There was no death until after life already evolved. Therefore death is not necessary for evolution.
I am pretty sure that there was death
during the time in which life evolved. Your philosophical argument treats the emergence of life as a moment instead of a process. There is not much philosophy involved here. It is just the nuts and bolds and springs and gears to make the machine work.
You can get evolution without death, but death does optimize it.
Without death that's gonna be pretty hard. If old generation did not die and keep reproducing then their un-evolved DNA not only stays in the pool, but keeps filling it. For most life forms life expectancy is set by the environment - they will likely die by the elements or a predator before they grow old. For larger creatures and top predators in particular, death by age, or being weakened by age till the elements or predator kills you ensures that old generations are removed from the system. Death of old generations also frees natural resources to the young.
This is why this "error" that causes aging is actually a feature developed and optimized by evolution. It optimizes the time a creature has to reproduce vs. the need to remove it from the system and allow the new generations to keep evolving. Thus having it is an advantage to the specie and the survival of this feature in the gene pool - it got selected.