Philosophy and death

It’s actually a subjective assessment rooted in Heineken. N said himself that german metaphysics was owed to beer, and it’s not for nothing that Ns been elevated to an almost metaphysical, mythical status.

Dying At The Right Time
Morgan Rempel wonders whether there is a good time to die.

How on earth to grasp let alone grapple with this as something that was a “good” thing for him or a “bad” thing. He’s barely in his mid forties when everything starts to fall apart for him [both physically and mentally] but at the end how much in touch was he with all the things that death would take away…or the fact that he was tumbling over into the abyss that was oblivion. He never had to stare into the abyss as most of us will.

Me, I’m all for dementia before I go. But just not yet.

Our problem here though is we have no idea what it was like to be inside his head over those 11 years. Was there considerable more pain than pleasure, considerable more suffering that satisfaction? You tell me. Based on everything you have garnered in regard to his condition. Even afflicted physically and mentally, one can still have access to things that make life worth living. It’s just that there are so many different variables to consider in so many different sets of circumstances isn’t it really all rather futile for philosophers to tackle it? Other than in intellectual contraptions like the authors?

Of course this too is just the reflection of but one man who, based on the life that he lived, had come to think this. Others may be quite content to weather the storm given lives that to them are still worth living. In fact, an aphoristic assessment of this sort reminds one that Nietzsche basically divided the world up between “one of us” [the ubermen] and “one of them” [the flocks of sheep].

So, what are other men and women obligated to “recognize”? Not being apples, for example.

And here one can well recognize why the Nazis might be drawn to this sort of thinking. And then taking it as far as the Final Solution for the “apples” that they insist are hanging on the branches far longer than they deserve to.

“The consummating death”? Is this something philosophers have any business at all addressing.

Death & The Philosopher
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being.

We’ll need a context of course.

Here of course any context at all merely confronts us with the enormous – staggering – gap in reconciling what we think we understand about any context and how that context would be understood by someone with an ontological grasp of existence itself.

Here, however, the gap is narrowed down to reconciling what any of us think we know about death [our own death in particular] and what one would need to know about the metaphysical parameters of Existence.

Of course one way in which to reduce the existential anguish is through God and religion. Our subjective experiences become just another manifestation of God. And in regard to both life and death. It’s all covered. Thus, Archimedes, Nagel, the author and anyone of us can make points as mere mortals. But those points about death often do bring anguish.

Philosophically, there is some comfort to be had in the gap. It is so enormous, we just don’t know the fate of “I” on “the other side”. So nothing then can really be ruled out.

So, until a God, the God chooses to reveal Himself, or until science and/or philosophy discovers the whole truth about what awaits us “there and then”, I’ll stick to what “for all practical purposes” works for me: distractions.

Death & The Philosopher
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being.

Doesn’t this encompass the ultimate paradox/antinomy embedded in the existence of any particular human being. If you were in a position of having to cause pain and suffering to others [perhaps many others] in order that you would continue to exist, how far would you go?

All sorts of hypothetical thought experiments can pop up here. Imagine that you must choose between this or that terrible set of consequences or you will die yourself. Imagine it’s your own oblivion or the death of innocent children.

What is the right thing to do when the obliteration of “I” for all time to come is at stake. And here of course a faith in God or one or another religious outcome can make all the difference in the world.

And yet no matter how much you cherish the importance of your own continued existence, your death would be utterly lacking in significance if the universe – all there is – really is an essential “thing” that merely exists as a brute facticity.

So, you are a serious philosopher. What then to make of this. It’s like ILP itself. Some here put all of their philosophical eggs into and it appears on the verge of collapsing. Either [re the Kids] into irrelevancy in regard to philosophy or literally for any number of reasons those who own and operate it happen to have. And if it goes the way of the ponderers’s guild or e-philosophy or the old yahoo-philosophy groups, of what relevance is that to the rest of the universe?

“I” being the center of the universe from the perspective of the individual. And the individual being of utter, utter insignificance in the context of “all there is”.

It’s like the feeling that some get when a calamity befalls them and they want the whole world to take note of it. But the world just keeps spinning around and around in utter, utter indifference.

As for the “science of it all”, that only takes us back to the extent to which science is able to grapple with an explanation for Existence Itself.

And how profoundly, ineffably insignificant can “I” be in regard to that?

Death & The Philosopher
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being.

Being preoccupied with death seems reasonable enough. Especially for those who really have a lot to live for, are not able to think themselves into believing in one or another religion, and who recognize just how many different ways there are to die. Especially in this day and age.

But it doesn’t surprise me that certain philosophers become preoccupied in turn with approaching death in terms of an “authentic consciousness”. After all, they are first able to think themselves into believing that this is actually possible. For some, even obligatory.

Whereas for others [like me] the far more preferred “consciousness” is “being-towards-distracting-oneself-from-death”.

Which I am not doing now only because of all the existential variables in my life that predisposed me subjectively to come back to death “philosophically”. Though now down to only a few hours a day.

Nope, never felt that before. The only thing I can imagine my own death bringing to me in the way of exhilaration is embedded in the worst of all possible worlds: being in excruciating agony with no end in sight in going on living, or ending the agony once and for all with the only possible end available.

Well, for one thing, all one need do to accomplish this is to think oneself into believing any number religious or “spiritual” explanations for why anything at all is what it is. And death becomes just another manifestation of that. And, sure, if it includes immortality and salvation…?

All the better, right?

Death & The Philosopher
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being.

If Socrates is thanking someone for curing him of the disease of life, than how much courage does it take to end it? On the contrary, if one sees life as a disease in search of a cure, then at the very moment one comes to that conclusion why not end it all then and there.

Really, in one respect, Socrates is no different from the rest of us. There are either enough fulfillments and satisfactions in ones life to warrant continuing on with it or the pain and the suffering becomes so great that it is preferable to end it…even at the cost of having to abandon all the pleasures.

On the other hand, Socrates death also becomes entangled in politics. Those in power put him in a position where his death eventually becomes a philosophical issue for many. Was his a wise choice or not?

And then the part that revolves around God or “the gods” and religion.

From History.Com

“Although he never outright rejected the standard Athenian view of religion, Socrates’ beliefs were nonconformist. He often referred to God rather than the gods, and reported being guided by an inner divine voice.”

So, okay, what were his views on immortality and salvation? To the extent that anyone believes that both are in fact a part of their own future, death can only be that much more bearable. Perhaps even something to look forward to. It’s not for nothing that suicide is frowned upon by most denominations. After all, if they advertise paradise for all of eternity, why not get there as quickly as possible.

This of course is presented as a “noble death”. Or a “death with dignity”. One’s integrity remains intact. Even in the midst of a dysfunctional body, the spirit prevails. But, according to Timothy S Yoder from Marquette University, “Hume challenges some of the arguments for the existence of God, but repeatedly in his writings, he affirms God’s existence and speculates about God’s nature.”

No chronic diarrhea in Heaven one imagines.

Still, the bottom line I suspect is that the individual reactions to death of philosophers known and unknown will be all over the board. Just as with the rest of us. There are simply too many different “situations” that we can find ourselves in to ever suppose that a “philosophy of death” won’t be especially embedded in dasein.

Do you ever do philosophy that is not a comment on something someone wrote?

Well, let’s just say that I’ll stack up my contribution to philosophical discussion here to yours any day of the week. And twice on Sunday.

And what on earth could possibly be suspect about subscribing to philosophy magazines or reading the philosophy of others online and then reacting to the arguments of those examining issues that are philosophically important to you? For me, that’s identity, morality, language, religion, death, nihilism and determinism.

And then bringing those arguments to a site called I Love Philosophy?

That puzzles you?

No but you didn’t answer the question.

And twice on Sunday.

Note to others:

Not that it will stop him from following me around like a goddamn child and taking dumps on my threads.

On the philosophy board.

On the other hand, it does bring my threads to the top again.

Gee, maybe that was his plan all along!

?

Pedro…

Here is my very first thread at ILP: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=173346

It has nothing to do with death but that won’t stop you from making some inane comment about it. And it brings it back to the top today, right?

Then going back to to all of my earliest threads – ilovephilosophy.com/search. … start=1450 – one by one make more inane comments about them. And bring them all back to the top again here and now.

You’ll have literally hundreds of opportunities to make completely inane comments!!

And all of my threads will be reborn!!!

Thanks in advance buddy.

It’s a simple question really.

ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=196480

But don’t forget this:

That was neither a yes nor a no…

What can I say:

youtu.be/waf46eBajkw
youtu.be/5hfYJsQAhl0

Death & The Philosopher
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being.

In a nutshell: options.

Ones that you have access to. And, in exercising them, the reactions of others to them.

And, when it comes to those options, the older and older you get, the clearer it becomes that “our flesh/ Surrounds us with its own decisions”. Which [perhaps ever and always] explains why God and religion will be the option of choice for the overwhelming preponderance of us. Indeed, I’d go there myself if I could figure out a way to think myself back into believing it is all actually true. That’s precisely – probably? – why I tend to thump on those here who refuse to actually make the attempt to demonstrate that it’s true themselves. Not that this actually seems possible.

Envy as much as anything. They are still able to accept that what they believe is true need be as far as they go in order to make it true. And I no longer can. So, in the face of the obliterated “I”, how do they not win?

Sure, that’s another frame of mind I would love to be able to think myself into accepting as an antidote to death. But, here and now, it is no less preposterous. In particular when I am doing something that brings me enormous satisfaction. I can only acknowledge that in death [at least as I understand it here and now myself] I will never ever get to experience it again. And there are lots and lots of experiences like that.

Yeah, if what you are experiencing now is “wretched”, death is easily construed in a whole other way. When I’m dead I never have to feel wretched again. Like that somehow makes the part where, for all of eternity, the joys you have in life are also gone forevermore go away.

So, it’s always going to be an actual existential balance: pleasure and pain.

More so than…philosophy?

Death & The Philosopher
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being.

Come on, it is easier not to regret being nothing at all before you were born because then you hadn’t accumulated all of the things in your life you love that precipitates the feeling of dread at the prospect of losing them forever.

It’s not even close to being the same. Or not for me. But, sure, if you can think yourself into looking at it that way, more power to you. Anything that diminishes the dread works, right? It’s not as comforting as religion, but it’s not nothing either.

On the other hand, one thing to note about being nothing at all before you were born: no pain and suffering either. And that’s definitely not nothing.

As for this part…

…it’s entirely too abstract for me. Except as it relates to gaining or losing particular pleasures and particular pains. Which is entirely moot for all of the eternity that existed before I was able even to think through something like this.

Yes, but here again that crucial distinction between something mattering existentially and nothing mattering essentially. That’s what life and death are teetering between. Only we have no idea how to grasp what this means either existentially or essentially.

Or, rather, not counting those of the James S. Saint sort here who have created these [at times] fantastically complex theories of everything “in their heads” in order to fully explain, well, everything. And that will certainly include all of their “pre-natal” years.

This part will obviously be more relevant to some than to others. But unless you believe in a religion that will reunite you with your loved ones in Heaven – or Hell? – once you are gone that’s their tragedy. And how can this possibly compare with your own. And even if I had many others who would miss me once I’m gone it doesn’t make me any less obliterated.

But, again, if you are able to believe and feel comforted by this, all the better.