluding section is a "literary Largo" wherein the poet, probably in coma, sinks beneath his personality and species into the center of the life force. Likewise, listen to the last movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony for a musical analogy.
All of which is to argue that death cannot always be considered "a point in time" but is more often a series of points in time. Certainly, if a five-ton weight falls from a skyscraper onto one's head, death might approximate "a point." Yet so many other forms of mortality are more processes than points.
Wishing all a thoughtful Good Friday, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
