Death

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DEATH

Although most of the great philosophers have touched on the problem of death, few have dealt with it systematically or in detail. Frequently, as in the case of Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza, an author's views on the subject are known to us from a single sentence; and at almost all stages in Western history we are likely to discover more about the topic in the writings of men of letters than in those of technical philosophers. Whether this relative reticence on the part of philosophers should be attributed to a general lack of interest or to other causes is a moot point. Arthur Schopenhauer, who was the first of the major philosophers to deal extensively with the subject, declared that death is the muse of philosophy, notwithstanding that the muse is seldom avowed. And the existentialist philosophers from Søren Kierkegaard to the present have more or less consistently endorsed Schopenhauer's contention; Albert Camus's declaration in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) that suicide is the only genuine philosophical issue is an extreme but notable case in point. On the other hand, most contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophers probably regard the paucity of materials on death as evidence of the subject's resistance to serious philosophical inquiry. In general, they wish to exclude the subject of death from the area of legitimate philosophical speculation, either as a part of their campaign against metaphysics or on the grounds that the subject can be more adequately dealt with by psychologists and social scientists. The psychologists and social scientists have, in fact, recently given signs of a willingness to explore the question. One such indication was a symposium on the psychology of death at the 1956 American Psychological Association Convention, which resulted in the publication in 1959 of an anthology including contributions from scholars in a wide variety of fields. Unfortunately, as several of the contributors to this volume lamented, the number of experimental studies actually undertaken has been disappointingly small.

The Knowledge of Death

The primary concern of most philosophers who have dealt with the question of death has been to discover ways in which we may mitigate or overcome the fear it tends to inspire. There are, however, several other loosely related problems that have also tended to excite interest or controversy and that it will be advisable to discuss first. How does man learn of death? Is death a natural phenomenon, or does it require explanation in nonnatural terms? What specific psychological or social conditions tend to heighten the awareness and fear of death?

awareness of death

The clearest and simplest answer to the first of these questions was given by Voltaire, who stated: "The human species is the only one which knows it will die, and it knows this through experience" (Dictionnaire philosophique ). Although some persons have questioned whether man is the only animal who knows he will die, arguing that certain of the lower animals appear to show some vague presentiment of approaching extinction, it appears to be unquestioned that man alone has a clear awareness of death and that man alone regards death as a universal and inevitable phenomenon. The interesting question is how man knows he will die. The view that experience alone gives knowledge of death derives support from the ignorance of death displayed by many children and from anthropological data indicating that many primitive peoples refuse even as adults to regard death as necessary or universal. However, a number of twentieth-century philosophers contested this view, especially Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger, who argue that the awareness of death is an immanent, a priori structure of human consciousness. Although neither of these authors offers anything in the nature of scientific evidence for his position, it is not easily refuted; for, if one grants current notions about levels of consciousness, apparent ignorance of death may be interpreted as merely superficial and attributed to some form of repression. Moreover, the imperfect knowledge of death among primitive peoples is a fact that could be used against those who argue that the knowledge of death comes from experience, since the hazards of their lives expose primitive peoples to an earlier and greater experience of death than is common among civilized men. At the very least it must be granted that the knowledge of death depends not only upon experience but also upon a level of mental culture that makes it possible to interpret experience accurately.

Ironically, Sigmund Freud, who more than anybody else has habituated us to think in terms of levels of consciousness and has thereby rendered credible the idea that knowledge of death may exist despite apparent ignorance, stated that the consciousness, not the apparent ignorance, of death is merely superficial, the unconscious being firmly convinced of its immortality. How Freud could reconcile this belief, which dates from the period of World War I, with his later belief in the unconscious death wish is not clear.

death: a natural phenomenon?

Is death a natural phenomenon? Most persons today tend to find this question a bit foolish. It is noteworthy, however, that most primitive peoples attribute death to the agency of gods or demons who are jealous of human achievements. Equally significant is the Christian explanation of death as punishment for the sins of Adam. It should also be observed that if by a "natural" phenomenon one means a fact that can be fully understood and explained by empirical inquiry, death is not a natural phenomenon for Heidegger or Scheler. This reluctance to explain death in terms of natural causes has an interesting parallel in the reluctance to explain life itself naturalistically, and the religious or metaphysical perspectives that give rise to nonnaturalistic interpretations of life tend also to occasion nonnaturalistic interpretations of death.

variations in consciousness of death

Are there great variations in the awareness or fear of death from person to person, from epoch to epoch, from culture to culture? If so, how are these variations to be explained? Surprisingly, very little attention has been given to these questions. The most interesting and almost the only hypothesis on this topic is that of Johan Huizinga and Paul-Louis Landsberg, who, each in his own way, link the consciousness of death to individualism. According to these authors, the consciousness of death has been most acute in periods of social disorganization, when individual choice tends to replace automatic conformity to social values; they point especially to classical society after the disintegration of the city-states; to the early Renaissance, after the breakdown of feudalism; and to the twentieth century. This hypothesis has yet to be fully confirmed or disconfirmed by careful historical and anthropological study. However, it is true that late antiquity, the early Renaissance, and the twentieth century made unusually great contributions to the literature on death.

The Fear of Death

With respect to the fear of death, the great divide is between those who argue that only the hope of personal immortality will ever reconcile men to death and those who argue that the fear of death may be mitigated or overcome even when death is accepted as the ultimate extinction of the individual person. The second group, which is remarkably heterogeneous, may be subdivided according to the techniques recommended for allaying fears.

the epicureans

One of the oldest of the "solutions" to the fear of death was that of Epicurus and his followers. According to Epicurus, the fear of death is based upon the beliefs that death is painful and that the soul may survive to experience pain or torture in an afterlife. Since both of these beliefs are mistaken, it suffices to expose them as such. Although death may be precipitated by painful disease, death itself is a perfectly painless loss of consciousness, no more to be feared than falling asleep. And since the soul is merely a special organization of material atoms, it cannot survive physical destruction. "Death," Epicurus said, "is nothing to us. … It does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more" (Letter to Menoeceus ). It is hardly necessary to point out that many persons have questioned Epicurus's conception of the soul and consequently have rejected his views with respect to its immortality. The principal criticism, however, is that the Epicureans have falsely diagnosed the cause of humankind's fear of death. Death terrorizes us, not because we fear it as painful, but because we are unwilling to lose consciousness permanently. The twentieth-century Spanish existentialist philosopher Miguel de Unamuno reports that "as a youth and even as a child, I remained unmoved when shown the most moving pictures of hell, for even then nothing appeared to me quite so horrible as nothingness itself."

the stoics

The later Stoics, especially Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, offered a more complicated and elusive view of death. Seneca said that to overcome the fear of death we must think of it constantly. The important thing, however, is to think of it in the proper manner, reminding ourselves that we are but parts of nature and must reconcile ourselves to our allotted roles. He recurrently compared life to a banquet from which it is our obligation to retire graciously at the appointed time, or to a role in a play whose limits ought to satisfy us, since they satisfy the author. The fear of death displays a baseness wholly incompatible with the dignity and calm of the true philosopher, who has learned to emancipate himself from finite concerns. Essential to the Stoic outlook was the Platonic view that philosophizing means learning to die; that is, learning to commune with the eternal through the act of philosophic contemplation.

Although much of Stoic thinking on death crept into later Christianity, the contemporary Christians saw in this thinking a sinful element of pride. Death, Augustine said, is a punishment for human sin, and the fear of death cannot be overcome except through divine grace. Others find it highly questionable whether one can reasonably accept the metaphysical underpinnings of the Stoic view, most especially the belief in a providential order of Nature.

spinoza

A third solution is that of Spinoza. He wrote: "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is not a meditation upon death but upon life" (Ethics, Prop. LXVII). Since Spinoza did not elaborate, it is possible to argue almost endlessly about the precise import of this famous remark. Most often, however, it is interpreted to mean that men can and should allay the fear of death simply by diverting their attention from it, and some persons have argued that by his nature man tends to—perhaps must—follow this advice. François de La Rochefoucauld, for instance, averred that man can no more look directly at death than he can look directly at the sun. One fundamental criticism of this position comes from the Stoics and the existentialists, both of whom maintain that the fear of death can be allayed only by facing it directly. A second criticism consists in pointing out that the fear of death is frequently an involuntary sentiment that cannot be conquered by a merely conscious decision or a bare act of will. It is not enough to tell people not to think of death; one must explain how they can avoid thinking of it.

death and the good life

This brings us to a fourth view on death, a view that was felicitously put by Leonardo da Vinci. Just as a day well spent brings happy sleep, so, he said, a life well spent brings happy death. Painful preoccupation with death has its source in human misery; the cure is to foster human well-being. A happy man is not seriously pained by the thought of death, nor does he dwell on the subject. This view was held by many Enlightenment thinkers, most notably the Marquis de Condorcet. It also appears to be the view of most pragmatists and of Bertrand Russell.

There are two counterarguments. The first is the theme prevalent in several branches of Christianity concerning the total impossibility of attaining happiness on Earth. The second is the even more familiar and prevalent Christian theme that in order to achieve happiness in this life, one must first conquer the fear of death. Happiness, therefore, is not a cure; it is a consequence of the cure.

death without consolation

In sharp contrast to this last position is that of a long line of nineteenth-century and more recent philosophers, from Schopenhauer to contemporary existentialists. For them human well-being or happiness, at least as traditionally conceived, is totally impossible to achieve; and if the individual is to experience such rewarding values as life does permit, he must uncompromisingly embrace the tragedy of the human condition, clearheadedly acknowledging such evils as death. Like the Stoics, these authors would have us think constantly of death. Unlike the Stoics, however, they do not offer us the consolation of belief in a providential order of nature. From the standpoint of Being or Nature, the death of the individual is totally meaningless or absurd.

For Schopenhauer the finite, empirical self is a manifestation of a cosmic will that has destined man to live out his life in suffering or painful striving. The only remedy is to achieve a state of indifference or pure will-lessness—a state best known in moments of pure aesthetic contemplation but to which the awareness of death substantially contributes.

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, the superior man will not permit death to seek him out in ambush, to strike him down unawares. The superior man will live constantly in the awareness of death, joyfully and proudly assuming death as the natural and proper terminus of life.

Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, like most existentialists, urge us to cultivate the awareness of death chiefly as a means of heightening our sense of life. The knowledge of death gives to life a sense of urgency that it would otherwise lack. The same point has been made by Freud, who compared life without the consciousness of death to a Platonic romance or to a game played without stakes.

Heidegger makes the additional claim, although here Sartre parts company with him, that the awareness of death confers upon man a sense of his own individuality. Dying, he says, is the one thing no one can do for you; each of us must die alone. To shut out the consciousness of death is, therefore, to refuse one's individuality and to live inauthentically.

Bibliography

Jacques Choron, Death and Western Thought (New York: Collier, 1963), is a fairly comprehensive review of what Western philosophers have had to say on the subject of death. It is especially recommended for its wealth of quotations. Herman Feifel, ed., The Meaning of Death (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), is an anthology containing many contemporary essays by psychologists, sociologists, and workers in allied fields.

Russell's views on death may be found in "The Art of Growing Old," in his Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956) and in "What I Believe," in his Why I Am Not a Christian (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957).

Heidegger's views will be found in his Being and Time (New York: Harper, 1962), Part II, Ch. 1; Sartre's in his Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), pp. 531–553.

An interesting work by a Roman Catholic existentialist is Paul-Louis Landsberg, Essai sur l'experience de la mort (Paris, 1951).

Freud's views are expressed in "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), Vol. XIV, 288–317.

Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London, 1952), provides the best account of that author's reflections.

For an analysis of primitive attitudes toward death, see Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality, translated by Lilian A. Clare (London: Allen and Unwin, 1923).

Robert G. Olson (1967)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy