A mysterious Persian philosopher in 500 BCE (the same region was latter inhabited by Greeks). Heraclitus is mysterious because not too much informations have been recorded about his life, most of his stories were only retailed based on the inferences of his personal feature throughout his master pieces. Heraclitus is one of the “pre-socratics” philosophers, the formation of his theory have been considered highly related to several first (philosophy) thinkers in his region. These philosophers include Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. Heraclitus and other pre-socratics thinkers significantly marked “the birth of natural philosophy”(Garvey 25). Heraclitus was commonly known from his theory the “universal flux”, that every thing are constantly changing over time. An illustration of this idea is his famous metaphor of the changing stream. “Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river”(Plato Cratylus 402a = A6). Heraclitus also puts forward such fundamental view of world’s pattern by raising “the unity of opposites”. Every pairs of opposites are meaningless without one another, thus could be seen as a unity. He also provides a method to understanding the world’s formation based on cosmology. “This world-order, the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures” (B 30). Heraclitus believes that fire is the essential substance; since his world view was most likely attributed to the notion that a world would both reborn and terminate by fire.
Based on previous studies, Heraclitus’s “cosmos fire” theory is an analogy of the soul, that expressed his view of death. Concretely, there is a combination of his three theories. With the unity of opposites, he primarily represents a state of existed entities, that every things and their opposites are strongly bonded together; hence, an abstraction of an eternal circulation. The opposite of a kindled fire is being quenched, yet these are the only states the fire would possess. In addition, one assumption that Heraclitus made to support the existence of such circulation, is the universal flux. The principle that every thing constantly changing serves as a “scope” to the opposite’s circulation, in terms of a basic manifestation of the physical world’s state. Only the fire’s kindle-quench process is persistently changing, the opposites would remain as a unity.
“As the same thing in us are living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these”.(B88)
An essential assumption is, death and alive are two opposite states. Yet under the same mechanism represented in the cosmos fire theory, the “individual’s soul fire” (Hussy 1) also alternates between quenching and kindling. Nevertheless, the combined view of Heraclitus’s theories seems limited due to the strict assumptions. Through out his fragments, one would treat him as a highly systematic theorist. Fire plays a central role in both his view of cosmos and soul, and each being a pattern of “unity-in-opposite”(Hussey 1). He reckons a general order of the universe by imposes the cosmos fire’s example. Thus, it is complicated to understand the universe is ever living, since it is twinkling between living and dying. The same conclusion also stands in terms of souls. In addition, several “unity of oppositions” propounded by Heraclitus as examples of his doctrines, have crucial influences. According to Heraclitus, the opposition of life-death is linked with mortal-immortal, and human-divine.His proposition of death, is then denote to a fragment of a process other than a termination.
As one of the pre-socratics thinkers, Heraclitus has been delineated as immortal. An example in this case, is “The Battle of Gods and Giants”, a symbolism of a historical events happened in Heraclitus’s era. The sanctification of this story suggest that there is a “difficulty of saying anything definitive about the lives of the earliest Greek philosophers” (Garvey 25). Therefore, the unknown informations of Heraclitus’s death was to some extent echoed with his world view. Such world view, to some extent considered the consequence of death in a same way as Buddhism. Specifically, the buddhism doctrine indicates that every being in this world have a soul, and each would reincarnation into another being after death. The belief of samsara therefore based on a core assumption of buddhism, which called hetu-phala. It then explains why should individual’s pursuing for virtue. Yet the reason is, the good deeds in this life, would transform into the welfare in next life. The similar mechanism about death revealed in Heraclitus’s world view, one inquiry is, how would Heraclitus responds to the hetu-phala.
Work Cited Page
Garvey, James, and Jeremy Stangroom. “The Story of Philosophy: A History of Western Thought.” The Story of Philosophy: A History of Western Thought. London: Quercus, 2013. 25-38. Print.
Kirk, G. S. “Heraclitus and Death in Battle (FR. 24D).” The American Journal of Philology 70.4 (1949): 384. Print.
Hussey, Edward. “Heraclitus on Living and Dying.” Monist 74.4 (1991): 517-30. Print.
Graham, Daniel W. “Heraclitus.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 03 Sept. 2019. Web. 25 June 2021.
“No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.“
Chances are, you’ve heard of the name ‘Socrates’ before, but you may not know who exactly he is. Socrates is one of the most famous and influential philosophers to have ever lived, despite never having written anything himself. He lived in Athens, and was one of the poorer citizens by will (according to remaining records of him by others, he actually embraced his own poverty and never charged money for his teachings). He was also apparently famously ugly, and due to his own poverty, didn’t change clothes a lot. Because most of the information known about Socrates comes from books and records written by his students, such as Plato or Xenophon, and those records were mostly focused on academic affairs, not much was written about his personal life. However, it has been recorded that Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus and Paenarete. He married a woman named Xanthippe and had three children with her.
Despite his outward appearance, he was noted to be extremely arrogant, preaching his beliefs and knowledge to random people that he met on the street, trying to convince them that he was right through extensive questioning and debating with them. Although this behavior was noted to be semi-annoying and harmful to the youth of Athens, in addition to being a bother to other citizens of Athens, Socrates himself thought nothing of it. He believed that the behavior itself
This behavior, however, angered the citizens of Athen and drew the attention of the Athenian court, who accused Socrates of impiety and influencing the youth in a negative way. In the end, the people of Athens held a trial to determine whether Socrates was guilty or not, and what punishment would he receive. Socrates was found guilty of his crimes, and was sentenced to death. The remaining records of this event are from Plato’s Apology, which details Socrates’s opinions on death and his own trial. Due to the fact that Plato is Socrates’s student, the book is known to be subject to Plato’s subjectivity, which may paint Socrates in a better light than how other’s may have known him. In addition, it is hard to tell which ideas are Socrates’s own ideas, and which ideas are Platonic, projected through the persona of Socrates.
One of Socrates’s most famous beliefs (and one of the points he gets made fun of the most) is that he knew that he knows nothing, and therefore he thought he was more intelligent than everyone else (which in itself is a contradiction, but at the time, it was a truly profound idea). Everyone else that Socrates encountered in Athens thought their own knowledge was irrefutable and real, so he wanted to help others share this supposed “truth” by walking around and teaching the citizens of Athens about his belief by asking others what they know and disproving them one by one. Many of the dialogues were recorded by Plato in the Platonic dialogues. Due to Socrates’s continous and main belief that no one can truly know anything, apart from the fact that he knows that he knows nothing, Socrates believes there is nothing to fear when it comes to death, since no one can really know what comes after death. Socrates believes that to fear death is to have a preassumption that death is supposed to be inherently bad, which is just one pretending to be smart when one is not. In the Apology, Plato writes, “To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.” This idea is linked to the quote at the top of the page, in which Socrates explains no one knows whether death could be the greatest blessing, or the greatest evil (which is both dependent on the nature of death itself, and the person experiencing it). Socrates also proposes two situations: death involves the ending of one’s consciousness, in which case death is nothing but a dreamless sleep, or death involves the soul of the body being admitted to an afterlife, where souls are ruled by just judges. Neither situation can be constituted as necessarily frightful (in his case, at least), so he has nothing to fear.
In the end, Socrates was executed by reason of impeity and corruption of the youth (although some believed that he technically commtitted suicide because he was granted the chance to escape, but he insisted on following the law and being executed instead), and we are left with unanswered questions, courtesy of Socrates’s legacy. Is being scared of death truly an act of ignorance? Will it always, under any circumstances, be irrational to fear death?
Plato. Apology, trans. G.M.A. Grube. Pp. 112.130 in Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.
Michel Foucault is a French philosopher and, he is considered a postmodernist and a poststructuralist, Although he himself does not seem to agree with this very much. Michel Foucault was born on October 15, 1926, in a rural family in Poitiers, France. His father Paul was a physician. His original name was Paul-Michel Foucault, and later he gave up Paul in his name, which may have something to do with the rather tense relationship between him and his father.
Foucault directly mentioned the concept related to death in his book “Words and Things”, that is, “death of men”. The content of the book does sound a bit obscure now, but I believe you will understand it after reading this article. The main point of the book “Words and Things” is that each historical stage has a set of rules for the formation of knowledge that are different from those of the previous period (Foucault called it the epistemological (épistémè)), while the modern knowledge is characterized by ” human” is the center of research.
Foucault mentioned in an interview in 1966: “I believe that the human has been if not a bad dream, a specter, at least a very particular figure”. Here, although he did not strictly divide humans, he believes that people are obviously special. He then said: “Humans are very historically determined and situated in our culture.” Through words such as “determined” and “culture”, we can first clarify that the “human” in Foucault’s “death of man” is the non-biological sense, but as work as a concept, and this conceptual human is shaped by culture and history. After clarifying the basic concepts, the following will first give a general description of the concept of the “death of man”. After you have a general understanding of this concept, I will expand to introduce the internal logic of the each element.
Foucault believed that In the 19th century and also the first half of the 20th century, it was believed that the human was the fundamental reality of our interest. the impression that the search for the truth about the man had animated all research, possibly including science, Morality, philosophy, etc. Foucault believed that until the end of the 18th century, before the French Revolution, “we never with the human as such.”
You may ask, since the birth of human civilization, haven’t we been developing around ourselves, include the concept of “humanity”? The meaning behind this question is that we believe that the concept of “human” was originally present. In fact, Foucault believes that the notion of a human actually began to appear in modern times. He believes that it was not until the end of the 18th century that we really began to talk about humans. Moreover, Foucault called the analysis of people in modern thought since the end of the eighteenth century as anthropology. This is his brief description of the relationship between human and humanism: “You can’t find the term human earlier because humanism is an invention of the late 19th century”. This sentence actually contains a lot of information. First of all, Foucault further defined the concept of humans. In addition to the aforementioned human as a product of history and culture, the concept of human also refers to a term in humanism that appeared in the 19th century. From this, we can be sure that the human Foucault is talking about is a human in a discipline, a person of a concept, or a person that is based on the concept that is formed in the humanities.
Foucault believes that Before the 19th century, it can be said the human did not exist. What exists were a number of problems, a certain number of forms of knowledge and thought, where it was a question of nature, or a question of truth, or a question of the movement, a question of order, or a question of a presentation, etc. But there was not a question of human. The human is a figure constituted near the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, which gave rise to what has been and still are called the human sciences.
Foucault believed that paradoxically, the development of the human sciences is now leading to the disappearance of the human rather than an apotheosis of the human. After the 18th century, huamn gradually became the center of the humanities and the concept of humanism throughout the 19th century. However, Foucault announced that this anthropology was going to die. This is the so-called “death of man”, or in other words, the end of huamn or the disappearance of man. As mentioned above, the “death of man” here is the death of a human being as a form of knowledge and ideology, and the death of a human-centered discipline. In the end, it is the death of modern human-centered knowledge since the end of the eighteenth century. So far, we have clarified what Foucault means by “death of men”, but why does he say that? How did such a “person” in the conceptual sense die and disappear? What is the essential difference between the existence and non-existence of the concept of man? What does the concept of “knowledge” mentioned repeatedly above specifically refer to?
To truly understand why Foucault said that “people did not appear until the end of the 17th century”, we first need to understand a very important concept he put forward in the book “The Order of Things”—representation. I will tell this concept through one of the world’s famous paintings, “The Maids of Honor”.
Foreign name: Las Meninas Collection: Prado Art Museum, Spain Creation time: 1656 Author: Velázquez
The painter in the left hand of this painting is the painter himself, namely Velázquez. He was painting for the king and the queen. Unfortunately, the little princess Margaret broke in. The entourage was a little panicked and made a gesture of coaxing the little princess, saluting and handing water. The king and queen are not in the center of the picture, they are only shown through a mirror. The main body of the picture seems to be the little princess and his attendants, but a closer look at their eyes reveals that they are actually looking forward. Including the people in the hallway behind are actually looking forward. Combining the spatial relationship with the king and queen in the mirror, it is not difficult to find that the little princess and the attendants are looking at the king and queen. This is the most interesting part of this painting. The majesty of the king and queen is obviously the main content of this painting, but the painting “The Maids of Honor” does not put them in the center of the painting. But through the eyes of other people, the king and queen expressed by the contrast of the direction and the reflection of the rear mirror. The entire painting can be regarded as a representation. In this representation, that is, in this painting, the subject is the king and queen, but they cannot represent themselves, they can only be reflected in a mirror. This painting shows the characteristics of “representation”: the subject of the presentation is concealed, and the subject and the object of the presentation can represent each other, but the subject cannot represent itself, but can only be represented as an object.
The different relations formed by the subject and the object of the representation lead to the difference of the knowledge type (épistémè). According to the book The Order of Things, the knowledge type is the “basic code of culture.” These codes may include language, perceptual framework, communication, skills, value, etc. It is these so-called “basic codes” that construct different cultures, and different cultures lead to different concepts of “human”. The difference in the concept of “person” will further lead to the different relationships formed by the subject and the object of the appearance.
The culture here does not refer to race or regional culture, but the entire Western culture. Foucault divided culture into four periods, namely Renaissance, Classical, Modern, and Contemporary. The concept of “death of man” mainly refers to the classical and modern periods, so this article will not dwell on other periods too much.
Foucault believes that in the classical period, around 1660-1800, the characteristic of knowledge is the most basic appearance, as in the above “The Maids of Honor”: the subject and the object are opposed, and the subject cannot represent itself and needs express through objects. As mentioned in the previous article, the philosophical propositions of the classical period may include what is nature and what suits the social rules of man. These issues or subjects are highly related to people, but they are not directly discussing people as the subject, but are representing people (subjects) through another proposition, namely, the object.
Until the philosopher René Descartes put forward “I think, therefore I am”. The core of the sentence “I think, therefore I am” is that Descartes believes that he can doubt anything in the world, but the only thing he can be sure of is the existence of “I think” because when he doubts other things, he cannot doubt his own thinking at the same time. “Foucault believes that Descartes’s words mark the arrival of the modern era because Foucault believes that the symbol of modern thought is that people can represent themselves. In the classical period, the concept of people needs to be represented by objects. But now it’s not needed anymore. Man is both an object and a subject. Returning to Descartes’ example, in “I think, therefore I am”, the existence of “I” does not need to be proved or represented by other things. On the contrary, “I “Existence is due to “I” thinking. This idea that “humans can represent human through themselves” is also called self-representation by Foucault.
However, this modern period also quickly entered the contemporary period. Foucault believes that its symbol is “God is dead” put forward by Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that God and man belonged to each other: On the one hand, man was overlooked and even created by God, and at the same time, God is also the God of man. There is no full existence of man, and God also has no meaning of his own existence. The appearance of God is the result of the appearance of a man. The meaning of the two depends only on the other, and can only be interpreted under the conditions of using the other as a reference, as a context, and as an explanation. They cannot be isolated and isolated from each other. In this case, God and man are both the subject and the object of each other. In this way, God and human need are inseparable, and the two serve as references to each other. In this relationship, if one party dies, the other party will die, and if one party loses all its existence, the other party will also die. It is in this relationship that Foucault wrote: “the death of God involved the death of the subject as well…. for the death of man is but part of the tragedy of the death of God.”
“Foucault thought that “the death of God” is a start or basis of the “death of man”. He believes that psychoanalysis, linguistics, and other disciplines developed in the contemporary era are all the dissolution and deconstruction of people. The relationship between people and their language, psychology, cognition, and other things is also interdependent. They are both each other’s object and each other’s subject. The original object can better support the existence of human beings, but from “God is dead” to later linguistics, structuralism, psychoanalysis, etc., all objects dispel the subject. Faced with this, the existence of human beings in disciplines and knowledge will be closer to death.
As in the last sentence of the last page of “Words and Things”, Foucault wrote: “Man will be erased, like a face on the sand by the sea.”
Work Cited
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Routledge, 2010.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, et al. The Gay Science. Dover Publications, Inc., 2020.
“Cogito, Ergo Sum.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 May 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum.
“Las Meninas – The Collection.” The Collection – Museo Nacional Del Prado, www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/las-meninas/9fdc7800-9ade-48b0-ab8b-edee94ea877f.
“Dasein” is a concept that cannot be ignored in the understanding of Martin Heidegger’s thoughts system. This is a German word, which leads to a discussion on the translation and interpretation that consist of many years till now. In English, the most common translation is “being”. The significance of Dasein as innovation is it’s trying to bring the “feeling” and “humanist” back to the discussion of philosophy, after a long journey of German’s “academism” modern philosophy, it is a breakthrough that makes Heidegger became popular at that time, which needed to be understanding under the context of the German philosophy research after WWI. Martin Heidegger, as an “existentialism” philosopher, also heavily influenced by Husserl‘s phenomenology and inspired by Brentano’s thoughts about the existence (Wikipedia).
The concept of death as the ending of existence in common sense cannot be avoided in the discussion of “Dasein” and ontology exploration. Heidegger mentioned death in division two of Being and time and fully discussed it in chapter 2, which is less on the completeness in the comparison with division one. Thus, it is crucial to aware of this incompleteness of Heidegger’s theory system about death and the relation with Dasein: his thoughts about death were based on the concept of Dasein.
“Being-towards-death” is the main definition and “attitude” used by Heidegger to describe the concept of death in the latter part of Being and Time, in an ontological way. This composition word sufficiently shows that “death is not an event”, but a character that included in Dasein. At the beginning of part 47 in the Being and Time of Heidegger, he wrote: “When Dasein reaches its wholeness in death, it simultaneously loses the being of the there.” This can be interpreted as at the moment that Dasein (the being) is finally facing its end and also its fully self, it’ll lose itself and also the death including in itself at the same time. In a more physical way, people like Dasein haven’t truly reach death before and cannot reach it, no matter by themselves or by others. The only way that one can experience but still not reaches death, is to settle aside the “objective” death of others. In another word, death is unavoidable for any being, being-towards-death.
Moreover, Heidegger distinguishes the concept “death (Sterben)” from the biological perspective from the concept “demise (Ableben)”, the end of Dasein.
“Thus we can say that Dasein never perishes. Dasein can only demise as long as it dies. (Heidegger)”
We can understand that death in the psychological aspects is another status of Dasein, a status or even proposition that can face demise. “Because the biological “death” does correlate with Dasein because the life has relation with Dasein. Thus, as Heidegger said: “The full existential and ontological concept of death can now be defined as follows: as the end of Dasein, death is the own most, nonrelational, certain, and, as such, indefinite and insuperable possibility of Dasein. As the end of Dasein, death is in the being [Sein] of this being [Seienden] toward its end (Heidegger)”, death now has two ontological characteristics, certainty (in Dasein) and indeterminacy (base on the time).
To face death with certainty and indeterminacy, Heidegger sees that it is covered by the action of “fleeting”, which is an escape from death. He then comes up with a possible way that we can do anticipation [Vorlaufen]: “The nearest nearness of being-toward-death as a possibility is as far removed as possible from anything real. The more clearly this possibility is understood, the more purely does understanding penetrate to it as the possibility of the impossibility of existence [Existenz] in general. (…) As the anticipation of possibility, being-toward-death first makes this possibility possible and sets it free as a possibility (Heidegger).” For best understanding, the “anticipation” here also has a great translation in Chinese, which is “先行”, “go ahead beforehand” into the demise of Dasein. This translation including the structure of space metaphor and time metaphor of the concept (Vorlaufen) can explain its importance toward the “Da-” part, which means “there”, in the concept of Da-sein.
Then, if apply Heidegger’s analysis of death into the context of daily life, what inspirations can we get? In my summarization, it will be: Instead of seeing physical death as the end of one’s own existence, the appearance, and the possibilities of the demise of one’s own existence is expected and learned: the previously hidden possibility of death is once again brought back into every moment of life and action. The hidden or coverage of the death is not only showing in the attitude that people always avoided talking about it, but also in the narration of it: people always use the third person perspective or even past tense to describe the death, which is a good way to raise the distance between themselves and the death. Heidegger reveals that the best status of being, Dasein, can be reached partially from facing the identity and be the identity of being-towards-death.
In the late 19 century, the appearance of phenomenology overturned the old concept of philosophy. Whereas the seeds of phenomenology can be traced back to Immanuel Kant’s distinction between the experience world and rational world, the thread of phenomenology really comes to its being is when the Logical Investigation published – German Philosopher Edmund Husserl in the last decade of 19 century. Its influence covers the landscape of continental philosophy. From Foucault and Sartre to Slavoj Zizek and Judith Butler.
Edmund Husserl
Phenomenology is an entirely new perspective, different from the previous school of philosophy, Husserl investigates the raw consciousness, and his arguments are mostly subjective that digs into our experience. What impact on latter philosophers, is his methodology of investigating the consciousness, called Epoche (or bracketing). Disregard those terms, a simpler way to understand Husserl and his phenomenology is the way of “feeling”. For example, towards the topic of death, rationalist would dispute about the mortal or immortality, the things happened after death, or souls and existence. Rene Descartes disproved our sensations and direct consciousness that subjectively examining our world. However, from the view of phenomenology, which you could understand as part of empiricism that emphasizes the first person point of view. When Husserl thinks about death, he probably would investigate the subjective first-person experience, which asks those people who have a near-death experience and more or less close to the “representation of reality”.
Edmund Husserl was born in Prossnitz on April 8, 1859. When Husserl was about 17 years old, he studied astronomy and mathematics, also philosophy in Leipzig. Among other things, he heard Wilhelm Wundt’s psychology lecture (Wilhelm Wundt is the founder of experimental psychology) on philosophy. This lecture is considered as a significant moment that Husserl combined psychology and philosphers later in his works. In 1988 to 1881 Husserl continues to study mathematics, physics and philosophy in Berlin. He took a PhD in mathematics in Vienna. After his graduation, he has been advised to study philosophy with Brenotano, and Husserl is influenced by Brenotano’s psychology lectures. Later he has been introduced to Brenotano’s pupil, enable him to prepare for publishing books. It is notable that Husserl is a productive writer. Philosophy of Arithmetic published in 1891, which is his first published monograph. In 1900 the two volumes logical investigation published as his first work on phenomenology. From April 26 to May 2, 1907, Husserl delivered five lectures in Gottingen. He introduced the main ideas of his phenomenology. Specifically, the lectures are striking attacking on psychologism, which he particularly oppose “biologism” and “anthropologism”.
His speeches later are arranged in The idea of phenomenology, a collection contains five of his speeches. “How can cognition reach a being, and why is there not this doubt and this difficulty in connection with the cogitationes? (Husserl 2)” He considers the self-reference of cognition is a question yet to be answered in the current study of philosophy and psychology. We take for granted that the world around us exists independently of us and our consciousness. He claims that transcendent experience is posited regard as “the natural attitude”. In the speech, he introduced “the epistemological reduction” to emphasize that we shouldn’t posit a star or outer space exist unless we can cognize them. Whereas Husserl called this method “epoche” in Idea I, the true meaning of “epistemological reduction” or “epoche” is the key to open the gate of phenomenology. This means that all judgments that presume the independent existence of the world or worldly entities, are to be the bracket and have no use to phenomenology. For example, the phenomenon of fire. In order to approach this phenomenon, we discard those prior judgments of fire, cut off the connectiona between the fire and the outside world, and concentrate on the experience of it. The key of epoche is to reduce the phenomenon to its rawest experience. Ultimately, the consciousness you have could be your dream, your hallucinations, or real. But for phenomenologists, it is all the same.
Indeed, Husserl has never discussed death in any of his works, but he has constructed a path toward death for those philosophers after him. According to Being and Nothing, Sartre has quoted Husserl 60 times to state his thought. This demonstrated clearly that the edifice of philosophy is built on one by another. Even though Husserl didn’t express anything about death, it is not difficult to investigate this topic follow the logic of Husserl’s contributions.
Since Husserl opposes biologism or anthropologism, then he must be indifferent in physiological death. His method of investigation depends on one’s perceptions and experience. However, there will be no more experience after death. This is probably the reason Husserl has never talked about death – at the moment of death, your consciousness passed away. Thus, it is impossible for anyone to experience real “death”.
Nevertheless, according to the methodology of epoche, the experience must be described from the first person point of view, to ensure the image of representation is exact as one experienced. As previously mentioned, phenomenologist doesn’t care whether an experience is a hallucination or real. This is because either a dream or hallucination, one’s undergoes is exactly the same as perceiving the external objects. “Therefore, the (adequacy of a) phenomenological description of a perceptual experience should be independent of whether for the experience under investigation there is an object it represents or not. (Stanford)” Moreover, Husserl calls up any consciousness that contains perceptual content the “the perceptual noema”. As long as a hallucination involves intentional acts, it is a “real” perception of objects.
Therefore, even though it is impossible for any living being to experience death, a hallucination of death is an alternative way to understand what is death. The only question is: how could a human being imagine something he or she has never experienced? Husserl might say: “Thinking about death doesn’t matter whether the imaginary death is based on a true experience or not, I concern the intentionality.”
References:
Beyer, Christian. “Edmund Husserl”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL =<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/husserl/>
This well-known quote appears first in Jean Paul’s 1797 novel under a chapter named “The Dead Christ Proclaims That There Is No God.” Later, it is found in a poem by Gérard de Nerval, and then Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. But the person this phrase was best known for is the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was first seen in his collection The Gay Science published in 1882. The paragraph goes:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
(Anderson)
For further investigation, it is needed to define the phrase “god is dead.” And yet, Nietzsche has been so vague in his various mentions that what he meant by it remains greatly controversial even today. The most accepted theory, though, is that the God referred to the Christian God. This theory states that the phrase referred to the enlightenment and the triumph of scientific rationality it brought is making the dominant beliefs of the Christian God no longer needed. This is a representation of the great moral collapse of the western world in Nietzsche’s theory, where all the moral values that was rooted in Christian culture will also collapse. (Anderson) Indeed, in the quote he said, “What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?” This means the process of building up a new set of moral values which he evidently thinks is too great for humans. He argued that what awaits them is a huge project of breaking down what can no longer stand after God has “bled to death under our knives” and build a whole new system of morality, all while keeping the society stable and working, taking the roll God had previously. “Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” His view that this current moral system needs such a major reformation also shows how much criticism he felt against it, thinking that it is destined to collapse.
Nietzsche’s Life
Nietzsche has his first experience of death very early in his life when his father died when he was five. This caused him to grow up in an all-woman household made of his mother, grandmother, two aunts, and his younger sister. When he was 24, he was called to a chair in classical philosophy at Basel, being the youngest ever to be appointed to that post. It was also around 1870 where one of Nietzsche’s greatest friendships, his friendship with Wagner ended, also giving inspiration to the work The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music published in 1872. Then he continued to produce essays about Strauss, Schopenhauer, and Wagner, known collectively as the Untimely Meditations. In 1876-1877, Nietzsche’s poor health conditions forced him to take a break, eventually forcing him to resign his professorship. After that, Nietzsche focused on writing the literature that he is best known for, almost publishing a book every year. In his later years, he traveled the world in search of a climate that would improve his health, but eventually died of a stroke in 1900. (Anderson)
Nietzsche on death in “The Gay Science”
Being one of his best-known works, Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science” included his thoughts on a great variety of subjects, including death. In summary, he described “The thought of death” as “the only things certain and common to all in this future.” This argument is obviously true, and is also very shallow, but his next point follows that people “are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death!” He points out two very interesting psychological phenomenon we very well understand but are not very aware of. The first is that “men do not want to think at all of the idea of death!” It just happens that everyone is so afraid of the idea of death that we forget about it for most of our life, only remembering it when it arrives. The second is that it is always the last moment before an eternal departure where “people have more than ever to say to one another.” In the text, Nietzsche used an example of the departure of an emigrant-ship, stressing the ocean “with its lonely silence” being “so greedy” and “so certain of its prey,” making it obvious that the ocean symbolizes death. On each of these phenomena, Nietzsche says it gives him “melancholy happiness” and it “makes me happy,” evidently amused and happy about how humans cope with the shadow, the predator always following them in death.
