The Human Person as Oriented Toward their Impending Death: A Chapter on Meaning of Life and Death

Introduction
In this module we will think through some issues in a branch of philosophy called metaphysics, devoted to studying about the
human reality; the origin and the essence of things pertaining to the causes and ends of things. As the title of this module
suggests, we will think about two important questions. What is the meaning of man’s existence? What is the purpose of his life?
Is there life after death? We'll think about some influential ways philosophers have tried to define death, and consider some
understanding on the meaning of life.
 

8. 1 The Philosophy of Existentialism

Existentialism focuses on the meaning of existence for the individual. It is basically the philosophy of man. Man is the
original center, the source of initiative, who has depth, who transcends determinations, the openness and giver of meaning to the
world.
Existentialist philosophies stress the subjectivity of man. To be subjective is not necessarily to be subjectivist; rather, it
could be the only way to be objective, to talk meaningfully of a world.  Among theistic existentialists, God is not an object but
God-for-me, the God of my prayer, the Thou that I as a person can address to. Likewise, they do not deny that man to a certain
extent is an object, that he is a thing, given, conceptualize, manipulable, controllable and determinable by others. But this does
not constitute his humanity.
 

Soren Kierkegaard Friedrich Nietzche Martin Heidegger

(1813-1855) (1844-1900) (1889-1976)

-he developed a philosophy based on
the importance of the individual and
the individual choice.
-It is important for people to have a
meaningful existence. However,
meaning comes from whether or not
people sense that their lives have a
permanent significance.
Three Stages of personal development
in identifying the meaningful
existence:
1. Aesthetic (Artistic)
2. Ethical (Dutiful)
3. Religious
Aesthetic (artistic)
-Life devoted to pleasure and
enjoyment
-Concerns are temporary
-lived carefree lives
-avoiding responsibility and living for
a moment
-lives in despair
Ethical (Dutiful)
-he believed also that the individual is
especially important.
-however, that individuality was
indefinable, since any attempt at definition
would place limits on it.
-“superman” (ubermensche) individual is
capable of developing into something
better than what we think as of the
individual.
-he explained that we can’t be objective
about paving the way toward the superman.
-we need to think things that aren’t true in
order to make sense of what is actually a
chaotic reality.
-there is no objectivity, only subjectivity;
there are no facts, only interpretations.
Transvaluationhappens when you give an
old idea a new significance.
-contrasted the superman with “the herd”-
those average people who like to stick
together and think and act alike.
-it limits one’s possibilities in life.
-the herd prevents people from creating
new ways of thinking and acting
He recognized that resisting the herd means
taking risks, like rejecting the old ideas of
good and evil.
-he believed that man is primordially
directed towards the world and has the
power-to-be in the world.
-He considers man to be more than a
rational animal and hence calls it
Existence, i.e., where it stands to emerge.
-he believed that worldliness of the
world is due to man’s concern.
-he said that authenticity involves
refusing to take things for granted or
accept other people’s assessments.
-he believed that existence is everything.
Because things change.
-we need to work with these changes, not
resist them, by changing our attitude
toward our old selves as we continue to
exist in time.
-he stressed that the most important
limitation is that we won’t be here
forever, which means we have to take
responsibility for our lives now.
-he emphasized the idea that we can’t
separate knowledge from experience;
they’re both part of the same reality.
-he said that we can “know” before we
even realize it.
 -begin to introduce a sense of
permanence to your life.
-Permanence is only partial and
creates conflict that leads to despair
again
Religious (leap of faith)
-takes place between an inner sense of
temporality and a desire for
_we need to look “beyond good and evil” if Thinking about our existence is
permanence.
we want to realize our potential for living . phenomenological terms that can help
-personal commitment to religion. It people recognize the harmful ways they
involves freedom and responsibility. see the world and show them that there
are other, more positive ways of seeing
-Leap of faith is the way out of He believed that we should obey our will to it.
despair and it gives you a sense of the live through the ideas of the “superman”
permanent significance of your life. and eternal.

-placed emphasis on the importance

of personal meaning in the life of the
individual.
-He believed that subjective meaning
is the most important thing in life, and
that a “leap of faith” into a religious
commitment is the only way to avoid
despair.

 
 
8.2 Ontological death
          Ontology is a study of being, or existence. Ontologists want to know what we mean when we say something exists.
          In this lesson, existence is always being close to death as well, with death being, in Heidegger's view, not yet dead.
However, death is the end of life. Existence is always that of being a creature who dies. The current death is said and done
together when everything is done to reach it because it is only notions that can die, and the death of life, to work, will not destroy;
however, dead expressions of the dead use the word death. “Where Existence is terminated without really dying, as Existence can
simply not be wasted, we understand this phenomenon as death (demise). However, death (dying) is a way in which Existence is
assigned to his death. Thus, we must say that Existence can never be wasted, but Existence dies just as long as it can
die.” (Heidegger, 2014, p. 319).
In his view, death is the most original form of the possibility of Existence that threatens the entire universe, so the
existence understood by the notions of the way to be in charge of his own life. “Heidegger” is trying to show the truth that man
(Existence), unlike any other living creature, isterminally affected by destruction and death. (Evans, 1998, p. 212).
8.3  Martin Heidegger’s  ideas about death

Death is inevitable; however, some facilities are in Heidegger's view called “Besorgen”. That means that everyone is
concerned not only with themselves but also with the treatment of others. To advocate on behalf of someone else is one of the
essential features of people's unity; however, Sartre is beyond this and knows all human possibilities and all of the emotions
without substitutions and returns all of the feelings and existence to himself.

“Death is contingent on all other possible rules and suddenly putthem down because at the same time that they are
chosen, they become too heavy; thus, if I may die, I did not need to come into existence. There is the existence of one among the
two inexistences that is real, and everything else is meaningless. Thus, the impos-sible becomes possible and essential
nothingness. Death prolongs life, and death also extends life in the presence of death.” (Blakham,2014,p. 145)
 Heidegger believed that in human thought and the human collective, man lost the ability to think and interpret and
became unoriginal in Young's views, and man became a mere function of “human”. Here, the “human” dictatorship of
individualism takes ona type of richness and, according to Yang and Freud's interpretation of the archetypes of any age, is a
mixture of all human history. “With the addition of the” interpretation, it is the same as the drugthat “the sum of” relief provides
with a view of the human scourge without being noted among the missing. It can be stated that real people do not truly fear death
because of the collective human heritage, and over the death of his inner thinking, he considers traditions and ceremonies. Why
always be faced with the death of others and have an original impression of death only in the shade, avoiding the richness that
comes separately? “The death of others is more effective; thus, ending an Existence” objectively “is acces-sible.” (Blakham,
2014,p. 307) Heidegger, in the book Being and Time, states:

The correct understanding of death in Heidegger's view is that Existence knows that agony continues. That is,
Existence does not have totality; however, this totality comes with death, although he no longer knows its entirety. Death is
existential understanding, and understanding is Existence's way of death. There is an initial possibility of an existential aspect of
his existence; however, death ultimately eliminates the possibility of the other Existence. The possibility of Existence is not
possible. Death is henceforth not there. (Ahmadi, 2002, p. 493) From the perspective of Heidegger's death, one also faces
inexistence.

“Existence is not complete with death and does not simplydisappear; it is not even ready or fully accessible. On the
contrary, Existence is always ahead of his not-yet, as its front end. It is determined that death is in no way intended to imply
existence, but towards the end (being towards the end), this is implicated. Death is a manner of existence as soon as it takes it for
itself.” (Heidegger,2014,p. 317).

“Death is not a forfeiture, but is something that should be un-derstood as existential.” (Heidegger, 2014, p. 311)
Existence integ-rity results in death; however, this experience shifts Existence to the other world being transformed. However,
death does not totally destroy Existence but rather his physical object; it hands over the object and the material, devoid of life;
however, what life is lost?
 

Heidegger distinguishes between “not being alive” and being “without living” because not being alive has more living
thanwithout living does. Heidegger still finds something to do with life in flesh and meaning in expressing his views and
something to do with life and death, with the dead distinguishing between the survivors and the deceased. The difference from
dead matter is that the survivors “are broken and are a type of his being” but still nothing more than a “tool that is manually
employed in the world around …. death, as his loss is obvious. Most of the loss is experi-enced by survivors. However, suffering
from the loss of losing his dying who suffers is not allowed”. “Even the body of hegemony, in theory, a pathological autopsy
might object that it is still based on the idea of understanding life orientation to the left. Superiority is something else-only” a
preview “of a material inanimate object in which we face he who lost his life.” (Heidegger, 2014, PP. 308-309).
 
Being-towards-death and care
          Heidegger defines care as “ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in (the world) as Being-alongside entities which we encounter
(within-the world).”  Care, in other words, has the following characteristics of Dasein’s being: existence, in the ‘ahead-of-itself’;
facility, in the ‘Being-already-in’; and falling, in the ‘Being-alongside’.  Being-towards-death must be understood in these terms.
Everyday Being-towards-death-Inauthenticity
          Death is known as mishap that frequently occurs.  The self of the public, the impersonal ‘they’ talks of death as a ‘case of
death,’ an event happens constantly. The ‘they’ hides death by saying, “People die…one of these days one will die too, in the
end; but right now it has nothing to do with us.” The ‘they’ realizes that death is something indefinite that must arrive ultimately,
but for the moment, the ‘they’ says, it has nothing to do with us.”
The inauthentic mode of man of being-towards-death. He loses himself in the ‘they’ and forgets his distinctive
potentiality for being.  The ‘they’ has a very nice way of hiding the true nature of man’s being-towards-the-end. When a person is
dying, the ‘they’ talks to him into the belief that he will not die, that he will recover his normal state of tranquilized everydayness.
By tranquilizing death, the neighbors console the dying person and of course themselves.
According to the ‘they’, the attitude to the fact that one dies is that of indifferent tranquility.  For Heidegger, this
indifferent tranquility of course-means the alienation of man from his ownmost non-relational potentiality for being-towards-
death.

Authentic Being-towards-death-Authenticity
          The authentic reaction of man in his being-towards-death is not of evasion, of covering up death’s true implications, nor of
giving new explanations for it.
          The authentic being-towards-death, man realizes that death is his ownmost possibility, and thus the awareness comes from
him of his potentiality for being, for fulfilling himself, his own being.  He must therefore wrench himself away fram the
impersonal ‘they’ and make himself an individual, alone.
          The authentic man does not outstrip death.  His anticipation does not evade death; rather it accepts this possibility.  In
accepting death as the possibility, man frees himself.  Anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it
face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily unsupported by concenrful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an
impassioned freedom towards death- a freedom which has been released from the illusions of the ‘they’; and which is
factical, certain of itself, and anxious.
8.3 Friedrich Nietzche’s View
          He projected the forthcoming nihilism, the seeds of which had already been inseminated.  The greatest realism for him was
neither the military power of Germany nor the developmental process and advances of science but rather the irrefutable fact that
belief in the Christian Good had forcefully rejected the point where he could say that “God is dead.”
His ambivalent response to the nihilistic phenomenon of the death of God turned Nietzche’s mind to the essential
question of human values.  In his exploration for a new cornerstone for values when God is no longer be the end and sanction of
human conduct. He turned to the aesthetic phenomenon, saying, world eternally justified.  HE believed that it was the Greek
genius, who had originally divulged the true meaning and modality of human enterprise.  He absorbed his profound insights
about man from the Greek innovation of Apollo and Dionysius.
Evaluation of all Morals
          He argued that there were two fundamental types of morality: "master morality" and "slave morality".
Master morality values pride and power, while slave morality values kindness, empathy, and sympathy.
 
          He believed that morality was clearly dying.  His irrefutable instructions are not clear has his critical analysis.  He rejected
the slave morality.  If the morality of slaves is originated in the bitterness and retaliation, there must be a reappraisal of all values.
 
          He said that reappraisal implies that all the “stronger motives are still extant, but that now they appear under false names
and false valuations, and have not yet become conscious of them.”It is not necessary to pursue and creative new values but only
to reverse values once again.
          He showed that what modernistic man called “good” was not at all morally excellent.  This was considered as truth but was
disguised by selfishness and helplessness, and that his religion was skillful in creating psychological weapons with which moral
pygmies were cultivated and turned naturalized giants.