Relation to oneself· Existence
Living in view of one's death
Axis: Death — What attitude should we take toward death?
Not to flee one's mortality but to hold it in view: knowing my possibilities are numbered is what makes them mine and gives each choice its weight. This lucidity is not morbid; it is the price of an authentic existence, wrested from distraction and from the anonymous "one dies" that never concerns anyone.
Movements 2
Phenomenologyexplicit
With Heidegger, phenomenology makes death a structure of existence: Dasein is being-toward-death, and it is by resolutely anticipating its ownmost, insuperable and non-shareable end that it tears itself from the idle talk of the "they" and authentically takes hold of itself. Death is not a distant event but what, here and now, individualizes existence and gives it its weight.
Heidegger, Being and Time, §§ 46-53
Existentialismexplicit
In the existential tradition, finitude is no external accident but what individualizes existence: for , Dasein (being-there) is being-toward-death, and resolute anticipation of one's own death wrests one from inauthenticity, the opposite of . qualifies this thesis, but the movement unanimously rejects consoling immortality.
Heidegger, Being and Time
Philosophers 2
Heideggerexplicit
Division Two of opens with a problem: how can existence be grasped as a whole, when it is never complete as long as it lasts? The analysis of answers without waiting for an end, as one would wait for the end of an object. Everything turns on an ordinary phrase: "one dies". The "" speaks truly, everyone will die, but it turns death into a fact that concerns everybody and never me. Yet one can die for another, not take away another's own dying: death is the ownmost possibility, certain and indefinite as to its moment. Anxiety reveals what idle talk tranquillizes, and anticipation of this possibility, joined to the resoluteness that answers the call of conscience, lets one own one's choices, in the light of their finitude: that is existence.
Being and Time, §46-53 · Being and Time, §40 (anxiety)
Show inferred positions (1)
Nietzscheinferable
Nietzsche dismisses the Christian beyond as a slander on life, and likewise refuses to make death an absolute evil: he preaches a free death, chosen at the right hour, that crowns existence instead of merely undergoing it. To die one's own death, at the summit, is to make one's end an act and a fulfillment, in the amor fati that says yes even to the eternal return.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Free Death · Twilight of the Idols
Argument
- In everyday busyness, I mostly live as "one" lives: scattered among tasks, rumors and everyone's opinions, I keep postponing the question of what I truly want.
- Death, however, cannot be delegated: no one can die in my place, and no one knows when. It is my ownmost possibility, the one that sets me apart and that nothing surpasses.
- Facing it lucidly, instead of fleeing it, brings me at once back to the essential: this finite time is mine, and it is for me to answer for it, here, now.
Therefore Therefore facing death is not morbid: it is the condition of an existence, chosen rather than undergone.
See the pageObjection
- Making death the focus of existence risks tinting every moment with dread, instead of freeing it for action and joy.
- reverses the idea in advance: "a free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life."
- The Epicurean adds: since death, when it comes, is nothing to us, devoting constant attention to it is to spoil the present for a nothingness.
Therefore Therefore authenticity through death can turn into its opposite: a morbid fascination that impoverishes the life it claims to intensify.
See the pageObjection
- That the thought of the end can rouse a slumbering existence, granted. But it does not have this power alone: a love, a calling, the birth of a child draw us out of indifference just as much, and put us under summons to answer.
- goes further: what truly calls me out of myself is the face of the other, its frailty that makes me responsible, and not my death, the most solitary and most silent of relations.
- By making death alone the source of , one risks the opposite of the goal sought: a withdrawal onto one's own end, where it may be attention to the world that opens a life.
Therefore So nothing compels us to take death as our only master: life has other paths, perhaps surer ones, to return us to ourselves.
See the pageFacing your own death to return to yourselfExerciseInspired by Heidegger
For , fleeing the thought of death means letting yourself live the way "one" lives, diluted in habits and the expectations of others. Anticipating your own death, the one death no one can take on in your place, singles you out and returns you to what you truly want: this is . Today this exercise is an antidote to autopilot, a way to take back the reins of an life rather than one merely endured.
Put this practice to work
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Discover the Premium account- PrescriptiveExistential Thought experimentIs finitude a good?
Would a life with no term end up drained of its savor, passions dulled, everything already lived? If so, it is not in spite of death but thanks to it that our days count.
a whole life - PrescriptiveExistentialMy death, or death?
Is my death my ownmost possibility, the one that individualizes me and returns me to myself, or an absurd limit from outside that ends my possibilities without revealing anything to me?
my own death - PracticalExistential QuestionTaming the fear
The sages proposed exercises for living without being haunted by it, dwelling on it daily or not at all: can philosophy truly cure us of this fear, or does it cling to us too hard to yield?
the thought of death