How have your understandings of Philosophy and you beliefs affected your thoughts on death or dying?
Thank you
Amilie xXx
Hi,
What was more the case in my experience was how death and dying effected my philosophical understanding. Not my death, obviously, but that of my brother-in-law.
I have spent a significant proportion of my life trying to find the answers to why we are here and what happens to us when we die. I have studied all the major religions (and some philosophy) and labelled myself a buddhist for many years, but was never fully happy about the idea of rebirth and had not really come any closer to finding any answers that convinced me.
I never really knew my brother-in-law very well until he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. While my wife, his wife and children, mother and so on obviously had to deal with all the emotions related to the suffering and imminent loss of a much loved family member, I could offer him the opportunity to perhaps more freely explore his feelings with another human being.
What struck me was his absolute joy in life… he could tell me all about the plants and birds in the garden of the hospice, about the stars at night… he clearly loved everything about being alive, but at the same time he felt confident that his life, his consciousness, would end with the death of his body. While he clearly didn’t want to die, to miss his children growing up, and feared losing control when the cancer inevitably became all-consuming, he didn’t fear death itself, or the thought of non-being.
His inspiration gave me the confidence to accept what I had really believed all along… that consciousness, and certainly personality or sense of self, is inextricably linked to the physical body… that in all likelihood we have this one life, this one spark of illumination in the vastness of time and space, one opportunity to live and find joy in all around us before we once again return to star dust.
What do you think?
Why have we immortalized death (in its usual sense)??? Is it because we fear death ??? or is it the mystery ???
Death is an abstract notion, the concrete reality is the fact that humanity has associated so much emotion and I think its imminent that we are more interested in this association than death itself.
Attachement is the greatest evil and the greatest good. We could take sides and the arguments will never end. If one ends attachement then that is dying and this is of gargantuan relevance to the present generation. (For eg. Divorce is not the end of an attachement because its a reaction of the attachement -prior)
philosophy opened my mind to possabilaties after death, where more liniar sciences simply ignored that possability.Had I not opened my mind to such aspects I would probably not be here today. In some ways not knowing has been more of a saving grace than knowledge.
Several of my family members have died since my early teens, including two grandparents, a family pet and my mother, I’m not that old now but seeing those deaths simply opened my mind further to the possabilaties afterwards since each and every one of them had a look of peace upon their face.
Please be clearer.
What do you mean by ‘usual sense’?
How so is death an ‘abstract notion’?
Please explain ‘if one ends attachment then that is dying’.
thanks
I am glad you are still here and that your loved ones died in peace.
Are there any particular philosophical thoughts or theories that you have found useful in relation to your loss?
thanks
for a long time I tried to find some way of convincing myself that there was in fact a god… and some afterlife… and some meaning to everything… but I was unable to find any argument good enough… any emotion true enough… or any experience profound enough to convince me that there is anything other than the natural out there…
I wished there were a god… i wished there were an afterlife… but wishes don’t make things true… for a while it was depressing to think of death when nothingness was on the other side… and knowing that everday lead you closer to that fate… but now… that i no longer harber a wish for an afterlife… nor a god… i find that i’m better able to apitiate life while it’s here… and all that goes with it…
even pain is prefrable to nothingness… I rarely bitch and moan about things now… since all in all… regardless of how bad things might get… I’m glad to be alive to have an opnion of how shitty it all is… nor do i have a fear of death anymore… since I realized that i’ll be nothing… I’ll hardly be able to feel miserable once i’m dead… or regret something i never did 
what you think of death, the dead and dying is at best irrelevant… what you want to do is pay attention to the living while they’re here… they won’t give a damn once they’re dead… so… better make the best of it while you can…
or simply put: givin my views… Death is a boring subject… let’s talk about the life instead…
I have found some that were helpfull, not the least of which being that scientists speculates that about 98% of the energy in the universe is unaccounted for (aka. dark energy and/or dark matter) so that leves open almost infinate relms of discovery and possability. and that being only humans we are limited in our perceptions of the world, but that does not mean the world itself is limited by us.
Essentually what I have learned from philosophy is than anything is possible, if for no other reason than there is still the unknown, and this gives me an incredible sense of peace in that I am not alone in my ignorance.
Wether that makes sense or not I’ dont know, but it makes sense to me and that’s what matters.
Everything you said is true, trouble is that plenty of people haven’t reached that point, many are still afraid of death, others are actively seeking it due to their delusional faith that they will go straight to heaven as martyrs.
There is still much to be done.
Or are they afraid of the unknown?
With regards,
aspacia 
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Truth(God’s laws) is what is true yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Death is the truth and one of that laws. Everything change. It is the law. Death is just a change. I had NDE. It wasn’t scary at all, so peaceful, free of pain and suffering, euphoric. I was very mad when I came back to life. It was the most beautiful experience I ever had. You will want to keep going to that bright light.
We each only have one lifetime to live. When the brain dies, that is the end. All that survives of us is the memories that others have of us and the work that we produced.
Some are afraid of the unknown, and others of the ‘known’ (i.e. have a strong faith in existence of hell and worried about going there, or the athiest who fears extinction).
Others are not afraid of the unknown, or not afraid of the ‘known’ (such as, in religious terms, Justly above, or the suicide bomber, who both ‘know’ they are going to heaven - or the athiest who knows that with extinction there is no knowledge of it, no suffering).
I am not afraid of the extremely likely, for the same reason as the unafraid athiest above.
It has helped me to see the connection between modern individualism and the general opinion on death. Our society is fixated on the individual person, her birth, growth and death, but why not see human life (or all life, if you like) as an “immortal” humanity which continuously regenerates itself in each new generation? From a philosophical perspective, this viewpoint leads to much more interesting questions than “what will happen to ME after I die?”. It has a direct influence on the way we structure many ethical problems of today (think about “the rights of future generations”, for example, should they be considered separately from “our rights”?).
I had a similar experience as Al it made me re-evaluate my existence and everyone else`s and that drew me to more of a philosophical understanding that death is real and no matter how you dress it up in religion or approach it with open arms of with fear it will inevitably come to us all and the difference it that most people know this fact very few understand it and come to accept it as true. With this notion comes a certain release as often the terminally ill experience.
Very true.
A noble sentiment indeed shame that it doesn`t apply nowadays we would find i hope that a lot of the “bad” things that go on would no longer be a problem. I hope that like a disease spreads that ideas like this can grow into eventually the ideology of the masses.
Matter is composed of mass (form-volume) and energy (motion).
Our spiritual aspect is our mind, soul and heart.
These three are manifestations of our tens of trillions of living cells in Borg-like proximity and concert that thereby create our “I am” spirituality – our self – at the next level of material being … which we refer to as our mind, soul and heart, our trinity spirituality.
There is no other spiritual dimension.
Because this spiritual dimensional phenomenon is derived from the material, when our material body dies, our material body which includes all the cells of our body, blood, brain, muscle, skin, all of it, a death that occurs essentially all at once when we die, when we die, our spirit dies too – our mind, heart and soul die also, and there is nothing of our very self that lives on afterward.
There is no afterlife as religion erroneously perceives it, nor is there a before life as well so there is no “separable” part of us that has lived before or will live after we die.
Our life is one-time only.
And death … is forever.
We do, however, live on in other ways.
We live on in the minds of those who knew us.
We live on in the souls of those we touched.
And we live on in the hearts of those who loved us.
Regardless, this is our one and only personal life.
So, philosophically, it behooves us to make the best of it.
And in that, we are all ontologically the same.
So I consider our lives to be sacred, from the moment of our conception, to the moment of our death.
Our basic rights to life, security and freedom derive from this sanctity.
Only therefore in exceptional cases of self-defense is it acceptable to kill another.
We must error on the side of the lives of human beings.
Failure to do so can cause self-inflicted neuropsychological damage that is best to avoid if we truly want to make this, our one and only life, the best it can be.
Philsophically, therefore, it is in my best interest to respect my own life as sacred and bestow the same respect on the lives of others.
Many argue the energy that makes us alive, continues after death. I do not know, and have read but very little on this.
True enough.
Hum, so we the right to protect society by executing a murderer?
This has occurred, and the murderer was released on a technicality, only to murder again.
What if “others” do not respect your life as sacred, and do not respect the lives of others? That is, they want you dead? Turn the other cheek?
With regards,
aspacia
I would make the same argument.
The energy from the atoms of the molecules of the tissue of the living cells that together formed our very life does indeed continue.
If I recall correctly, the E=MC^2 axiom of physics presents conservation of energy and mass in matter, such that the two are always in proportional balance – mass and energy can be converted back and forth, but you can’t destroy either into nothingness.
So the energy of these atoms that were a part of us when we were alive often remain to become a part of something else after we die.
However, none of that has anything to do with the fantasy of afterlife, nothing whatsoever. There is simply no real relationship between the two.
Yes … if society is truly in danger by allowing the murderer to live.
Most often, however, governments execute people out of financial convenience or to placate a vengeful populace with respect to political consituency, when the bound, confined and guarded prisoner is really no threat to anyone at the time.
Self-defense is always in the moment.
Afterwards, killing someone is probably just another form of murder.
If that has occurred, then I seriously question that an error was made on the side of the lives of human beings, as the release of the murderer put the lives of potential victims at risk.
A problem with the mechanics of our legal system does not adequately excuse releasing a dangerous person into the population at large.
But the potential for such a situation to occur does also not excuse murdering that criminal when he is bound, confined and guarded and is thus not a threat.
No, defend ourself via acts of self-defense.
And if we kill them in the act of self-defense, then, though that is still tragic and it will affect us detrimentally, the attacker was in the wrong and all accountability for his own demented demise rests with him, and not with us as innocent defenders.
If I recall, it is illegal to threaten the life of another.
It is not illegal to “want” someone dead.
It is only illegal to actually say so and threaten them.
Regardless, unless they are in the act, as determined by a court of law, in the act of attempting to kill you, it is unacceptable with respect to the sanctity of life for you to seek them out to kill them before they kill you.