The Meaning of Death
Laszlo Makay, George Marosan Jr. and David Vatai consider whether death destroys meaning or creates it.
A misunderstanding? Doesn’t this suggest there is in a way in which to think about death that reflects the most reasonable understanding. Or at least a selection of options such that if your idea isn’t among them then you are in fact misunderstanding death?
In fact there are any number of narratives [religious by and large] which position death in the only possible way in which the faithful are expected to embody it. By the Book, as it were.
As for the relationship between a possible meaning of death and a possible meaning of life, few things can possibly be more existential. After all, when push comes to shove, it’s your life and your death. And all of us are in the same boat here: able to communicate them to others only up to a point. Even identical twins will not live exactly the same lives.
Here, as Sartre suggested, “existence is prior to essence”. At least until some philosopher comes along and demonstrates that his or her own assessment of life and death is essentially true. And not in the manner in which the objectivists here do it: by confining this demonstration to what they believe is true “in their head”.
This perspective only makes sense to me if “meaning” in our lives revolved entirely around the existence of one or another teleology or intellectual contraption. As though we spent the preponderance of our actual lived lives thinking about the meaning of it itself.
Which is simply not the case. Instead, we have a mind and a body programmed biologically to afford us any number of pleasurable experiences. The food we eat, the drinks we down, the orgasms we feel, the love we share, the friendships we sustain, the music we hear, the films we enjoy, the arts we explore, the endless gratifications available to us through the use of drugs.
How does a lack of overall meaning in our lives make these things less fulfilling, less absorbing, less enthralling?