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Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy

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01.08.2013 | Scientific Contribution

Death: ‘nothing’ gives insight

verfasst von: Eric J. Ettema

Erschienen in: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy | Ausgabe 3/2013

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Abstract

According to a widely accepted belief, we cannot know our own death—death means ‘nothing’ to us. At first sight, the meaning of ‘nothing’ just implies the negation or absence of ‘something’. Death then simply refers to the negation or absence of life. As a consequence, however, death has no meaning of itself. This leads to an ontological paradox in which death is both acknowledged and denied: death is … nothing. In this article, I investigate whether insight into the ontological paradox of the nothingness of death can contribute to a good end-of-life. By analysing Aquinas’, Heidegger’s and Derrida’s understanding of death as nothingness, I explore how giving meaning to death on different ontological levels connects to, and at the same time provides resistance against, the harsh reality of death. By doing so, I intend to demonstrate that insight into the nothingness of death can count as a framework for a meaningful dealing with death.

In Aquinas’ view, the human being consists of body and soul. In death, the soul departs from the body and lives on. This does not mean, however, that ‘my soul’ lives through as ‘myself’: with death, we cease to exist but the soul continuous to live in an impersonal form. It is only with the promised resurrection that the soul returns to us (Toner 2010).

Levinas criticises Heidegger on various points, one of which is that Heidegger focuses one-sidedly on the orienting ‘meaning’ that death gives to one’s own life. Levinas, on the other hand, points out that death is rather a disruptive and disquieting ‘emotion’, which makes us defenceless to the disorientation of death.

In various publications Heidegger stresses that his work is not an existentialism since his primary concern is being itself. See for example Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism (1947). This does not take away that Heidegger’s elaboration of authenticity has implications for the existential domain, especially for how we deal with the confrontation of imminent death.

It goes beyond the scope of this paper to establish the conditions on the basis of which aspects of Aquinas’, Heidegger’s and Derrida’s analyses are compatible with each other. Although their different ontological presuppositions are, in themselves, incompatible, Derrida’s analysis disrupts the different ontological perspectives, including his own. This generates the possibility to re-evaluate and, from there, to relate aspects of Aquinas’, Heidegger’s and Derrida’s insights with each other.

In my opinion, most critiques on Heidegger result from a one-dimensional understanding of his analysis of death. Conceptual differences are then interpreted as inconsistencies rather then different aspects of the phenomenon of death. If one sees, on the other hand, Heidegger’s analysis of death as multilayered, many of the alleged inconsistencies can be understood as referring to different aspects of Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of death. Such a multilayered understanding of Heidegger’s analysis reflects the phenomenological method and therefore leads to a more integrative and constructive understanding of death (Ettema, E.J., Derksen, L.D. & Van Leeuwen, E. Interpreting Heidegger’s phenomenology of death as a possibility. Forthcoming).

In The gift of death (1995), Derrida tries to solve the tension between Heidegger’s claim of authenticity and his own claim of the impossibility of mineness. Following Levinas and Patočka, he narrows this tension down to, on the one hand, an irreplaceable authentic responsibility to take up one’s own finiteness and, on the other hand, an infinite love that is needed to be able to renounce oneself and to become finite (Derrida 1995, p. 45). For Derrida, this lack of symmetry between authentic response and forgetful renouncement—or in other words, between finite singularity and infinite love—can only be solved by accepting a space for the ‘secret’. This secret does not refer to hiding something but to respecting one’s absolute singularity (Derrida 2005). Derrida lays bare that the non-relational characterisation of death in the end grounds in a relational characterisation of a mysterium tremendum.

In this picture, the ontological dynamics of giving meaning to death is not relativistic. Instead, due to Dasein’s constitution as Mitsein, all giving meaning springs from and is at the same time limited by our historical horizon.

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Titel: Death: ‘nothing’ gives insight
verfasst von: Eric J. Ettema
Publikationsdatum: 01.08.2013
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy / Ausgabe 3/2013
Print ISSN: 1386-7423
Elektronische ISSN: 1572-8633
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-012-9440-6

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