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Can the dead have interests?
Nothing happens to the dead. No posthumous events can in any way alter a single instant of the full scope of events that constitute a completed life. Accordingly, after death, with the removal of a subject of harms and a bearer of interests, it would seem that there can be neither “harm to” nor “interests of ” the decedent. Because in such a context, these phrases (i.e., “harm to” and “interests of ”) use prepositions with no objects, they are, strictly speaking, senseless.
(Partridge 1981: 253)Partridge's stark rejection of posthumous interests rests on a simple argument: interests require an interest-bearer; after death there is no longer a subject to be a bearer of interests; therefore, there can be no interests after death. And because there are no interest-holders after death, neither, thinks Partridge, can the living have any responsibilities to the dead. To think that there are any such is to commit ourselves to the absurd judgement: “We owe X to P, and there is no P” (ibid.).
In strong contrast to Partridge, Feinberg finds no conceptual strain in the notion of a posthumous interest:
I would like to suggest that we can think of some of a person's interests as surviving his death, just as some of the debts and claims of his estate do, and that in virtue of the defeat of those interests, either by death itself or by subsequent events, we can think of the person who was, as harmed.
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