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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
This is what some existentialists might call “authenticity”. You only really grasp death when you think about it as they do. Whatever that means.
Death with dignity? Learning how to die? Tell me this isn’t rooted in all manner of conflicting historical and cultural and experiential contexts?
Nope, for me there is only this: the terror of dying when you live a life still bursting at the seams with things that fulfill you and that bring you pleasure. The wanting to die when the pain becomes so much more unendurable than the pleasure.
No need to delve into it philosophically at all. Just “I don’t want to die!” and “I don’t want to live!”
Though, sure, given the sheer complexity embedded in the human condition there are always going to be plenty of narratives in between. Yours and mine for example.
Right, as though there are not plenty of “inauthentic” mental and emotional accounts still available to choose from. You merely have to have that as an option.
But this still all comes down to any particular one of us losing a loved one. There are so many different frames of mind here. On the other hand, some [like me] are less impressed with communication that is said to be preserved for eternity by calling it existential.
Also, what might this sort of communication consist of? I suspect that when I am dead any communication that I have created as well as any communication that continues on about me after I’m gone won’t do me a lot of good.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
Well, not counting those living “inauthentic lives” of course. They understand – believe – that the “the inevitability of their future deaths” and “concept of nonbeing” are easily enough subsumed in one or another leap of faith.
In fact, we’ve got a handful of them here.
A route noted by, among others, Woody Allen as well. Not “man” generically but any particular man or woman who thinks of stuff like this “philosophically”.
Remember this exchange?
Mickey: Aren’t you afraid of dying?
Father: Why be afraid?
Mickey: You won’t exist.
Father: So?
Mickey: That doesn’t terrify you?
Father: I’m alive. When I’m dead, I’m dead.
Mickey: Aren’t you frightened?
Father: I’ll be unconscious.
Mickey: But never to exist again?
Father: How do you know?
Mickey: It doesn’t look promising.
Father: Who knows what’ll be? I’ll either be unconscious or I won’t. If not, I’ll deal with it then. I won’t worry now.
Come on, the actual experience of death itself is something that might seem impossible because we have never actually experienced our death…yet. On the other hand, our concern about what seems to be the indisputable fact that someday we will die more than makes up for it with most of us. And we can cling to our worldly activities only until, one by one, we can’t.
Yeah, Dasein, maybe. On the other hand, dasein is more inclined to “avoid boundary situations” given the arguments I make in my signature threads here.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
It is also often noted that in our increasingly more “postmodern” age, where, through the internet alone, people have access to countless “points of view” about both life and death, there has been a drop in the number of those able or willing to take that leap of faith to God. Even here in America, the numbers are falling.
What then are the consequences of that? If you come to believe that there is no life after death, that there is no God around to reduce human interactions down to Judgment Day…then what?
How many more will take a leap instead to, “in the absence of God all things are permitted”? How many more sociopaths in other words? How many more ubermen intent only on mastering the slaves? How many more moral nihilists putting all their eggs in the “show me the money” mentality that sustains the global economy?
Or, sure, stay up in the stratosphere reflected in the intellectual contraptions of some right here.
Got that? Okay reconfigure it into an assessment of your own behaviors in regard to your own spiritual, philosophical and existential take on death.
Right here, for example.
True. On the other hand…
Here all I can do is to seek out those who think that they do comprehend what Jaspers means by all of this and to ask them to take his conclusions out into the world and explore them given the components of my own philosophy in the face of both life and death: dasein, conflicting goods, political economy.
Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
Clearly, the manner in which we are able to think ourselves into believing one thing rather than another about death can have a profound impact on the behaviors we choose. Believe in one or another God commanding one or another Scripture and, with Heaven or Hell on the line, you will act accordingly.
But a “true self” is to me no less an existential contraption than God Himself. You can reject religion but then anchor yourself to one or another secular facsimile and still be in the same boat: an either/or morality in which Right and Wrong, Good and Evil become a fundamental part of what motivates your deportment with and around others.
As for speculating that no one is immune to despair when eyeball to eyeball with the Grim Reaper…who can really say, right? It’s not for nothing that most religions insist that suicide is a sin. After all, if it was not deemed to be, how many of the true believers might opt “here and now” to end their life in order that their soul be catapulted into Paradise?
Not impossible? Hell, it happens all the time. All one need do is to believe that they are in sync with their true self and that, on the other side of the grave, this true self carries on as a soul for all of eternity in one or another paradise or Nirvana.
Sure, if you really want to put months and years into the mental disciplines practiced by these folks, go ahead. Or, again, go to a place of worship every other Friday, Saturday or Sunday, read from the Scriptures occasionally, try to practice what you preach and merely believe that immortality and salvation awaits you.
That is really all that is necessary for the faithful: believing it.
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.
