From Frustrated Desire to Posthumous Harm

This chapter provides an extensive defense of the third premise of the book’s central argument: the claim that if frustrating a person’s desires is one way to harm a person then it is possible for an act to wrongfully harm a person even if the act takes place after the person is dead. After an overview, the chapter begins by presenting the basic reason for thinking that if the Desire Satisfaction Principle is true, then the Posthumous Harm Thesis is true. It then considers a series of objections that can be raised against the claim and responds to each of them.