4. Philosophers and Death.
Schopenhauer main-
tained that death is
the muse of philosophy and that
“all religious and philosophical
systems are principally
directed toward comforting us concerning death,
and
are thus primarily antidotes to the terrifying certainty
of
death” (The World as Will and Idea, III, Ch.
16).
This is an obvious oversimplification and over-
statement. The origin of religion involves many
other
factors than just the dimension of human anxiety with
regard to
death, and this is true even more of philoso-
phy where “wonder” (Plato) and intellectual
curiosity
were motives of equal if not greater importance.
Still almost from the very first, death was a major
topic of philosophical
reflection. Of the 126 known
fragments of Heraclitus, no less than sixteen
deal with
death. And while it is a mistake to impute to Plato
the
proposition that philosophy is a meditation on
death or to suspect him of
an inordinate fear of it,
there can be no doubt whatsoever that it held a
promi-
nent place in his thought. What
Plato did say was
that “the true philosopher is ever pursuing
death and
dying” (Phaedo 64A). This
statement can be understood
correctly only in the context of Plato's notion
that
the soul is a prisoner in the body, that the body is an
obstacle
to the acquisition of knowledge, that the
philosopher is a seeker after
truth, and that the attain-
ment of true
knowledge is possible only when the soul
is liberated from the chains of
the body, which is what
death means to Plato. Thus, in the pursuit of true
knowledge, the philosopher strives in this life to ap-
proach the condition in which his soul will
be after
death. In philosophizing, he is, as it were, rehearsing
death.
Death was also an important theme among the
Stoics, Montaigne, Bruno,
Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer,
Feuerbach,
Nietzsche, and many others of lesser stature.
In any case, not until very recent times did philoso-
phers—with the notable exception of
“existentialists”—
deliberately shun the
problems arising from the fact
of mortality. This is the more surprising
since the
prominent place which the topic of death occupies in
contemporary literature (Malraux, Camus, Heming-
way, Faulkner, Beckett, Ionesco to mention but the
most oustanding
examples) seems to reflect the pro-
found
uneasiness concerning man's ultimate fate.
One of the reasons for the reluctance of most contem-
porary philosophers to deal with death is their disen-
chantment with metaphysical
speculation which
seemed to yield nothing but contradictory opinions.
Moreover, the “glamor” of science, due to its spec-
tacular advances and the visibility of
its practical ap-
plications, awakened the
ambition to make philosophy
an “exact” science in its
own right. Both of these
tendencies led to a considerable restriction of
the scope
of philosophy. “Professional” philosophers
today are
neither disposed nor expected (at least by their peers)
to
concern themselves with “ultimate questions.” But
if
the so-called analytical philosophers, who predomi-
nate in the English-speaking countries, exclude death
as a
legitimate topic of philosophy because of a narrow
view of the task of
philosophy, some of those who still
cling to a broader and more traditional
view of the
philosophical enterprise disregard death because indi-
vidual man and his death appear to them
to be of little
importance.
Typical is the remark of the German philosopher
Nicolai Hartmann that only
“self-tormenting meta-
physicians” waste their time on meditating on death
and
speculating about immortality. And most pragma-
tists are, in addition, haunted by the fear that concern
with
“otherworldly” things will interfere with the task
of
improving the conditions of existence here and now.
It may be argued,
however, that a better life includes
also a satisfactory coming to terms
with death. In any
case, for better or for worse, a great many contem-
porary philosophers have abandoned
the field almost
entirely to psychologists and sociologists.
