Philosophy and death

Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.

On the other hand, given my own interest in death from both sides of the grave, what they both share in common is still this:

1] having no real substantive clues as to what actually awaits us on the other side of it

and thus…

2] having nothing definitive to provide us in the way of how one ought to live on this side of it…given that there may actually be a connection between them

Either in a God or a No God world.

In other words, if an attempt is made to connect the dots here for “I”, what other option is left us? All that Humanism is [from my point of view] is an attempt to shunt death itself off to the side for now so that secular objectivists can concoct any number of ideological and deontological assessments that might allow some who can concoct one or another moral and political consensus in one of another community to sustain something along the lines of a “right makes might” approach to human interactions.

Then, as well, those No God objectivists who anchor their own “true self” to things like nature, biological imperatives, genes and/or the Ubermensch.

Two things that seem to be reasonably certain:

1] both of them are now dead
2] those who are still among the living have no idea as to what that actually means

Well, not counting those here who insist that they do.

So, if you’re one of them, you’re up: tell us.

Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.

And it is reasonable because we all eventually experience death. We all die. But we do not all live the same life culminating in the same “world view” about the meaning of either life or death. I simply examine the practical implications of this given my own subjective understanding of dasein.

On the other hand, until and unless science itself can establish the fate of “I” on “the other side”, the only seeming wager in town is still one or another religious path. But: even here “leaps of faith” will be profoundly embedded in dasein. Some leap, some don’t. Why? Well, it is certainly not because philosophers have managed to pin down the most rational option. Instead, for me, it is intertwined in our own personal experiences out in what can be very different worlds that push us in different directions. The part those here who embrace one or another “general description spiritual contraption” steer clear of.

Leaps such as this:

But then the part that revolves around all those who opted for death. They committed suicide for any number of personal reasons no less profoundly rooted in dasein.

Then the sheer mystery that is human life and death itself.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

What I imagine here, of course, is a discussion with a Daoist in which, given a particular set of circumstances involving conflicting goods and immortality, he or she made the attempt to differentiate religion and philosophy in regard to their own life experiences.

Same thing. How are both sides of the same coin construed given that which is of most important to me in regard to both: How ought one to live on this side of the grave so as to assure the fate of “I” that is most desired on the other side of it.

And not just spiritual contraptions that basically avoid the existential parameters of the lives that we live from day to day. Lives that often come into conflict. And, ironically enough, over conflicting religious and philosophical assumptions.

Examples please. What for all practical purposes does it mean for them to see their age and themselves more clearly? What, given a situation that we are all familiar with in which there are contested assumptions regarding clarity and uncertainty, consensus and contention, does it mean to transcend one’s personal identity?

This…?

We’ll need an actual context of course. What in particular to live for? What in particular to die for? Given that one has been able to “transcend their sense of personal identity”.

Anyone here want to cite examples from their own lives?

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

I know, I know: my point too.

On the other hand, I suspect that Daoists don’t connect this dot to the one that sustains my own existential angst rooted in being – in feeling – fractured and fragmented.

In other words, let the Daoists among us focus in on a particular set of circumstances yanked down out of the general description spiritual contraption clouds and note how their own frame of mind prevails in regard to connecting my dots…the dots between how one ought to live on this side of the grave in order to attain the optimal fate for “I” on the other side of the grave.

Any Daoists here willing to go there?

First, of course, doing nothing has to actually be an option. Try doing nothing when there are bills to be paid or children to be raised or obligations to meet.

And, come on, who really knows what is inevitable or unavoidable in any number of situations. Perhaps you are not just thinking things through in the most reasonable manner. Or perhaps there are obstacles to be removed if you have the courage to risk removing them. Or perhaps you are ambivalent given conflicting assessments.

Death itself is inevitable and thus unavoidable. But there are countless individual contexts in which however one construes wu-wei, no two individuals are ever faced with exactly the same set of variables. And then the arguments I raise in regard to dasein.

Another general description spiritual contraption. So, once again, all I can do here is to ask those who think they understand this to note examples of it from their own lives. And, in particular, to explore it with me given contexts in which conflicting goods are involved.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

You know what’s coming, right? The way of the world given experiences and interactions that clearly seem to be either this or that, and the way of the world when our reactions to that which we can all agree is either this or that come into conflict.

Thus, tell me about the Dao as it relates to the behaviors I choose on this side of the grave as that pertains to the fate of “I” on the other side of it.

The Way to live virtuously.

And, again, with many Western religions, it’s all in the Book. Commandments and such. And, with their God, the Ultimate Reality is anything but impersonal. How does one even go about grasping an Ultimate Reality as impersonal? The part where we shift from how things do what they do to why things do what they do and not something else.

How we die can be as a result of many, many, many different things? But why do we die? And why were we born at all?

Sure, a skilled doctor may perform an abortion almost as effortlessly as she ties her shoes. The Dao here is easily within my grasp. But how does the “impersonal Ultimate Reality” react to the fact that she chose to end the life of an unborn baby/clump of cells? What can she expect after she herself dies?

In other words [of course] the Dao and the points I raise in my signature threads.

Or, sure, let’s not go there now:

The Dao here becomes just another general description spiritual contraption that could hardly be more opaque. Someone here who follows this path would have to take us through their day and note the distinction that they experience in living this way as opposed to how they once lived before taking this path.

And then the part that is of most interest me. You are on this path [in relationship, at work, in your social interactions] and find yourself confronted with someone who is not on the path and who insists that you not behave in a particular way because in their view the behavior is irrational and/or immoral.

Then your attempt to explain how and why you connect the dots between the path you are on now and the path you expect to be on when you die.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

How is this not just another general description spiritual contraption that, for all practical purposes, tells us little or nothing substantive about either the life we live or the death that awaits us. In fact, from my frame of mind, it comes closer to psycho-babble than anything that can be used in describing human interactions given my own own main interest in death: connecting the dots existentially between the behaviors we choose on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” on the other side.

What of the Dao here?

Okay, so let’s take this conclusion [however you construe its meaning] out into the world of conflicting goods and put it to the test. But that’s the point, isn’t it: never to have to. It’s all “impersonal”. It’s all encompassed in a “state of mind” that ties everything together for you as long as it is never really more than a psychological state that makes you feel at one with…everything? Which, for all practical purposes, may as well be nothing nothing at all.

Like everyone else the Daoists have bodies to feed and to sustain. They will probably have bills to pay and obligations to meet. They will no doubt have jobs and interactions with others in which there is always the possibility of coming into conflict with them in regard to particular moral and political agendas that clash. But as long as they seek to be “caring” and be a “good man”, Heaven will invariably side with them?

And “unlike God” how exactly does the Dao go about actually participating in the lives that we live? Where does the Dao end and “I” begin when confronted with a particular set of circumstances.

Are there any Daoists here able to go there?

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death.

This sounds more like something out of a crackpot New Age philosophy. “The Dao possesses infinite power without being powerful”. Really, what alternative is there then but for me to ask those who believe this themselves to note how this actually unfolds given their own life and their interactions with others. It’s like arguing that God is omnipotent but lacks any actual power? To me, it’s a purely “mystical” assertion that for all practical purposes might just as well be meaningless. But for those who believe it the comfort and the consolation are still the same.

And in particular how they come to reflect on this in regard to their own existential death. The Dao when it comes down to that…in the weeks, days, hours before a death, the death, their flesh and blood death is at hand.

I’m speechless. What on earth does this mean in regard to death? Your death. Here and now. Death, of course, is an inherent part of nature. And some speculate that after death “I” returns to the nothingness that it was before one is born. Oblivion on both sides of our 70 odd sojourn in the middle. What of effortless action and breath control then?

And, okay, I’ll admit it: my “sneering” reaction to all of this is derived in part from how badly I wish I could acquire it myself. Being able to think myself into actually believing this makes any sense when confronting the abyss. They actually have this comfort and consolation. I don’t.

That part I always get.

Yes, that’s what it always assumes. Meditation and the mystical. Something “wholly other” than oblivion and nothingness. Death as a “transformation”.

And the reality is…

Of course: you tell me.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death.

How convenient.

In other words, if someone is trying to grapple with the Dao so as to grasp its relevance to and significance in their own actual life and death, words are there only to reveal that anything exposed will always be accompanied by its opposite. Whatever that means.

In fact these are precisely the sort of words that [to me] configure the Dao into a psychologism. What counts with any words that you are able to come up with is not what they convey in the way of meaning but how the words convey a psychological reaction to the world instead.

Nothing can really be pinned down. But that’s the point. What you are experiencing instead is a “sense” of reality. And who can really probe that beyond the psychological sense itself. To me it’s not all that far removed from the opaque narratives of the New Age gurus.

As in, “we are all at one with the universe”? And, again, the beauty of descriptions like this is that they can can mean anything to anyone. You can’t get it wrong because there is no way in which to test your assumptions. There’s the universe and there’s you. And whatever happens between them is the embodiment of the Dao?

Which, from my own interpretation, means that, really, we can have any viewpoint at all. No viewpoint is the wrong one because it’s your viewpoint. We don’t know what we see out in the world with others. Instead, we see only what we already know.

Now, sure, I might be completely misunderstanding the Dao here. But that’s the point. Unless I can discuss the Dao with others as they actually experience it, not only might I be getting it wrong, it’s almost as though that is perfectly okay because in the end, I, like everyone, else am still at one with the universe.

Only what on Earth might that actually mean?

Or, for example, given the life that Daoists live, what does this…

…mean?

And then connect the dots from that to your own death. The ultimate “deconstruction” of a life.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death.

Again: way, way, way up in the intellectual/spiritual stratosphere. Thus there is trying to grapple with its meaning here and now given your current set of circumstances…and then imagining yourself grappling with it at a time in the future when you find out that you are very close to death yourself.

How many of us do grasp the “nature of things” in regard to before death, death, after death? Instead, given “I” here as the embodiment of dasein, we will all have different — sometimes very different – reactions to Nature/nature as we have come to understand it.

So, is there anyone here who is following the natural course of his or her own imminent death? Not a death out there down the road but one just around the corner. How in some detail has this natural course allowed you to “avoid being affected by sorrow or joy” through reason and understanding.

Instead, we get this:

Rain in Classical Daoist Thought?

Sure, to the extent that, given your imminent death, following the Daoist path does “for all practical purposes” permit you to “avoid being affected by sorrow or joy through reason and understanding”, it works and that’s the bottom line. Or it could be any number of other religious/spiritual paths.

There’s really nothing I can say here but this: that, here and now, I wish I were able to rethink myself into finding the path that I was once on all those years ago.

But there is simply too much that I would have to believe in turn about being on a One True Path that I no longer am able to.

Here and now.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death.

Again, this is typical of what happens when things like death are taken over by the philosophers. This attempt to “capture” it in an “assessment”. An intellectual or spiritual conjecture such that it can be pinned down to what extent one should be indifferent towards it…and how far removed the “common practice” where you happen to resides is from that of the sages.

Okay, so given your own actual existential death, has anyone here been well taught to “disperse emotion with reason”.

On the other hand, how can one be reasonable about something they know absolutely nothing about? Unless, of course, they were taught in turn that if they are on the right path religiously or spiritually, “I” continues on for all the rest of eternity comfortably ensconced in one or another rendition of paradise. Provided that, on this side of the grave, they toed the line and earned that salvation.

Okay, for him, then and there, given the manner in which he had been able to think himself into accepting the death of his wife… and given the manner in which death itself was believed by him to be just another “season” in our lives…this worked for him.

So, will it work for you when someone you dearly love has just died? Or when you yourself are on your deathbed?

Maybe. It depends on what you yourself have managed to think yourself into believing about death. Or on what you have managed to think yourself into believing about life or no life after death.

But: tell me that isn’t profoundly [and very much problematically] rooted in the manner in which I construe the meaning of human identity and dasein in regard to things like death.

Where’s Biggie’s Gadot? I too wish he’d visit the smartest man on the internet for a ‘Groot together.’ :evilfun:

:banana-angel: :banana-blonde: :banana-dreads: :banana-gotpics: :banana-guitar: :banana-jumprope: :banana-linedance: :banana-ninja: :banana-rainbow: :banana-rock: :banana-skier: :banana-stoner: :banana-tux: :banana-wrench: :banana-fingers: :banana-angel: :banana-gotpics: :violence-minigun:

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, up in the spiritual clouds where one’s reaction to death becomes a series of psychologisms. Like Maia’s reaction to Nature. Putting words together to encompass a general description of life and death such that merely in believing what you think the words mean is comfort and consolation enough.

Thus:

Nothing here about your own actual existential death. Nothing about fearing the loss of all the flesh and blood people that you love and cherish for all the rest of eternity. Nothing about grieving the loss of all the things that bring you enormous fulfilment and satisfaction for all the rest of eternity. Instead, death is “natural”. And if the dying part itself is filled with great physical and emotional pain and suffering? Well, that’s natural too.

Sure, if Daoists or Buddhists or Pagans or any number of others on their own One True Spiritual Path manage to think themselves into sustaining these soothing frames of mind all the way to the grave, then all the better for them.

I only confront them here by and large because this is a philosophy venue and we are expected to dig a little deeper into why we believe some things and not others.

And, even if you are not quite able to convince yourself that your own spiritual path does lead to the next chapter of “I” on the other side of the grave, it’s still no less natural that we become food for worms and do our bit to replenish the planet for the next generations.

Again, some of us are able to accept that as balancing out all the things that we lose when we tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

And some of us are not.

The part I factor into dasein.

Or, sure, being in the Coalition of Truth, you can reduce it all down to this:

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death.

And, really, in regards to death, how much difference can there possibly be between butterflies and human beings?

Who thinks these things up?!

Other than those who, in my view, need to reduce the fact of death – oblivion – down to comforting psychologisms of this sort. You’re faced with the imminent demise of your own life. Everything and everyone that you love dearly and, as well, provide you with enormous amounts of joy, fulfillment and satisfaction are about to tumble over into the abyss that is nothingness for all of eternity. So, of course, become the butterfly and just go with the flow.

Oh, and, in turn, you have the Dao/Tao that in ways which are not quite explicable allow you to believe that on the other side of the grave something like this…

“Taoism teaches that it is in this life that we’re eternal. Rather than transitioning from the living world to an afterlife, Taoism believes the afterlife exists within life on Earth. As a living person, you exist as part of the Tao, and when you die, you exist as part of the Tao.”

…happens.

I truly do challenge someone to make an attempt to demonstrate how this actually works in regard to “I” here and now.

Instead, in my view, any number of those here inclined toward one or another religious or spiritual rendition of the One True Path path will reconfigure their own “fear of death” into a psychologism of this sort:

And all one need to do here is to believe it. And, sure, my own at times hostile reaction to those who still can revolves at least in part around the fact that I am no longer able to dupe myself into believing it.

If “dupe” is the right word of course.

There is a view that entails the idea that experience is merely the realization of a cosmos ultra rich in metaphor. Not the other way around.

Reality is merely a description of that appearent up-side down wirld in terms of. and within the either or world.

As Mark Twain said, “I was dead for billions of years before I was born, and it didn’t inconvenience me in the slightest.”

That’s my take on philosophy and death.

On the other hand, before we are born, there is no one in our life that we love dearly; and no things that bring us boundless satisfaction and fulfillment. People and things that are obliterated along with “I” for all of eternity in a No God world where immortality and salvation are merely the embodiment of leaps of faith that some are able to make and others not.

Why on earth do you suppose we invent the Gods? Why on earth do you suppose that some are terrified of death, oblivion, nothingness?

And: How on earth is that not reasonable if you truly do love your life and must come face to face with the prospect of the obliterated “I”?

Again, if those like pood are able to think themselves into approaching their own existential demise in a comforting psychologism like his above, more power to them. It sure beats my own frame of mind.

But then, here and now, how close is he to his own actual flesh and blood death?

Rather than a…philosophical death?

You know, if you can fit all of this on the headstone.

Beats me. See Twain.

Because when my “I” is obliterated I won’t know or care. Again, See Twain. No inconvenience,.

Pretty close, I reckon.

As my friend in California and I used to say, “Life sucks, you eat a lot of Mexican food, and then you die.” The dying and the Mexican food are the good parts, provided the food is prepared in the authentic Mexican style.

I should amend to say, “the dying and Mexican food are the good parts, providing the food is prepared in the authentic Mexican style and the dying is quick and painless.”

Being afraid of dying seems quite reasonable to me, as it is often prolonged, painful and messy. Being afraid of death (non-being) does not seem reasonable to me. As the atheist Ayn Rand said when pressed on this point, “you won’t be there,” which is exactly right and even more succinct than Twain.

My point is to note how, for many/most, there is a rather substantial gap between contemplating “I” before they were born…the part where they have absolutely nothing to lose…being born, accumulating relationships that are near and dear to them, accumulating experiences that bring them enormous fulfillment and then being told by the doc that they have just days to live.

Sure, some are able to think themselves into comforting frames of mind that manage to subsume the loss of the life they love in something akin to what I construe to be a TwainSpeak psychologism.

And indeed if their life actually sucks, the pain and the suffering can reach the point where death itself is the comforting thought. That’s all rooted in dasein of course. Each of us on our own unique path. But as per usual pood seems more intent on confronting his own death smugly.

He’ll show death!

Now, perhaps he will offer up some details as to how close he did come to death.

Also, note that his own life does contain plenty of loving relationships and precious experiences that will tumble over into the abyss with him. Perhaps he can afford to be more “philosophical” about it because he really doesn’t have all that much to lose anyway.