Can the Dead Still Be Wronged?

Suppose a writer clearly asks for an unfinished manuscript to be destroyed after death, but a friend gives it to a publisher for financial gain. The writer will never know and cannot feel disappointed. Can we still say that the writer has been wronged?

Epicurus held that good and bad matter to us through experience; when death arrives, we no longer exist, so death itself is not experienced by the dead. Extended to later events, the sceptical question is sharp: if no subject remains to suffer, when could the harm occur?

Contemporary discussion offers another route. A person’s interests may include not only present experiences but also projects, relationships and reputation formed during life. Publication does not give the dead writer a bad feeling, yet it defeats a settled aim concerning the work. Even if the dead no longer hold rights, the friend may still have broken a promise and damaged a practice of trust on which living people rely.

My view is that we should separate making a dead person feel worse from treating a completed life wrongly. The first cannot occur after death; the second still can. Yet a dead person’s wishes are not unlimited commands. If carrying them out would gravely harm the living, conceal injustice or conflict with a stronger public reason, the duty must be weighed again.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/