Fear of Death
How deep and transformative is the well documented fear of death? The fact that ones life must end is understood to invoke in most people a kind of existential terror. While I am not keen to die immediately, I have never shared this terror. Should I die in the night, so be it. Im ready. Ive prepared my will and I've set up steps for when the time comes.
Life ending reveals nothing to me about what happens before it ends. My enjoyment of a book, music, a meal or a movie is not diminished by the knowledge that it is going to end. One enjoys the ride, the experience, the moments. Or - one hates the ride, the experience and the moments. Whatever is the case. Ditto life.
Its often argued that all the achievements and struggles of life mean nothing if it all ends in blackness. How so? Arent the moments themselves worthwhile? Is eternity the only criterion of value? This seems ugly to me.
Heidegger famously wrote, If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.
I dont fully understand notions of being free to become myself - sounds like a 20th century existentialist trope. Even though death is not a concern to me, I'm not sure I have a better grasp of my becoming, or an enhanced feeling of freedom as a consequence.
Derrida appears to say something similar, 'Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.
So, an acceptance/knowledge of death is a liberation from dread and anxiety and an open door to freedom? Does that resonate?
Of course all this is flipped for some of us beholden to forms of theism with its the notion of judgement and potential eternal punishment in the fires of The Abyss. A vestigial fear of this seems present even amongst some strident atheists.
What do others think about the role of death in their lives and the concomitant role it plays in their philosophical speculations. Was Montaigne right to say, 'To philosophise is to learn how to die.'
Life ending reveals nothing to me about what happens before it ends. My enjoyment of a book, music, a meal or a movie is not diminished by the knowledge that it is going to end. One enjoys the ride, the experience, the moments. Or - one hates the ride, the experience and the moments. Whatever is the case. Ditto life.
Its often argued that all the achievements and struggles of life mean nothing if it all ends in blackness. How so? Arent the moments themselves worthwhile? Is eternity the only criterion of value? This seems ugly to me.
Heidegger famously wrote, If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.
I dont fully understand notions of being free to become myself - sounds like a 20th century existentialist trope. Even though death is not a concern to me, I'm not sure I have a better grasp of my becoming, or an enhanced feeling of freedom as a consequence.
Derrida appears to say something similar, 'Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.
So, an acceptance/knowledge of death is a liberation from dread and anxiety and an open door to freedom? Does that resonate?
Of course all this is flipped for some of us beholden to forms of theism with its the notion of judgement and potential eternal punishment in the fires of The Abyss. A vestigial fear of this seems present even amongst some strident atheists.
What do others think about the role of death in their lives and the concomitant role it plays in their philosophical speculations. Was Montaigne right to say, 'To philosophise is to learn how to die.'
Comments (88)
Creating more life is scarier, Sisyphean, and more ever-present than the "spectre of death". But that being said, if you are in your deathbed, actually feeling the impending inevitability, then the existentialist ideas might come crashing in about it. But otherwise, I agree more-or-less that the notion of death is often just reified romanticism.
I like that.
I posted this graph from the web a month or so ago:
Here is the source it came from:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/959347/fear-of-death-in-the-us/
So, no, death does not appear to invoke existential terror in a large portion of the population.
Quoting Tom Storm
My attitude is similar to yours. I'm having a good time. I'd rather not go right now, but I don't want to live forever either. I'm trying to stay healthy, but I just ate a Milky Way bar.
Are people afraid of being dead or are they afraid of dying?
As for being dead, the imagination of the living can make death something between heaven or hell on the one hand, and a perpetual nothing on the other hand. I like the nothingness of death which some say is like the nothingness before being gestated and born.
As for dying, Buddha said to his gathered disciples (as he himself was dying), "Decay is inherent to all compounded beings. Therefore, press on with diligence." Something like that. Translations may vary.
The idea that acceptance of death results in freedom or least is freeing is ancient. You see it in Lucretius, Epicurus, Seneca and others. But I think the Christian focus on death and its disdain of life as sinful transformed death, making it particularly fearsome; far more than it was for pagan philosophers, making the acceptance of death seem peculiarly liberating.
This is possibly (?) the freedom or self-becoming Heidegger and Derrida had in mind. If I stop desperately trying to identify with something lasting and indestructible -- conceived as the only way something can be 'truly' real -- then time becomes mine in a new way. Like Sartre/Roquentin in the cafe listening to the notes from the saxophone, dying away, an irrepeatable experience. Is it better to die young, perhaps because one lived with a beautiful and reckless courage ? As opposed to a safer but less vivid longevity ? Who decides this ?
Since no man knows aught of all he leaves, what is it to leave betimes ?
But... it might end at any time, which after 76 years won't be like the lost opportunities of people dying before they have found their way in the world (which takes 20 or 30 years).
Is it more like the acceptance of death is precisely that liberation from dread? Perhaps dread is a terrified resistance to the endless rush forward of life, as if one note from the horn refused to die to make way for the next.
Is the expansion of identity precisely the destruction of its pettier identifications ? Perhaps angels can only fly naked.
Great thread, by the way. I've been chewing on this issue.
Nice. Interesting survey.
Quoting BC
The latter I would have thought.
Quoting BC
Almost sounds Stoic.
Quoting green flag
I wondered about that when I read it back to myself.
Quoting green flag
That's good.
Quoting BC
Me too. No booze or smoking for many years. I walk through city streets for exercise but stay away from the country - I am immune to landscapes.
Quoting green flag
Maybe. What I do find startling as I get older is the rush of time going by. I have ties older than some of the kids who work for me. It's remarkable how little and how much you can do in one life.
-- I'd say what you feel about death is the healthy place to be, insofar that it is a genuine feeling. My feelings on death fluctuate. I certainly fear it in the sense of avoiding death -- even fireworks make me jump!
So when I say to myself "Death is nothing to us" I mean to remind myself that my fears are temporal. It's natural to fear death, and it is good to remember that this fear isn't a real thing you can defeat. For some of us that part is not so easy to accept.
When I was teaching philosophy I thought about teaching a class based on his jokes.
I think that's fair. I understand fear in the process (the messiness) of dying. But being dead seems like a doddle...
I recall a colleague telling me that her father had died aged 96. 'It was such a surprise,' she said. I thought the surprise was it took so long for him to go...
I like that one. The whole album is great.
A couple of songs about death that have been ringing about my mind:
EDIT: Changed the video for Leonard Cohen to the album cover. I just posted the video thinking it would have the song but upon watching saw it was more than that.
Your post is helping me work this out. The earliest lecture/draft of Being and Time has everyday or inauthentic running like a rat in the wheel of a clock that tells everyone's and therefore nobody's time. If we look at how Heidegger and Derrida and Emerson lived, they had to mean something like the joy of courageous creativity. But I think it's more than fair to include joking with the wife over coffee about the pets. To obsess over fame or getting paid would, as I see it, put us back in that clock, insisting that we are machines for converting time into social capital. It may be the case that those who live carelessly 'accidentally' sometimes create such capital. But when I hear great music for instance, I experience it as a gift and not a request. If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
:up:
I think (?) that the rushing by of time as we age is because the vast machinery of a personality has long been assembled and is now settled and has been running without much trouble. Of course that goes with a lifestyle that keeps you out of trouble. I can't be what the young me tolerated from companions in retrospect, but then they had to tolerate that younger me.
Yes. Too late for us to die young.
Quoting green flag
That's a very nice formulation. I suspect the joy of courageous creativity helps people to bear some of life's greatest burdens. What's your take on the desire to make one's mark in the world - not necessarily to be recognized, but to leave a legacy, even if no one knows it was you?
I suspect that we are evolved to enjoy bringing resources back to the tribe. We tend to love children and pets, just for being there. It's even one of the great joys of life to nurture.
I think the truest and deepest art (I include philosophy and drama) comes from a similar place. It is fundamentally self-transcending and directed at least to a virtual community that it may even be helping to create. The desire is to bring the gift. If it's experienced as truly a gift and of value, then its assimilation is not only or even primarily recognition but the empowerment of the tribe or species. It's like wanting your baby to eat the good food you made.
I [s]joke[/s] that there's only one philosopher/artist, one 'spirit' or Geist, that gets poured differently into different skulls, to run its adversarial self-expansion and self-exploration routines. As Feuerbach noted, every species is self-loving, self-asserting, and glories in itself. When humans love human children, it's like they are loving the image of their own eternity. In art and philosophy, it's as if they are adoring their own transcendence, the glory of their minds. "For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage." A generalized polyamory beyond the flesh ? An onanistic orgy of the singular Dionysos reassembled?
Earlier we contemplated whether freedom was doing without identification with the eternal. In this context, I think Schopenhauer nails it. We know on some level that death is unreal. Our little self, however unique, is still essentially replaceable. There are some hangnails we can talk about, but I'd like to see what you make of this.
*Last thought. The individual body cannot reproduce itself, which mocks our personal egoism.
The flesh itself betrays our need for and directedness toward others. Until rich dudes achieve immortality and sleep in a pile of sexbots who speak 17 languages.
Life is an arc. If you're on the climbing side of it, I think you're supposed to have an aversion to death, because you're headed in the other direction: into life, discovering who you are, making plans, exploding forth your potential on the poor unsuspecting.
If your roller coaster car as past the zero slope zone and you're headed downward, I don't know if aversion is still part of it. Maybe if a person has unfinished business? If they never learned to live? So they're still looking for a chance at authenticity (as if they would take it if you handed it to them.)
I see a lot of people die. Even old people are sometimes afraid if their minds are still there. I figure some people have so much love for life that they cling to it till the very end. That's kind of cool.
If one ceases to exist on death, then there is no "what it is like" to be dead. Hence fear of being dead is irrational.
Concern for the process of dying is reasonable.
Death is a negative if considered as putting a limit or restriction on what one is able to do and enjoy. On the whole, and contra the view of some hereabouts, being alive is better than being dead.
Grief at the passing of another is reasonable.
Concern for those left after one has died is also reasonable.
If I am a ball thrown, describing a parabola through space and time, it seems like there is no gap between when I was trying to escape my past and when I realized the connection was so tenuous in the first place. No effort or resignation was asked from me at that point in the orbit.
I can see how this shift relates to the anxiety in dreams. Many of the roles are the same but something has changed.
Perhaps more prejudice than hypothesis.
Quoting Study into who is least afraid of death
Maybe. Most people are about 98% irrational.
Nevertheless, given this is a fact, you might as well do something you find rewarding or interesting, if you can - it's what you make of it, to a large extent.
Death can give a sense of urgency for things you want to do, or finish - and for this reason is excellent motivation. But one should also consider the case, that no evil can last long enough that a mortal has to endure it forever.
I strongly suspect that death itself is literally a non-issue for you (in general) - but it means a massive amount to those close to you - somewhat of a paradox.
Finally, we should consider that, something like 99.999999999999....% of everything that IS, has no consciousness or awareness, so it shouldn't be as strange as we sometimes make it out to be.
Most people are 98% dead....
Sorry, a cheap shot I couldn't resist.
I wonder how things would play out. Overpopulation would be a big issue. But how would it feel like, knowing that you will always live?
It's unclear to me...
:razz:
Indeed. Irrational fears often have the biggest hold on us.
When I've worked with people dying and in palliative care, it used to surprise me how often it is religious folk who are most scared. It's said that faith provides comfort, but often it seems to provide discomfort along with apocalyptical, haunted visions.
Nice. Food for thought.
The fear of death may take several forms. I might feel an existential dread at the thought of annihilation, just because it cannot compute in the context of being alive. I might feel anxious because of the ineliminable mystery that the fact of death presents us with. I might be concerned that I have not realized my potential or that death might take me while I still have unfinished business. Death may be fearsome because it represents paradigmatically my powerlessness. Or I may just be afraid of the process of dying; the pain and sense of aloneness it can bring.
Quoting Tom Storm
If we live well, we never stop learning, and growing spiritually in the sense of overcoming shortcomings. If we think of this as a hard-won process of progression towards freedom, liberation or enlightenment, then its being cut short seems absurd and may make it seem like it was all for nothing, as whatever wisdom was gained will all be lost at death if it is nought but annihilation. For the creative person this wisdom may be embodied in their creations, but they too will be all but forgotten unless they are renowned, and even then the ultimate end will be oblivion.
Quoting Tom Storm
As I read Heidegger his notion of death does not refer (predominately at least) to physical death, but to the closing off of many possibilities that comes with committing oneself to anything. Of course actual death, if it is annihilation, is the ultimate closing off of all possibility. Committing oneself to something means the death of many other possible courses of action, but it also means the opening up of the possibilities that come with whatever one has committed oneself to.
Quoting Tom Storm
Being free of the concern about the closing off possibilities inherent in commitments allows one to commit, and without such commitment, whatever form it may take, one cannot become who they are, cannot fulfill their potential, but will be endlessly seeking distraction, so as not to have to make any commitment. It has been said that those who are afraid to die are afraid to live, and I think there is truth in that.
Spinoza says ( paraphrased), "A free man never thinks of death" and this may seem, on the face of it, to be the antithesis of Heidegger's "being towards death". But perhaps it is not; perhaps being genuinely free of concern about death (having thought it through to the end, as opposed to distracting oneself and refusing to think about it) just is the mark of the free person, who has transcended such concerns.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, provided the acceptance is real and not merely a pose or delusive simulacrum.
Quoting Tom Storm
In the light of what I've been saying, I would say 'yes', because to learn how to die is to learn how to live. That said, we are embodied beings and I think there will always be a visceral fear of pain and suffering, and pain and suffering may be inevitable in the process of dying. There may well also be a visceral fear of not being, simply because we only know being.
Anyway, congratulations for presenting a most significant OP. In some respects I think it is the only question which really matters.
Quoting Janus
That's an interesting angle. And I have often felt this way myself as I have made my choices and a part of me dies...
Quoting Janus
All these associations between death and freedom are curious. I get it, but the formulation is striking.
Quoting Janus
I think this is often true for older people who want to see the future. When my mum was told she had two weeks to live she was angry, not scared or upset. Just plain furious. 'Now I'll never know what happens,' she practically spat at me. When there's a family narrative you have been delighting in, it must be hard to leave it all behind.
Quoting Janus
Nice. It's like a philosophical ouroboros
This fits into my thread here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14164/existentialism-vs-personality-types
Perhaps your choices are constrained, to some degree, by personality anyways. Thus existentialism has some opposition with personality type theory. That someone perhaps is bound to have tendencies of patterns that lead to decisions.
From the study:
Apparently the speed with which time appears to pass is based on physiology. The body has a "time-passing-sense" (probably operating in the brain stem) and as we age, it slows down. As it slows, our perception of time speeds up.
On the other hand, this month of March has NOT been passing swiftly by. It is dragging, like it should be the middle of April by now. Maybe the weather? It's been a cold month and every day snow is still sprawled all over everything.
No kidding? That's wild.
I that right? I always thought time appeared to speed up because as you age a year represents only a small percentage of time you have already experienced, compared to when you are young and one year represents a significant percentage and feels like an aeon.
"busyness" may also figure into this. Many people maintain a high level of 'busyness"which will help them to avoid boredom or self examination. It isn't just a few people - millions and millions strive to be busy at all times, seems like.
No kidding? I have about a 52% confidence level that my theory is correct.
Harvard's Science In The News says:
Yes, I think this is part of the deal of being human.
From an old thread "Should We Fear Death?"
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/456624
Another post from an old thread "What happen after you no longer fear death? What comes next?"
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/450016
Yes, from Plato originally. And influenced, or informed, by even more ancient Dharmic paths to moksha. Here's a recent post ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/791990
edit:
Excerpt of another old 'meditation' ...
Quoting 180 Proof
Death as eternal return... I should have realized there'd be more threads on this.
I like what you said here:
Quoting 180 Proof
Fear, a double edged sword. Ditto for acting and public speaking.
:up:
There are no 'jubilant afterlifers' in foxholes. :smirk:
I am experiencing another death in my world.
Several months ago, I found out that my cousin and friend was dying of cancer, stage 4. (too young to be dying) I also heard that he didn't want to go on with the treatment. I knew him. We were friends as young teens. Then we separated after high school. He moved away. That was the last time I spoke with him, although I held him close to my heart.
He was an atheist at a very young age, and that got him in trouble within our family circle. The adults didn't like him. He was very vocal about atheism, and how he hated backward mentality. He became very successful in life, through hard work. That earned him even more hatred among relatives and families. What?? A blasphemous psycho owns a commercial building? I was prevented from communicating with him. :sad: Our families have become so political, it's made me angry. Maybe I'm a coward, too, by not being able to go against it.
When I tried to get his phone number so I could talk to him for the last time, I was met with indignation. I was met with silence. All texting stopped and no one was communicating with me. Days ago, I had a feeling of dread - out of the blue. He must have died already. I resolved to grieve for him, even in silence.
Z, this is for you -- Je t'aime. I hope your journey was worth it. You are courageous.
PS: @Tom Storm, thanks for this thread. Sorry, if I hijacked it. I needed an outlet for this emotion.
Perhaps the fundamental issue is the transitoriness of life, not death itself? Perhaps death merely forces us to confront the fact that life is transitory?
Im in my 70s. The world of my childhood is gone. Its a memory. What do I recall of my tenth year of life? Very little. And hardly anything of my first year. I recall more of my high school years, but that world is gone, too. The building itself has been torn down. Many classmates are no longer here.
What did it all mean? True, it contributed to who I am today. But if I lived eternally, the contribution would become less and less. At age 1,000, what occurred in my tenth year of life might not matter much. At age 1,000, I would have had much opportunity to resolve any traumas from my early years. At age 1,000,000, Id expect the impact of my first few years to be minimal, even infinitesimal.
If everything I experience is eventually forgotten and everything I accomplish is eventually gone, then what is the point of my life? If I find religions answers unconvincing, the question may lead me to philosophy.
Fear of death may prompt us to address the transitoriness of life. Once we have made our peace with that fact, then death may be easier to accept.
Yes, I think that summarises my understanding of how many people feel about death. I have the reverse reaction - if life is evanescent and everything is eventually forgotten, then the moment matters more. But I have never held a view that there is any 'point' to life other than the experience you're having now.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think it's a great hypothesis. The fear of [s]God[/s] Time is the beginning of [s]wisdom[/s] philosophy.
I remember letting go of God and afterlife at about age 18. Life becomes a dream, a rollercoaster ride.
People work hard and go to college to be this or that honored and wellpaid whatnot, and in general we connect intelligence with prudence and the maximization of long term reward. But our anticipating mind is 'shattered' as it looks too far forward. Is a brief span superior to the long span ? Does not such an assumption convert time into space ? Or time into money ? Death makes havoc of all our certainties, or something like that.
Yes. There is a similar religious view that we can experience God only in the present (for us, the past and the future exist only in our thoughts and memories), so we should try to live in the present. Buddhist monks have a similar view. I read once that most people will habituate to a bell that rings periodically, but that some Buddhist monks do not; their brain waves show they hear each ring, as would be expected from someone who is paying attention to the present.
That is interesting. I live two doors down from a church which has an hourly clock tower bell. I never hear it going off. Never. Perhaps if I were a Buddhist it would drive me crazy...:wink:
Wonder in spite of "fear" the shock of 'appearing and disappearing' may spark deliberative reflections; absent wonder, however, I think "fear" itself just reinforces superstitions.
Quoting Tom Storm
:fire:
Excellent point! Reminds me of Sheldon Solomon's team's work. Reminders of destruction seem to influence people to cling more tightly to their wider 'tribal' identifications. As far as I can make out, this is basically what spirituality is, so it's just a matter of how sublimated or elevated or expansive those identifications are.
But I do remember a wild night with [various substances] that threw me into total death terror. I managed with the help of philosophy and myth to steer that terror into overflowing love. I had to forgive/accept my own death, experience myself a straw dog, rusty pipe, melting candle. Very strange to veer from terror into ecstatic joy. I might have scrawled god is love is death. But I sobered up. I don't think mortals can stay in such extreme states for long. Hardware won't allow it.
One could maybe define terror as fear intense enough to shatter the ego.
Ah yes, a beautiful description of that abyss that terrorized me that night. We usually (if lucky?) find ourselves absorbed in the play of life ('falling immersion').
This reminds me of Ecclesiastes but more vivid. Which is not to say the KJV isn't a masterpiece.
***
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
Quoting Tom Storm
When Socrates, in the Pheado, says philosophers "practice death", he meant that, as death releases the "soul" from the body, so do philosophers release pure truth from the deceptive body, distracting desires, opinions, biases, etc. Cicero believed we should "meditate" on death, and Montaigne picked that up in saying: "Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve." Essay #20. His point being that if we are not afraid of losing life, we are free to live it.
Ignoring death--not being afraid of it happening, of our losing life--can look like we are focusing on "life". We are "in the moment" and pursuing "feeling alive"--Derrida refers to this, I believe, as Presence. However, if you ask any psychotherapist they will tell you that we do not fear death so much as we fear life.
Quoting Janus
Quoting green flag
Emerson believed that we grew in partial circles which we had to close in order to form each version of our self. The picture is an adolescent becoming an adult, first having any and every opportunity open to them, but then stepping into the world and becoming a lawyer, etc. It's also pictured as the time before speaking (before suffering I think the Buddhist would say), when our experience of the world can be immeasurable, and so fitting that into a word is a kind of violence, and expressing it to others is putting it on the record--as if thought were alive and writing was dead.
Quoting Janus
So I would agree that "not fearing death" is not to ignore it, or think of it always, or to focus on "living", but to have the courage to define ourselves in committing to form and structure and institutions and the judgment of others; to speak despite the inadequacies of our expressions and still be held to our words as if all that we are was in them, with everything else dying each time.
Nice. Yes I think fearing life is definitely the key problem that I see in my work. But fearing life is actually fearing things like decisions, rejection, responsibility, commitment and consequences, etc.
I've tended to find that most things said about life and death by philosophers and poets leave me cold.
:up:
Also injury, disease, and violence. In general: suffering including humiliation and loss of power.
:up:
Good image!
You will cease to be human and your identity will shift to something else. The energy and matter that upheld your conscious mind, body and self identity will dissipate or spread out and be shared amongst the various other biologicals that work on decaying your body back into the flowing cyclical material-energetic soup that is mother nature.
Sure "you" as a specific identity and it's experiences and memories will evaporate, but your substance - your basis in the physical world will not go anywhere but simply be recycled into new living systems.
At most this could only ever be the creation of a new identity with no recollection or memory of past lives. Experiencing life anew as a worm, a wolf, a human. Who knows. At worst it means you will never exist again. In total oblivion.
But the oblivion one emerged from is the same as one enters on death. And as you didn't suffer before being born, I suspect you will not suffer in death. Suffering is for the living not the dead.
All in all, regardless of what view you take, I don't think death is something to be feared as much as it is inevitable and natural and what gives life meaning. A fact of life just as much as birth.
Dying as a process, now that can be feared. Dying may involve suffering - pain, disablement, disorientation, uncertainty. That is something to fear but it resides in the "state of living."
Perhaps death is just like a dreamless sleep. Perhaps one you may awake from once again. Or perhaps one you never wake from.
In either case is dreamless sleep "suffering"? I don't believe so.
Yes!
Indeed. For most of time we were all already dead...
I think philosophers can be too vague (as you mention) and therefore leave us cold.
Fear of life and fear of death look to be the same thing. It's like the fear of going backwards. Loss of comfort, power, freedom, status, safety, reputation. Fear of loss.
Learning how to die seems to be like becoming so ripe that one is willing to drop from the tree. One way to see this ripeness is as the realization that one is not really trapped in a particular dying primate. There are other close-enough copies of the softwhere in other dying primates who have the joy and terror of making still more.
Great line.
:up:
Thanks!
So, something like Heidegger's "resoluteness"?
Quoting green flag
I won't be willing to die until I've already dropped from the tree and become so dried up and shriveled that I am way beyond over-ripe.
Quoting green flag
Too irrelevant would be my pick.
:smirk:
What if you knew your mental faculties were declining ? If it didn't make one a burden, maybe it'd be OK, but part of the charm of life for me is the hope of always jumping a little higher. This is irrational in the sense that we don't actually leave a Real dent, but that might be something we have trouble believing in our depths.
For me the challenge would be to find joy in decline; it's a different kind of experience after all. I don't set so much store in mental faculties. I'm not interested in "jumping a little higher" just for the sake of it, although I am interested in being a little higher, and I've found that much of philosophy doesn't help me with that.
I'm getting to the point now where I have little interest in complex intellectual productions, or arcane subjects, and find more joy in simple expressions of being. I find much of philosophy, however impressively intellectually acrobatic it might be, tedious and uninspiring. If it lacks poetry, then I lack interest. I'm also unconcerned with leaving a mark in the world.
I'm more interested now in those philosophers whose focus is on living wisely. As I seem to remember from Wittgenstein: "It's more important to be good than to be clever".
Thank you for the sincere and detailed answer. Did you ever see one of Rorty's last essays expressing that kind of point, an appreciation for poetry as opposed to tedious fussy webs ? What you describe sounds perfectly reasonable.
:up:
I'm glad you reminded me of it.
PMN is beautifully written. CIS is maybe even better, because more existential and less technical. The essays tend to be great too. I just happened on Rorty about 9 years ago at the public library and found him terribly readable. So I've read most of his work and a sociological biography. Here's a snippet and a link to one of the last essays:
[quote=Rorty]
I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts just as I would have if I had made more close friends.
[/quote]
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/68949/the-fire-of-life
I find Emerson inspiring, though it can be hard to make out how he is doing analytical philosophy (following Kant and Descartes and Socrates). Nietzsche is as arcane unfortunately. The later Heidegger (Poetry Language Thought in particular) is a kind of poetry. I would try an essay of J.L. Austins too. Although pedestrian, it is refreshing to see him actually get somewhere with issues that tie others in knots, though again it can be hard to take him as dealing with the same issues as the tradition.
I have read Austin years ago. He seems to convince himself that he has it all commonsensically figured out and that it is misuse of language and only misuse of language that causes philosophers to tie themselves up with metaphysical knots that can never be unravelled, but rather, like the Gordian knot of legend, can only be cut by the sword, in this case the sword of linguistic analysis. I find that attitude unconvincing because I see it as over-simplistic.
I can understand seeing it that way. Wittgenstein is better at keeping open the question of why skepticism continues to appear. And, yes, Austin can seem like he is just cataloguing how language works. What he is doing though is looking at: what we say when we.... (know, think, etc.) because the way we talk about those activities shows us what matters to us about the activities. The criteria for having apologized are what count towards being forgiven. So the workings of how we discuss the activity show us what we are interested in about it. The language shows us the world.
We agree on this point. I like the question of meaning and the question of being for bring our ignorance to light, for making darkness visible. Openings, beginnings. Not closings, endings.
Did you ever wrestle with Limited Inc ? Fun strange book.
I never did get into that one. I hate to say I read a book about a book, but Stanley Cavell was a student of Austin's, and, in his second chapter of "A Pitch of Philosophy", he discusses the book and how it appears to him that Derrida was responding to a mistake he read into Austin's work, and then later that Derrida had turned presence (or the voice) into something more metaphysical than logos. I have a hard enough time with Hegel, so I skipped it.
--So I'm not allowed to joke about bombs at this airport?
They arrest him.
NEXT DAY
--So I'm not allowed to joke about joking about bombs at this airport?
They arrest him.
[inspired by a point made in the book]
I agree that language shows us the world; since the world is a linguistically generated collective representation in my view. This is not to say that whatever gives rise to the phenomenal world is linguistically generated, nor that our perceptions of things are (entirely) linguistically generated.
Naming things, positing them as entities, brings the world into being for us. We never actually perceive the world, we just perceive those things which enter our visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, etc., fields. Nor do we ever actually perceive whole things.
:up: I agree.
:death: :flower:
:up: A whole day under the sun includes the brightest and the darkest hours.
Thank you.