Category: Death and Immortality
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The Horror of Death and Its Cure
This entry is a companion to On the 'Inconceivability' of Death. ………………….. There is dying, there is being dead, and there is the momentary transition from the one to the other. While we rightly fear the suffering and indignity of dying, especially if the process is drawn out over weeks or months, it is the anticipation of the…
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On the ‘Inconceivability’ of Death
Thomas Merton poses the problem in his Journals, vol. 6, pp. 260-261, entry of 8 July 1967: Victor Hammer is critically ill . . . . Death is shocking in anyone, but most shocking in the case of someone of real genius and quality and someone you know and love well. The blunt fact is that…
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Of Death and Detachment
St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, p. 11: My Lord, since Thou hast given me light to know that what the world esteems is all mere vapour and folly, give me strength to detach myself from it before death detaches me. I find it very interesting that 'detach' is being used in two very different…
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Las Vegas Rampage: The Existential Lesson
"Impermanence is swift." (Dogen) Alive in the morning, dead at night. Heute rot, morgen tot. Gotama the Buddha: "Decay is inherent in all composite things! Work out your salvation with diligence!" (Supposedly, the Tathagata’s last words.) Plato: "nothing which is subject to change…has any truth" (Phaedo St 83). Aurelius Augustinus: "Things that are not immutable are…
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Royce Revisited: Individuality and Immortality
This is a draft of a paper from years ago (early aughts) that it looks like I may never finish. But it is relevant to present concerns. So here it is. …………………………………………………… ROYCE REVISITED: INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY “What is it that makes any real being an individual?” Near the beginning of his 1899 Ingersoll lecture,…
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At Funerals
At funerals one hears pious claptrap about the dearly departed going home to the Lord. In many cases, this provokes a smile. Why should one who has spent his whole life on the make be eager to meet his Maker? Why the sudden interest in the Lord when, in the bloom of life, one gave him…
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Accept No Substitutes!
The ersatz immortality of progeny is a poor substitute for the genuine article, as is 'literary' immortality. Ditto for the miserable after-existence of a merely intentional object in the fallible and flickering memories of a few acquaintances not known for the justice of their assessments, acquaintances themselves slated for the Reaper's scythe.
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Names on Grave Stones
The names on grave stones are proper names for a time, while the memories of survivors provide reference-fixing context. But with the passing of the survivors the names revert to commonality. After a while the dead may as well lie in a common grave. What lies below the stone is not Patrick J. McNally, but…
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Thinking Concretely About Death
When my death seems 'acceptable,' a 'natural' occurrence, I wonder whether I am thinking about it concretely and honestly enough. I wonder whether I am really confronting my own utter destruction as a subject for whom there is a world, as opposed to myself as an object in the world. If I view myself…
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Journeys and Preparations
We plan our journeys long and short. We lay our plans for trips abroad well in advance. And those who leave their homeland and emigrate to another country take special care. Why then are we so careless about the journey on which all must embark and none return? "Because it is a journey into sheer…
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Why Do We Remember the Dead?
One reason, the best reason, is to keep ourselves face-to-face with the reality of death. To live well is to live in the truth, without evasion. Trans-humanist and cryonic fantasies aside, death cannot be evaded. We remember the dead, then, for our own spiritual benefit. Where they are, we will be. And soon enough. But…
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Is Life a Ponzi Scheme?
Mark Johnston reviews Scheffler & Kolodny, eds., Death and the Afterlife, Oxford UP. I note that the title is false advertising: In Scheffler’s self-consciously idiosyncratic use of the term, the“afterlife” is neither a supernatural continuation of this life, nor the result of a deeper naturalistic understanding of the kind of thing we are; it is…
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Seriousness as Camouflage of Nullity
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, Harper, 1955, p. 61, #93: The fact of death and nothingness at the end is a certitude unsurpassed by any absolute truth ever discovered. Yet knowing this, people can be deadly serious about their prospects, grievances, duties and trespassings. The only explanation which suggests itself is that seriousness…
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Is a Dead Person Mortal?
To be mortal is to be subject to death just as to be breakable is to be subject to breakage. But whereas a wine glass is fragile/breakable even if there is no future time at which it breaks, a man is mortal only if there is a future time at which he dies. If there…
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“I Cannot Reconcile Myself to Being Nothing”
David Rieff, son of Susan Sontag, quotes Marguerite Duras:"I cannot reconcile myself to being nothing." (Swimming in a Sea of Death, p. 167). The unbeliever is in a tough predicament. He knows that he is not his own foundation, and that his ego must burst like an over-inflated balloon. And then nothing for all eternity.