{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,1]],"date-time":"2026-08-01T13:58:09Z","timestamp":1785592689039,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"Wiley","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,20]],"date-time":"2026-05-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1779235200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/termsAndConditions#vor"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,20]],"date-time":"2026-05-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1779235200000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/doi.wiley.com\/10.1002\/tdm_license_1.1"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["onlinelibrary.wiley.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Evaluation Clinical Practice"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,6]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>ABSTRACT<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Rationale and Aim<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Posthumous care\u2014honouring advance directives, keeping deathbed promises, defending deceased persons\u2019 reputations\u2014is central to clinical ethics, yet its philosophical foundations remain contested. This paper asks whether such care can be rationally grounded without presupposing either a robust transcendent ontology (the view that persons persist after death as welfare subjects) or the Epicurean conclusion that death renders all posthumous concern irrational.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The paper proceeds by philosophical argumentation and case analysis. It first reconstructs and critically evaluates subsequentialism (the leading contemporary attempt to ground posthumous harm in antemortem interests) and identifies an internal instability: interests are not stable across death in the way subsequentialism requires. It then examines three paradigm cases of posthumous care\u2014posthumous publication, deathbed promises and defence of memory\u2014and draws on narrative identity theory (Ricoeur, MacIntyre) and Kant's doctrine of regulative ideas to develop an alternative account.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      Subsequentialism fails because it cannot explain why interests should be \u2018frozen\u2019 at the moment of death rather than at any other point in a person's life, and because Parfitian accounts of personal identity undermine the interest\u2010continuity it presupposes. The Epicurean alternative is likewise rejected: it conflates the question of whether the dead can be harmed with the distinct question of whether the living have reasons to act on behalf of the dead. The paper develops\n                      <jats:italic>weak practical transcendence<\/jats:italic>\n                      : the thesis that the living may rationally act\n                      <jats:italic>as if<\/jats:italic>\n                      a deceased person's interests remain in force, grounded in narrative coherence, relational loyalty, and a Kantian regulative idea of biographical integrity. Posthumous obligations are particular rather than universal, calibrated by the depth of relational histories and the degree to which the deceased's narrative remains alive in a community of interpreters.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Weak practical transcendence has direct implications for clinical ethics. It reframes advance directive interpretation as a task of biographical stewardship rather than preference\u2010execution, reconceives surrogate decision\u2010making as the exercise of practical wisdom about what a patient's life\u2010narrative calls for, and identifies genuine posthumous obligations for clinical teams that persist after a patient's death. The account requires no posthumous welfare states and no metaphysics of personal survival; it is a normative thesis that articulates what our best clinical and moral practices already implicitly acknowledge.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1111\/jep.70473","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,20]],"date-time":"2026-05-20T18:50:17Z","timestamp":1779303017000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Acting as If: Weak Practical Transcendence and the Rationality of Posthumous Care"],"prefix":"10.1111","volume":"32","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5132-7631","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Rodrigo","family":"Laera","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Sociedad Argentina de Analisis Filosofico Buenos Aires Argentina"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"311","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_16_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9780511627231"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_3_1","volume-title":"Epicurus: The Extant Remains","author":"Epicurus","year":"1926"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/oso\/9780198842101.001.0001"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_5_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1365-2753.2012.01924.x"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1365-2753.2012.01918.x"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_7_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1365-2753.2012.01920.x"},{"issue":"2","key":"e_1_2_16_8_1","first-page":"183","article-title":"The Misfortunes of the Dead","volume":"21","author":"Pitcher G.","year":"1984","journal-title":"American Philosophical Quarterly"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_9_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/S0953820824000062"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_10_1","first-page":"255","volume-title":"The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death","author":"Johansson J.","year":"2013"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_11_1","volume-title":"Reasons and Persons","author":"Parfit D.","year":"1984"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_12_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1468-0068.2004.00460.x"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_13_1","volume-title":"Epicureanism","author":"Woolf R.","year":"2015"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_14_1","volume-title":"Harm to Others","author":"Feinberg J.","year":"1984"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_15_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s11098-011-9766-6"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_16_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/2214297"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_17_1","volume-title":"Mortal Questions","author":"Nagel T.","year":"1979"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_18_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/2025537"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_19_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/2998466"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_20_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1515\/9780773594883"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_21_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9780511804649"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_22_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/acprof:oso\/9780199691500.001.0001"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_23_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1215\/00318108-2008-014"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_24_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jpainsymman.2016.12.331"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_25_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.4324\/9781315212043-5"},{"key":"e_1_2_16_26_1","volume-title":"Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life","author":"Fischer J. 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