To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die
Facing death can be a key to our liberation and survival.
By Simon Critchley
April 11, 2020
From the NYT philosophy series The Stone
Of course the last thing most do is to turn to philosophers like Heidegger in order to reduce their own death down to a “social inconvenience” or to “down right tactlessness”.
After all, what on earth does either one even mean? And, in particular, as it relates to the new number one cause of death here in America: covid-19. No getting around mortality when you tune into the news these days. And any “counterfeit eternity” will be put to the test whenever you step outside your front door and play Russian roulette with everyone you happen to come across just in the course of going to the grocery store.
Me, I can’t imagine philosophy working to put our reality today into an assessment other than the one Critchley attempts here. Far, far, far removed from the actual lives that the overwhelming preponderances of us live. A general description intellectual contraption on steroids.
But: not true at all we are told.
Does this make sense to you? Can you relate it to your life? Can you imagine attending a funeral [when that becomes possible again] and noting this to those gathered around the coffin? Again, to me, it sounds like something that elevates death into something analogous to a Platonic form. A world of words death that one expects from those who think thoughts like this for a living.
On the other hand, he does comes closer to that which rings true to “me” here:
But then in closing he has to spoil it…for me.
What “human beings” are said to be [by anyone] and how one sees oneself as a human being can be nothing short of a gaping chasm for some of us. And this is the part where, in my view, philosophers can tread if it is somethjing they feel they can contribute to. But once they reach the point where they are arguing that our “wretchedness is our greatness”, they completely alienate me. This is a “general description intellectual contraption” that is far, far removed from the manner in which I see “I” here as, instead, an inherently ambiguous and profoundly confusing “existential contraption.”
And in regard to both life and death.