To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die
Facing death can be a key to our liberation and survival.
By Simon Critchley
April 11, 2020
From the NYT philosophy series The Stone
In a sense, it basically reflects death itself. Our own death in particular. It’s out there. All too real. We can’t see it or experience it now, but we know that eventually it will encompass the structure of our own reality. And certainly with no vaccine for it. At least not for us here and now. But is there a philosophical assessment that brings us closer to situating it objectively in our lives? In each of our own particular lives which can be so very, very different?
Nope, that has just never worked for me: “I die, therefore I am free”. The fear and anxiety are instead merely construed by me to be part and parcel of the brute facticity embedded in my own essentially meaningless existence. And death just takes away for all of eternity the actual existential meaning that I have been able to sustain now for decades.
On the contrary, freedom comes into play here for me only in a sense that my life can become simply unbearable. The pain [both physical and mental] can reach the point where I will beg to die. Why? In order to be free of that for all of eternity.
What some – many? most? – of us are swimming in is a sea of death. And not just from the coronavirus. We know that we are being pulled towards death because every time we turn on the news we are confronted with all the ways in which we can die.
So, is this what constitutes a “philosophical” reflection on death? Are you able to “liberate” yourself by thinking like this? Will you acquire just the right kind of courage here to be construed by other philosophers as “wise”?
Tell us about it.