Transhumanist fantasies aside, we will all die. Faced with the inevitable, one naturally looks for consolation. Some console themselves with the thought that 'life goes on.' In the words of the great Laura Nyro song, And When I Die:
And when I die
And when I'm gone
There'll be one child born in this world
To carry on, carry on.
The singer consoles herself with the thought that life goes on. But is the thought that 'life goes on' a legitimate and reasonable source of consolation? Or is it an "escapist self-deception" as Robert Spaemann asserts? (Persons, Oxford UP, 2017, 115. Orig. publ. in German in 1996; first publ. in English in 2006)
I agree with Spaemann. But it is not easy to bring the matter into clear focus, and for two reasons. One is that Spaemann writes in a somewhat loose and 'Continental' way. The other reason is that the subject matter is elusive and intrinsically difficult. But I'll try my best; to do so, however, I will have to put things in my own way.
Talk of life's going on is a way of evading the reality of death, which is the death of a person and not merely the death of an animal. It is true that we are animals. It is also true that, to put it in the form of an understatement, we are very unlike other animals. Genesis has it that man alone is made in the image and likeness of God. I take that to mean that man alone is a spiritual animal, a personal animal. Man alone has a higher origin and higher destiny, a destiny that Eastern Orthodox Christianity describes as theosis or deification. Even Martin Heidegger, despite his distance from Christianity and the metaphysics that underpins it, speaks of an abyss (Abgrund) that separates man from animal. Max Scheler says that while the animal has an environment (Umwelt), man has a world (Welt). Aristotle tried to accommodate both our likeness and our unlikeness to animals when he distinguished us from all other animals by the capacity to reason and speak. Man, he taught, is a rational animal, zoon logikon, with animal the genus, man the species, and rationality the specific difference. To think of oneself in this way, however, as primarily a member of a zoological species and only secondarily as different from the other animals, is to think of oneself from an external point of view. "This is the 'view from nowhere' . . . ." (115)
Personhood cannot be understood in this, or in any, objective or objectifying way. For a person is different from a specimen of a species or an instance of a multiply instantiable nature. Each person is unique in a way in which tokens of a type, as such, are not unique. To make this clear is not easy. But here we go.
Suppose I have a box of ten 100 watt, 120 volt incandescent light bulbs from the same manufacturer. They are alike in all relevant respects: size, shape, chemical composition of filament, date of manufacture, etc. We have ten tokens of the same type. These tokens are numerically different from one another, but qualitatively identical. The tokens are interchangeable. If I need to screw a bulb into a lamp, any one of the ten will do. Persons, by contrast, are not interchangeable. If you complain that a light has burned out, I say, "Replace it with another of the same type!" But if your beloved wife dies, I don't say, "Replace her with a wife of the same type!" or "Replace Mary with her identical twin Sherry: they share all the same lovable attributes!" Why not? Because your love of Mary is directed at a person who in her haecceity and ipseity is unrepeatable and irreplaceable.
The point is subtle. It is perhaps more clearly made using the example of self-love. Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin. Now it is a fact that I love myself. But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of multiply-instantiable properties, then I should love Phil equally. For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do. But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil. Suppose God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go. I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' So I don't love Phil equally even though he has all the same properties that I have. I prefer myself and love myself just because I am myself. I am unique. I am not an instance of a type. And because I am not an instance of a type, I ought not be consoled by the thought that other instances of h. sapiens will come along after I am gone.
This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties. For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other. This would make no sense if the being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties. In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also as a unique existent individual who cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual, as a person. And the same goes for Phil: he loves himself as a unique individual, as a person. Each of us loves himself as a unique individual numerically distinct from his indiscernible twin.
We can take it a step further. If love is blind as folk wisdom has it, self-love is blind in excelsis. In some cases self-love is present even when the lover/beloved lacks any and all lovable attributes. If there are cases like this then there is love of self as a pure individual. I love me just because I am me and not because I instantiate lovable attributes. I love myself, not as an instance of attributes, but as a case of existence. Instances are interchangeable; cases of existence are not. I love myself in that I am in a sense of 'am' that cannot be identified with the being-instantiated of a set of properties. I love my very existing. If so, and if my love is a 'correct emotion' (Brentano), then my sheer existing must be good.
I take this to show that self-love cannot be identified with, or reduced to, love of an instance of lovable attributes qua instance of those attributes. It cannot, because love of self is love of a person, and a person is not a token of a type, or an instance of properties.
Other Love
Now it is a point of phenomenology that love intends to reach the very haecceity and ipseity of the beloved: in loving someone we mean to make contact with his or her unique thisness and selfhood. It is not a mere instance of lovable properties that love intends, but the very being of the beloved. It is also true that this intending or meaning is in some cases fulfilled: we actually do sometimes make conscious contact with the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved. In the case of self love we not only intend, but arrive at, the very being of the beloved, not merely at the co-instantiation of a set of multiply instantiable lovable properties. In the case of other love, there is the intention to reach the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved, but it is not clear how arriving at it is possible.
In the case of self love, my love 'reaches' the beloved because I am the beloved. In the case of other-love, my love intends the beloved, but it is not clear that it 'reaches' her.
The question underlying all of this is quite fundamental: Are there any genuine individuals? X is a genuine individual if and only if X is essentially unique. (Josiah Royce) The Bill and Phil example suggests that selves or persons are genuine individuals and not mere bundles of multiply instantiable properties. For each of the twins is acutely aware that he is not the other despite complete agreement in respect of pure properties.
Does life go on after one dies?
It does indeed. The point however, is that one is not, in one's innermost inwardness, just a bit of life, a specimen of the species, h. sapiens. Qua person, I am not replaceable in the way an old animal is replaceable by a young one of the same species. One cannot reasonably find consolation in the fact that 'life goes on.' If one does, then one is alienated from one's own personhood. Spaemann is right: the thought that 'life goes on' is "escapist self-deception."
