{"id":3530,"date":"2019-10-24T19:03:59","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T19:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/10\/24\/six-types-of-death-fear\/"},"modified":"2019-10-24T19:03:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T19:03:59","slug":"six-types-of-death-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2019\/10\/24\/six-types-of-death-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Types of Death Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. There is the fear of nonbeing, of annihilation.  The best expression of this fear that I am aware of is contained in Philip Larkin's great poem "Aubade" which I reproduce and comment upon in Philip Larkin on Death<\/a>.  Susan Sontag is another who was gripped by a terrible fear of annihilation.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is the fear of becoming nothing, but there is also, by my count, five types of fear predicated on not<\/em> becoming nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. There is the fear of surviving one's bodily death as a ghost, unable to cut earthly attachments and enter nonbeing and oblivion.  This fear is expressed in the third stanza of D. H. Lawrence's poem "All Souls' Day" which I give together with the fourth and fifth (The Oxford Book of Death<\/em>, ed. D. J. Enright, Oxford UP, 1987, pp. 48-49).<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

They linger in the shadow of the earth.<\/span>
The earth's long conical shadow is full of souls<\/span>
that cannot find the way across the sea of change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Be kind, Oh be kind to your dead<\/span>
and give them a little encouragement<\/span>
and help them to build their little ship of death.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the soul has a long, long journey after death<\/span>
to the sweet home of  pure oblivion.<\/span>
Each needs a little ship, a little ship<\/span>
and the proper store of meal for the longest journey.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

3. There is the fear of post-mortem horrors.  For this the Epicurean cure was concocted.  In a sentence: When death is, I am not; when I am, death is not. Here too the fear is not of extinction, but of surviving.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. There is the fear of the unknown.  This is not a fear with a definite object, but an indefinite fear of one-knows-not-what.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. There is the fear of the Lord and his judgment.  Timor domini initium sapientiae<\/em>.   "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."  (Proverbs<\/em> 9:10, Psalms<\/em> 111:10)  A certain fear is ingredient in religious faith.  Ludwig Wittgenstein was one who  believed and feared that he would be judged by God.  He took the notion of the Last Judgment with the utmost seriousness as both Paul Engelmann and Norman Malcolm relate in their respective memoirs.  In 1951, near the end of his life, Wittgenstein wrote,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

God may say to me: I am judging you out of your own mouth.  Your own actions have <\/span>
made you shudder with disgust when you have seen other people do them." (Culture and Value<\/em>, p. 87)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wittgenstein had trouble with the notion of God as cosmic cause, but had a lively sense of God as final Judge and source of an absolute moral demand.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Fear of one's own judgment or the judgment of posterity.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. There is the fear of nonbeing, of annihilation.  The best expression of this fear that I am aware of is contained in Philip Larkin's great poem "Aubade" which I reproduce and comment upon in Philip Larkin on Death.  Susan Sontag is another who was gripped by a terrible fear of annihilation. There is the … Continue reading “Six Types of Death Fear”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,159,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death-and-immortality","category-emotions","category-human-predicament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}