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Death and Philosophy
Death and Philosophy brings a rich and diverse array of philosophical, literary and aesthetic perspectives to bear on the theme of death.
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First published January 21, 1999
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About the author
Jeff E. Malpas
34 books14 followersJeff Malpas is Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Latrobe University. He is the author of Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World and Heidegger and the Thinking of Place: Explorations in the Topology of Being, both published by the MIT Press.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 22, 2015
Interesting book, beautifully written, different topics, however, it can be very challenging, There were some ideas I couldn't grasp their meaning. a background in philosophy would definitely be helpful here.
April 10, 2016
From Robert C. Solomon, "Death fetishism, morbid solipsism", pp. 174-176:
The social dimension of death
The fear of death easily presents itself as a metaphysical or logical perplexity, as a dread of the unknown, as a confrontation with nothingness. The truth, I think, is much less flattering. We worry about the pain of dying, or the pain that precedes dying. We vainly worry about the disposition of our bodies after death. We worry about the people we care for, but then we also worry that they will be fine without our care, indeed, that they will not even remember us without our constant, even if kindly, reminders. The idea that death is nothing, too, may not be so much a matter of metaphysics as an awkward sense of absence. Put in the least flattering way, we might say that my death is a bad thing because it deprives the universe of me. I picture the world, without me, like Sartre's characters in No Exit. I see them talk about me, laugh about me, pity me. I watch someone date and marry my wife, raise my children, refute my books. Death may be nothing, but it is a nothing that hurts.
All of this is not grand metaphysics or 'fundamental ontology' but petty selfishness wrapped up in enigma. It is what I call morbid solipsism, an image of death solely in terms of the self. What I have been arguing toward, and what I believe has been neglected in philosophy, is the social dimension of death. To appreciate the importance of this, it is not necessary to abandon the first-person posture that is basic to the philosophical question, nor is it in any way to compromise our robust sense of individual life and the personal concern about death. But it is to say that we are, first and foremost, phenomenologically and ontologically as well as biologically, social animals. One's own death is always, except in the most lonely of cases, a disruption (one hopes, not too minor) of a network of relationships. And even in those lonely cases, one's death is, in one's own thinking, a disruption of past or possible relationships, or, at the outer reaches of pathos, a lament that one is, quite unnaturally, dying all alone.
What Heidegger marks off as the 'uniqueness' of being-towards-death seems to me to be a version of morbid solipsism, a denial of the obvious in favour of an obscure and mock-heroic philosophical theory. And Sartre, too, as much as I agree with him, seems to me to be falling into the same solipsistic trap, talking of 'my projects' and juxtaposing my mortality with that of 'the Other'. When I think of my death, I cannot help but think of what others will see in me, how others will think of and remember me. When I imagine myself at my own funeral, a la Freud, it is the eyes of others I am imagining, not my own whether or not 'my perspective' is, logically and irreducibly, mine and mine alone. When I imagine my body on a slab, or bloodied in the street, or frozen from terminal pain, it is others I imagine thus seeing me, not I. When I worry about how I will die, bravely or badly, it is for others that I am concerned. Of course, it is my reputation, my character, my ego that concerns me, but here, more dramatically than anywhere else, the social nature of the self is in evidence. After all, what difference could it make to me, in that attenuated philosophical sense, whether I exit the hero, the coward or the clown?
Most societies, of course, would consider this obvious. Their mourning rituals take it for granted. But in our advanced decadent philosophies, such thinking is all but ignored, or explicitly denied. How many philosophers (outside of this volume) have looked at grief and mourning as aspects of death, rather than cultural artefacts that belong rather to the anthropologists? How many philosophers have taken nothing less than the whole narrative of a life as the essential 'moment' in death (apart from morbid Silenus, for whom all of life was dying)? (In cartoon wisdom, on the other hand, it has long been a cliche that, as one is dying, the whole of one's life flashes before one's - inner - eyes.) In place of the 'death is nothing' argument, philosophers should argue that it makes a difference to me whether I live or die not because of the phenomenology of experience but because of the particular phenomenology of social experience. I want to live because of other people. I want to live because I love, because I am steeped in my projects - social projects, as Sartre above all would be the first to appreciate. I want to live, perhaps because others need me, but, for the most of us, because we care for and about others. I am part of their world as they are part of mine.
What I really care about are the people I leave behind, in part for the sake of myself, my pride, my vanity. How will my death affect them? This is not altruism. It is also self-interest, vanity, pride, shame, and the fear of loss of control (the real horror of No Exit). Death is what individuates us only in so far as it targets the vulnerability of intimate and significant relationships. In itself, death is nothing and dying is nothing worth celebrating. If dying is a test, a challenge, an occasion for bravery, it is so only in the category of 'being-for/with-others', not 'Being-for-itself' or 'being-towards-death'. Death is not nothing, but it surely can be made into something. A noble death, a death not just 'one's own' but with others in mind, for the sake of others, an 'inauthentic' death such as the Homeric heroes might have contemplated. That is the way our philosophies should once again take us - away from morbid solipsism, away from death fetishism, away from nothingness.
The social dimension of death
The fear of death easily presents itself as a metaphysical or logical perplexity, as a dread of the unknown, as a confrontation with nothingness. The truth, I think, is much less flattering. We worry about the pain of dying, or the pain that precedes dying. We vainly worry about the disposition of our bodies after death. We worry about the people we care for, but then we also worry that they will be fine without our care, indeed, that they will not even remember us without our constant, even if kindly, reminders. The idea that death is nothing, too, may not be so much a matter of metaphysics as an awkward sense of absence. Put in the least flattering way, we might say that my death is a bad thing because it deprives the universe of me. I picture the world, without me, like Sartre's characters in No Exit. I see them talk about me, laugh about me, pity me. I watch someone date and marry my wife, raise my children, refute my books. Death may be nothing, but it is a nothing that hurts.
All of this is not grand metaphysics or 'fundamental ontology' but petty selfishness wrapped up in enigma. It is what I call morbid solipsism, an image of death solely in terms of the self. What I have been arguing toward, and what I believe has been neglected in philosophy, is the social dimension of death. To appreciate the importance of this, it is not necessary to abandon the first-person posture that is basic to the philosophical question, nor is it in any way to compromise our robust sense of individual life and the personal concern about death. But it is to say that we are, first and foremost, phenomenologically and ontologically as well as biologically, social animals. One's own death is always, except in the most lonely of cases, a disruption (one hopes, not too minor) of a network of relationships. And even in those lonely cases, one's death is, in one's own thinking, a disruption of past or possible relationships, or, at the outer reaches of pathos, a lament that one is, quite unnaturally, dying all alone.
What Heidegger marks off as the 'uniqueness' of being-towards-death seems to me to be a version of morbid solipsism, a denial of the obvious in favour of an obscure and mock-heroic philosophical theory. And Sartre, too, as much as I agree with him, seems to me to be falling into the same solipsistic trap, talking of 'my projects' and juxtaposing my mortality with that of 'the Other'. When I think of my death, I cannot help but think of what others will see in me, how others will think of and remember me. When I imagine myself at my own funeral, a la Freud, it is the eyes of others I am imagining, not my own whether or not 'my perspective' is, logically and irreducibly, mine and mine alone. When I imagine my body on a slab, or bloodied in the street, or frozen from terminal pain, it is others I imagine thus seeing me, not I. When I worry about how I will die, bravely or badly, it is for others that I am concerned. Of course, it is my reputation, my character, my ego that concerns me, but here, more dramatically than anywhere else, the social nature of the self is in evidence. After all, what difference could it make to me, in that attenuated philosophical sense, whether I exit the hero, the coward or the clown?
Most societies, of course, would consider this obvious. Their mourning rituals take it for granted. But in our advanced decadent philosophies, such thinking is all but ignored, or explicitly denied. How many philosophers (outside of this volume) have looked at grief and mourning as aspects of death, rather than cultural artefacts that belong rather to the anthropologists? How many philosophers have taken nothing less than the whole narrative of a life as the essential 'moment' in death (apart from morbid Silenus, for whom all of life was dying)? (In cartoon wisdom, on the other hand, it has long been a cliche that, as one is dying, the whole of one's life flashes before one's - inner - eyes.) In place of the 'death is nothing' argument, philosophers should argue that it makes a difference to me whether I live or die not because of the phenomenology of experience but because of the particular phenomenology of social experience. I want to live because of other people. I want to live because I love, because I am steeped in my projects - social projects, as Sartre above all would be the first to appreciate. I want to live, perhaps because others need me, but, for the most of us, because we care for and about others. I am part of their world as they are part of mine.
What I really care about are the people I leave behind, in part for the sake of myself, my pride, my vanity. How will my death affect them? This is not altruism. It is also self-interest, vanity, pride, shame, and the fear of loss of control (the real horror of No Exit). Death is what individuates us only in so far as it targets the vulnerability of intimate and significant relationships. In itself, death is nothing and dying is nothing worth celebrating. If dying is a test, a challenge, an occasion for bravery, it is so only in the category of 'being-for/with-others', not 'Being-for-itself' or 'being-towards-death'. Death is not nothing, but it surely can be made into something. A noble death, a death not just 'one's own' but with others in mind, for the sake of others, an 'inauthentic' death such as the Homeric heroes might have contemplated. That is the way our philosophies should once again take us - away from morbid solipsism, away from death fetishism, away from nothingness.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2021
Her yönüyle ölüm! Öğrenildiğinde pek az işlenebilecek şeyler ama neyi zaten tamamen işleyebiliyoruz ki?
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