Death Anxiety and the Will to Live: Finding Beauty in a Finite Life - with Philosopher Tom Cochrane

SHOW NOTES: https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2025/10/27/deathanxiety/

I sat down with philosopher Tom Cochrane to explore death anxiety, happiness, and how we cope when existential dread surfaces. 

We began with the classic philosophical arguments against fearing death. 

For Tom, ultimate comfort does not require a cosmic designer. It comes from recognizing the world's intrinsic value. He advocates for what he calls "aestheticism," seeing the universe as beautiful, sublime, dramatic, and worthwhile on its own terms. This perspective is available to both atheists and theists. 

On self-sufficiency, Tom's critique is pointed and unique. A fully self-contained life becomes emotionally flat, he likened it to being like a ‘stale lemonade’. Humans are "contingent to the bone" and flourish through embraced interdependence and risk, not through isolation.

The key insight: we have control over our imagination. Even when it runs away from us, we can redirect it and build better habits of attention. 

About Tom Cochrane: 

Born in the UK, Tom completed his BA (hons) in philosophy at University College London, followed by a MA in music composition at Birmingham Conservatoire, and then a PhD in philosophy at the University of Nottingham. His PhD supervisor was Gregory Currie.
 
 Following his PhD, Tom was a postdoctoral fellow at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva (2007-2010). He was then an international visiting fellow at the Sonic Arts Research Center, Queen's University Belfast (2010-2012), before moving to the University of Sheffield as a lecturer (2012-2017). After a brief stint at the University of York in 2017, he joined Flinders in February 2018.
 
 Tom's main areas of expertise are the philosophy of mind (particularly emotions) and philosophy of art/aesthetics (particularly music). He also has interests in metaphysics and ethics.
 
 He is the editor of The Emotional Power of Music (Oxford University Press, 2013) He is also the author of The Emotional Mind: A control theory of affective states (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and The Aesthetic Value of the World (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Tom's latest book, The Aesthetic Value of the World: https://academic.oup.com/book/39016

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