Is Being Undead an Objective Badness?

In his essay “The Badness of Undeath,” published in The Undead and Philosophy, Richard Greene argues against the notion that the Undead, meaning both Vampires and Zombies, are objectively bad. His philosophical examination of the question about whether or not the Undead or the state of Undeath is in and of itself bad ends with the conclusion that Undeath is not inherently bad, but comparatively bad. In other words, there is nothing wrong with Undeath, but in comparison to being Alive it is not a desirable state of existence.

To achieve his basic arguments in “The Badness of Undeath,” Greene must necessarily set limits to what we can define as “the Undead.” Though technically the term can apply to Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, or any number of demon-possessed ghouls, Greene limits his discussion to vampires and zombies. He further eliminates the various “experiments” within the subgenre, such as the sparkling vampires of the Twilight saga or the politically motivated zombies of Zombies Anonymous. He sees these various “stages of the Undead” as changes that must be set aside when they’ve moved too far from the essential qualities of Stoker’s Dracula or Romero’s Bub from Day of the Dead. For the purpose of philosophical debate, his focus is only on vampires and zombies as either evil or behaving in ways that support notions of evil (6).

Having set these parameters, Greene then attacks the question of why being Undead is thought to be worse than being dead (3-4). This requires the question be asked: What’s so bad about death? Death “is not a state in which some part of us lives on after our physical bodies have died,” he says (6-7). If it were, then Undeath would be bad because it holds us back from Paradise, though it would be good if it held us back from the fire and brimstone. But in fact, we cannot qualitatively prove or disprove the existence of an afterlife, so “it is appropriate to address the question of death’s badness by assuming that death is an experiental blank” (7). If death is just the end of life, and a post-mortem experience is free of pain, then this is not why death is bad.

What if death is bad because it denies us the good things that life has to offer [see Thomas Nagel] or if it stops our engagement with the world as agents of progress and action [see Bernard Williams] (7). But these do not explain the badness of Undeath, though the deprivation view would better contribute to understanding the bad element of being a zombie. After all, zombies seem to derive so little pleasure from life. Still, we don’t know for sure if they suffer—the possible exception being the comment from the “backbone zombie” in The Return of the Living Dead who complains of the pain of death, and Ernie’s observation that “Apparently it hurts to be dead.”

Also, the Undead do seem to qualify for the desire-frustration argument. Their previous desires as living beings are obviously frustrated: loss of sunlight, loss of socialization, loss of intellect, and so on. But looking at the unfulfilled desires of the living leads to disregard of this argument for the Undead. After all, just because for the living person a desire goes unfulfilled, we cannot say this is “bad.” Life is full of unfulfilled desires. Indeed, we often change our desires. That’s good because we may often desire something that will eventually make us unhappy.

Dead is inarguably bad because it cancels out all unfulfilled desires. Undead, however, is not so bad: we merely substitute our desires as living beings with other desires. Thus, our craving for wine becomes a vampiric thirst for blood, while our appetite for a steak becomes the craving for flesh that drives the zombie in us. “Changed desire is not necessarily a bad thing,” Greene says.

Next up for consideration: Death is an “experiental blank.” So how does Undeath “feel?” Says Greene: “It is not obvious that being Undead feels bad, in itself” (10). We just don’t know for sure. (Though in many films the Undead zombie does not seem especially happy; and in many novels the zombie’s moan is a sign of discomfort.)

Some argue: “Better Alive than Undead.” For instance, it is better to have bad experiences as a human than have happy experiences as a pig. This is the argument made by John Stuart Mill (10). But this argument holds only for zombies, which Greene sees as “clearly ‘lower’ life forms” (11). The vampire, on the other hand, can be said to enjoy an enhanced experience of being.

Undeath is also only comparatively bad, not objectively bad. Objective badness means the state of being is qualitatively bad or forever lacking in good (11).  Most people assume Undeath is objectively bad, but this cannot withstand argument.

So why do most people prefer death to Undeath? It is logical that being Undead would be better than being dead. So why do we fear Undeath? (12)

To understand this, we need to consider the notion of evil. Vampires and zombies do unspeakable things. “The fact that people don’t like to imagine themselves doing such things serves to explain why Undeath is generally regarded as being worse than death” (12).

However, just because people see certain acts as evil doesn’t mean that these acts are either evil or bad. “So, the fact that people don’t like to see themselves doing things they regard as evil doesn’t mean that it is bad to be the sort of being that does these things” (12).

Still, vampires and zombies do behave badly. “…We need to consider the possibility that the objective badness of Undeath can be accounted for by the actions and nature of Undead beings” (12-13). Remember, a state is considered objectively bad when it either contains some qualitative badness or it lacks some good thing which one would not normally lack.”

So what good thing from Life is missing from Undeath?

Moral philosophers see “behaving in good ways” as a good thing, either because of the good consequences or because of some intrinsic value. So if being Undead “involves lacking goodness in general or lacking the ability to perform good acts, then it seems that being a vampire or a zombie is a bad thing, in virtue of lacking something of value that one would not normally lack” (13).  But vampires or zombies do not by nature have the ability to do good. “Thus, lacking goodness or the ability to perform good acts” is a feature that would be objectively bad “if and only if being good or being able to perform good acts is a feature that vampires or zombies usually have” (13).  The objection that good-behaving humans begin to lack the ability for goodness only upon becoming Undead is therefore a comparative badness, not an objective badness (13-14).

“It would appear then that we can’t account for the badness of being either a vampire or zombie by appealing to the fact that they are evil or do things that we generally consider to be evil” (14). “We have no alternative but to reject the claim that it is bad (in the objective sense) to be Undead.” Still, being Undead “may well be bad in comparison to being a human being” (14).