That was neither a yes nor a no…
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.
Or, sure, revel in their death instead. But why should the “art of outliving” be any different from the “art of living” or the “art of dying”: rooted profoundly, unpredictably and problematically in dasein.
In fact, choosing the word “art” itself is telling. Unlike with philosophy with its logical and epistemological tools and science with its laws of nature, art is considerably more subjective. And definitely more subjunctive. Yet when some speak of the art of anything the implication is that it is somehow superior or preferable to other things.
Yet coping with the loss of others is always going to be embodied in how our lives predispose us to react. Think of how Meursault reacted to the death of his mother. And think of philosophers arguing over how far removed that might be from the “art of outliving”.
Or another reaction:
So much for the “art” of it. There is only believing that death is somehow subsumed in one or another God and religion, or that ultimately it is subsumed in the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless existence, and those we outlive and those who outlive us will have to come up with our own and their own “least ambiguous” reaction. Call it an art, call it something else. But there it is: the abyss that is oblivion.
A good thing if the alternative is ceaseless agony on this side of the grave, a bad thing if for each of us as individuals the pleasures still far and away outweigh the pain.
Iambiguous,
You have zero percent knowledge of the spirit world.
Everything you type is uneducated.
I’m going to take you back trillions of years in the past …
We all were never born and we all will never die. Very simple.
The problem with this is that we get EXTREMELY bored with forever!
So a bunch of spirits submitted a new plan that they thought could entertain us forever… we all looked at the plan and said, “why the fuck not?”
That’s all this is… “why the fuck not?”
Your entire lack of being in the spirit world is a result of you deciding to be asleep.
I’m waking you up. We need a new plan dude. This one doesn’t work.
You still have that “condition” I see. Not only that but it appears to be getting worse.
Fortunately, here at ILP, there’s a thread for that: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=195805
Death & The Philosopher
Raymond Tallis on philosophical attitudes to non-being.
There it is. A countless number of reactions that any of us might have in regard to death in general and to our own death in particular. Mine certainly being among the most pessimistic outlooks. Objectively, both my own life and death seem to be embedded in an insignificance that, in the context of all there is, and in a No God world, would seem to be far, far beyond encompassing in words. When one is but one of billions that the overwhelming preponderance of the global population are utterly oblivious to, how can one not but feel the futility of it all.
And yet that doesn’t make me any less preoccupied with sustaining whatever life I have left for as long as possible. It is simply part of the existential reality of living “my life” that I don’t spend a whole lot of time obsessing over the 'big picture". Not when I can only actually live my life from day to day intertwined in any number of very real contexts that generate any number of mental, emotional, psychological and physical experiences. Call it a paradox, call it an enigma, call it an anomaly, call it a conundrum.
The only thing I know for certain is that these individual reactions are no less the embodiment of dasein. And that it seems highly unlikely that philosophers will ever pin down the optimal or the ideal or the most rational reaction to death among our species.
On the other hand, my own reaction to reactions of this sort is empathic: that it seems preposterous to me beyond any attempt to communicate at all. It is precisely the elevated level of fulfillment itself when life is a banquet that sustains the despair one feels knowing that for all of eternity there are no more banquets to be had. Sure, a part of you can attempt to focus in on the fact that you are no longer around to sorely miss those banquets, and if that works, good for you. It just doesn’t work for me me given my own psychological predispositions rooted in my own life.
Exactly. And, again, depending on just how sumptuous the banquet that is your own has become. That’s why I have always imagined those “celebrities” who have had the most fulfilling lives being all the more distraught about their own death. They have so much more of the “good stuff” to lose.
The irony then being that if you want the least despair in the face of oblivion then have the most miserable life here and now.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
How does one go about discussing comprehensively that which one has not yet experienced? Even in “intellectual contraptions” the discussion is limited to sheer speculation once all of the facts about it from “this side of the grave” are taken into account.
Instead, we only know that we will experience it. And, then, deciding “here and now” if we we will be better off dealing with whatever possible reality there might be on the other side of the grave. And that’s all about tabulating the pleasure and the pain and then calculating how realistic the options are for effectuating constructive changes.
I’m still on the plus side here. So, I’m still around.
The rest then revolves by and large around the extent to which you are able to think yourself into believing in one or another God or one or another religion.
Thus…
Here however it might be more intriguing to explore death and existentialism from the perspective of those who were generally thought to be atheists and those who were generally thought to be theists. The theists being those like Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Buber.
Though in fact unlike you and I, they are all dead. So, unlike you and I, they either still do or do not have a perspective on death that you and I fumble about grappling with and grasping from this side of the grave.
With or without God and religion.
Biggy, They may just not be dead, their gimmortality is evident , literally. Now go and figure.
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, what do those existentialists who were either theists or atheists share in common about death? This: that “views” about death are not the same thing as facts about death.
And even views [here] are no less existential contraptions rooted in the subjective/subjunctive “I”.
No “souls” have yet to be yanked up out of our “hearts and minds”. Or none that I am aware of.
But, not to worry. None of that “reality” stuff need matter:
See how it works? You come to believe all of this is true and so – miraculously enough! – that is what makes it true! Either in being indoctrinated by others or in conjuring up your own spiritual assumptions. It’s all just “in your head” anyway.
And because it is true [in there] it tranquillizes you. It soothes you, it calms you. And no less today than back in the “dark ages”. And all the Enlightenment from all the Humanists in the world won’t make the things that religion [and only religion] can provide you go away: immorality and salvation.
Then it’s just a matter of being one the fortunate ones able to take this belief all the way to the grave. I only made until I was about 20 myself.
But then you’re not me, right?
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
North, South, East, West. Scientifically, philosophically, theologically, technologically. Intellectually or for all practical purposes.
One thing remains the same. We know that everyone dies. We don’t know what that means. Science merely employs a methodology that seems considerably more intent on focusing in on what may or may not unfold given actual hard evidence. What can we verify about death? What can we falsify about it?
Not much at all in regard to what in fact does happen to “I” on the other side of the grave.
Yes, faith has declined. And no doubt about it: capitalism has created a frame of mind that is increasingly preoccupied with all of the things the mind can concern itself with on the journey from the cradle to the grave: Politics. Relationships. Sports. The arts. Entertainment. All you need here to make death go away for a while is the money that creates the actual options.
On the other hand, that doesn’t make the “morality here and now, immortality there and then” part go away. And for that God and religion are still basically the only game in town. At least to the extent that you crave the very, very best of assurances.
Mankind perhaps. But when it comes down to individual men and women faced with a set of circumstances in which death seems either miles and miles away or in which death is staring you down eyeball to eyeball, the “existential-phenomenological approach” is just one more intellectual contraption. That some pursue this philosophically doesn’t make the fear or the terror that many feel in confronting their very own death less suffocating.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
Analysis indeed. If you get my drift.
Why would that be interesting? Well, because the explanation that makes the most sense to me is in reconfiguring Dasein as a philosophical contraption into dasein as an existential contraption.
He was “brought up” to think one way. And he abandoned it. So, clearly, he had either accumulated experiences that changed his mind more or less than he accumulated philosophical arguments that accomplished it. And that is what is always interesting to me.
Right, an ontological inquiry into the meaning of death. Yet isn’t this always my point? That we cannot speak coherently about either life or death until we can speak coherently of all that one needs to know about existence itself?
Yeah, but why do some actually imagine that their own conclusions accomplish this?
Thus to speak of “the Being of human beings…established on a purely phenomenological basis without reference to a deity or the concept of immortality” is to imagine that intellectual contraptions of this sort really are capturing something utterly profound about the human condition.
Which is why I prefer the considerably smaller “d” dasein. The existential self becoming from the cradle to the grave. We all die. That really seems to be as close as we an come to an ontological assessment. As for the teleological parameters of it all, that’s what the invention of the Gods and religion is for.
Or, rather, so it still seems to me.
Right. What does “the focus…on the existential significance which this certain ‘yet-to-come’ death has to human life, i.e. to Dasein’s being-in-the-world” have to do with with “how people feel when they are about to die nor with death as a biological event”.
Okay, a part of me recognizes how and why “technically”, “epistemologically” it might be important to go there as a philosopher. And to the extent that those here choose to emulate Heidegger and others and focus on that, fine. But after accumulating their conclusions, how on earth are they relevant to the part that preoccupies me: morality here and now, immortality there and then.
Having pinned down the most sophisticated and rational manner in which to “the focus…on the existential significance which this certain ‘yet-to-come’ death has to human life, i.e. to Dasein’s being-in-the-world”, what does it have to do with the things that “I” think about in regard to death. The fact that, for example, it – the abyss – seems to be the only possible culmination to an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence on this side of the grave?
Or: how did he connect the dots existentially between his philosophical assessment of Dasein/death and, say, the Nazis.
The separate but partially binding liability between what is, and what ought to be, is still enigmatic.
Literally, death is solopsistic and singulad, but accounably, death dies not really exist.
I think that may figure within the Das ein.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
This despite the fact that, in order to accomplish this, would or would not Heidegger, a mere mortal here on planet Earth, have to acknowledge that the “Being of Dasein as a whole” is no less embedded in the gap between what he thinks he knows about the human condition and all that there is to be known about it?
In other words, not unlike you or I. And not just death, but life itself.
Back again to the “existentialist” understanding of living one’s life “authentically”. In order to be True to your Self, you must broach, then assess, then come to conclusions of this sort about your own Death. About your own Being.
Only [of course] very few of us [apparently] have either the intellectual honesty or integrity to embody this in the lives that we live. Instead, most either put all of their faith [indoctrinated or not] in one or another God or No God religious path, bestowing one or another rendition of immortality and salvation on the flock, or they accumulate any number earthly pleasures in the form of distractions from death and oblivion.
Or, if one must go up into the clouds of abstraction:
Here, however, I always come back to this: whatever works.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
That’s the beauty of configuring death into an intellectual contraption. It tells us both everything and absolutely nothing about our own actual existential death. On the other hand, it’s not like we do much better when we come down out of the clouds. Still, I prefer dasein to Dasein here. How ought one to live knowing that “one of these days…”
How does the existential reality of oblivion [an assumption] factor into the behaviors we choose on this side of the grave. And what when those behaviors come into conflict with others. Between, for example, Nazis and Jews. What then of Dasein interpreting the phenomenon of death?
Unless, of course, given any number of circumstances, your death is profoundly intertwined in theirs. Facing death together. Or, together, one bringing about the death of the other?
You tell me: dasein or Dasein?
Well, Dasein can go back up into the clouds here, but dasein has to deal with the day to day experiences that may or may not include death existentially.
Also, there is the God/religion option. Clearly, to the extent that one is able to think oneself into truly believing in their own immortality and salvation “total disintegration” becomes “paradise” itself.
Finally, particular daseins may opt for suicide. They choose oblivion over whatever terrible pain and suffering makes life itself unbearable.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
Tell that to the Jews?
No, seriously, the actual existential deaths that we experience are always out in a particular world given a particular set of circumstances. And considerably less a reflection of all this philosophical mumbo-jumbo about dread as a “state-of-mind” that those in the death camps must learn to “turn away from…and then to be thrown back to confront itself”.
Or in regard to your own more or less imminent encounter with oblivion?
On the other hand, sure, if what some accomplish with God and religion, you can accomplish with the optimal “authentic” philosophical reasoning, well, whatever works. That will always be my own mantra. Whatever you can think yourself into believing is true about either life or death…if it comforts and consoles you considerably more than what “I” am now impaled on then bully for you.
All that’s left for those who are compatible with Heidegger’s own “general description intellectual contraptions” here is to learn how to accomplish it:
Is this or is this not a classic example of a “serious philosopher” at work? A “a phenomenology of our relationship to death”. Go ahead, the next time you come across someone who is in fact dying down here on the ground, note this for them. See if they react “authentically”.
In my view, death is “existentially significant” given a frame of mind that takes into account the things that you love and cherish…the things that your own flesh and blood death take away for all of eternity; and all the pain and suffering it takes away; and that which you have managed to believe is true about an “afterlife” in regard to God and religion.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
All I can do here, given the context of “all there is”, is to note once again just how preposterous it would seem for any infinitesimally tiny speck of existence – a mere mortal here on planet Earth – to speak of an “ontological structure” for human beings.
Not that one can legitimately criticize those who try. Heidegger and Jaspers gave it their best shot. And, in fact, we have any number of members right here at ILP who have given it their best shot in turn.
But, come on: the ontological assessment of the human condition? And that’s before we get to what would seem to be the even greater prize: the teleological assessment of the human condition.
The role death plays in that.
Capitalizing words like these in an argument is not nearly the same as demonstrating why “for all practical purposes” they deserve to be.
Existenz. Transcendence. Being.
You tell me: How is the actual and the factual “death and beyond” for those who capitalize them in philosophical assessments any different from the deaths of those who don’t?
Ultimate reality here would seem to be just another more or less sophisticated Theory Of Everything.
Right, Jacob?
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
In other words, a flesh and blood subject that, for most of us, from the cradle to the grave, come to embody birth, school, work and death. But what on earth does all of this have to do with Being? And who on earth would ever conclude that any particular human being could be thought of as an object in isolation?
Aside, perhaps, from those here who, even in regard to moral and political value judgments, basically do just that. In fact, I have a word for them. It’s just that, in regard to death itself, it would seem that the becoming dasein reconfigures into Dasein the Being only through, well, what else is there but God and religion?
Got that? Okay, then move beyond intellectual contraptions like this and note how you would go about demonstrating your own Extistenz in regard to, say, your own…existence>
I can’t even begin to grasp my own life in these terms. Can you?
Then from my frame of mind it just becomes all the more unintelligible:
If this does not exemplify “serious philosophy” at its most irrelevant, it’s hard [for me] to imagine an even more obscure and impenetrable assessment. Of either human life or death.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
Sound familiar? In regard to either life or death, we all come to embody vantage points that are rooted in particular sets of circumstances derived from particular historical, cultural and individual contexts. So, in communicating our own views on either life or death what else is there but the capacity to discovery those things that appear true for all of us as objective facts and those things that are understood more subjectively as merely personal opinions?
Not counting those who, for any number of personal reasons, actually choose to select death as the best of all possible worlds. As securing them the better option.
So, how would you reconfigure this intellectual contraption into a description of death in attempting to convey it to particular individuals who may well be existing in very, very, very different situations? Facing not the technical fact of death given the inherent parameters of human biology, but in being eyeball to eyeball with the Grim Reaper himself. What are we confronted with here if not the profound limitations of philosophy itself?