Philosophy and death

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?

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.

So, if you’re one of them, you’re up: tell us.

Death, Faith & Existentialism
Filiz Peach explains what two of the greatest existentialist thinkers thought about death: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.

And it is reasonable because we all eventually experience death. We all die. But we do not all live the same life culminating in the same “world view” about the meaning of either life or death. I simply examine the practical implications of this given my own subjective understanding of dasein.

On the other hand, until and unless science itself can establish the fate of “I” on “the other side”, the only seeming wager in town is still one or another religious path. But: even here “leaps of faith” will be profoundly embedded in dasein. Some leap, some don’t. Why? Well, it is certainly not because philosophers have managed to pin down the most rational option. Instead, for me, it is intertwined in our own personal experiences out in what can be very different worlds that push us in different directions. The part those here who embrace one or another “general description spiritual contraption” steer clear of.

Leaps such as this:

But then the part that revolves around all those who opted for death. They committed suicide for any number of personal reasons no less profoundly rooted in dasein.

Then the sheer mystery that is human life and death itself.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

What I imagine here, of course, is a discussion with a Daoist in which, given a particular set of circumstances involving conflicting goods and immortality, he or she made the attempt to differentiate religion and philosophy in regard to their own life experiences.

Same thing. How are both sides of the same coin construed given that which is of most important to me in regard to both: How ought one to live on this side of the grave so as to assure the fate of “I” that is most desired on the other side of it.

And not just spiritual contraptions that basically avoid the existential parameters of the lives that we live from day to day. Lives that often come into conflict. And, ironically enough, over conflicting religious and philosophical assumptions.

Examples please. What for all practical purposes does it mean for them to see their age and themselves more clearly? What, given a situation that we are all familiar with in which there are contested assumptions regarding clarity and uncertainty, consensus and contention, does it mean to transcend one’s personal identity?

This…?

We’ll need an actual context of course. What in particular to live for? What in particular to die for? Given that one has been able to “transcend their sense of personal identity”.

Anyone here want to cite examples from their own lives?

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

I know, I know: my point too.

On the other hand, I suspect that Daoists don’t connect this dot to the one that sustains my own existential angst rooted in being – in feeling – fractured and fragmented.

In other words, let the Daoists among us focus in on a particular set of circumstances yanked down out of the general description spiritual contraption clouds and note how their own frame of mind prevails in regard to connecting my dots…the dots between how one ought to live on this side of the grave in order to attain the optimal fate for “I” on the other side of the grave.

Any Daoists here willing to go there?

First, of course, doing nothing has to actually be an option. Try doing nothing when there are bills to be paid or children to be raised or obligations to meet.

And, come on, who really knows what is inevitable or unavoidable in any number of situations. Perhaps you are not just thinking things through in the most reasonable manner. Or perhaps there are obstacles to be removed if you have the courage to risk removing them. Or perhaps you are ambivalent given conflicting assessments.

Death itself is inevitable and thus unavoidable. But there are countless individual contexts in which however one construes wu-wei, no two individuals are ever faced with exactly the same set of variables. And then the arguments I raise in regard to dasein.

Another general description spiritual contraption. So, once again, all I can do here is to ask those who think they understand this to note examples of it from their own lives. And, in particular, to explore it with me given contexts in which conflicting goods are involved.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

You know what’s coming, right? The way of the world given experiences and interactions that clearly seem to be either this or that, and the way of the world when our reactions to that which we can all agree is either this or that come into conflict.

Thus, tell me about the Dao as it relates to the behaviors I choose on this side of the grave as that pertains to the fate of “I” on the other side of it.

The Way to live virtuously.

And, again, with many Western religions, it’s all in the Book. Commandments and such. And, with their God, the Ultimate Reality is anything but impersonal. How does one even go about grasping an Ultimate Reality as impersonal? The part where we shift from how things do what they do to why things do what they do and not something else.

How we die can be as a result of many, many, many different things? But why do we die? And why were we born at all?

Sure, a skilled doctor may perform an abortion almost as effortlessly as she ties her shoes. The Dao here is easily within my grasp. But how does the “impersonal Ultimate Reality” react to the fact that she chose to end the life of an unborn baby/clump of cells? What can she expect after she herself dies?

In other words [of course] the Dao and the points I raise in my signature threads.

Or, sure, let’s not go there now:

The Dao here becomes just another general description spiritual contraption that could hardly be more opaque. Someone here who follows this path would have to take us through their day and note the distinction that they experience in living this way as opposed to how they once lived before taking this path.

And then the part that is of most interest me. You are on this path [in relationship, at work, in your social interactions] and find yourself confronted with someone who is not on the path and who insists that you not behave in a particular way because in their view the behavior is irrational and/or immoral.

Then your attempt to explain how and why you connect the dots between the path you are on now and the path you expect to be on when you die.

Death in Classical Daoist Thought
Bernard Down explains how two ancient Chinese philosophers explored new perspectives on matters of life and death. From Philosophy Now magazine

How is this not just another general description spiritual contraption that, for all practical purposes, tells us little or nothing substantive about either the life we live or the death that awaits us. In fact, from my frame of mind, it comes closer to psycho-babble than anything that can be used in describing human interactions given my own own main interest in death: connecting the dots existentially between the behaviors we choose on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” on the other side.

What of the Dao here?

Okay, so let’s take this conclusion [however you construe its meaning] out into the world of conflicting goods and put it to the test. But that’s the point, isn’t it: never to have to. It’s all “impersonal”. It’s all encompassed in a “state of mind” that ties everything together for you as long as it is never really more than a psychological state that makes you feel at one with…everything? Which, for all practical purposes, may as well be nothing nothing at all.

Like everyone else the Daoists have bodies to feed and to sustain. They will probably have bills to pay and obligations to meet. They will no doubt have jobs and interactions with others in which there is always the possibility of coming into conflict with them in regard to particular moral and political agendas that clash. But as long as they seek to be “caring” and be a “good man”, Heaven will invariably side with them?

And “unlike God” how exactly does the Dao go about actually participating in the lives that we live? Where does the Dao end and “I” begin when confronted with a particular set of circumstances.

Are there any Daoists here able to go there?