Even though Nagel sets this limitation to his paper, he still assumes that people that believe in the afterlife would be interested in his reasoning because the idea is interrelated with one s attitude toward death. Nagel begins the context of what will be his main arguments of why death is not evil by making several general observations. First is that death in itself can not be an evil thing. If it is to be evil at all, it is because it deprives its subject of life. Life is an inherently good thing.
Life outweighing one s experiences, with a net good or bad value, is true for two reasons.
First is the value of life simply cannot be determined by its contents. One of the observations that Nagel makes is that the evaluation of the value of life is based on time. The longer one lives, the better. An important example that Nagel extends throughout the essay illustrates this point. Nagel reasons that people want to live as long as possible, even if it means achieving continuity through discontinuity.