Abstract
What is the meaning of death to the human being as a person? The question admits of no conclusion, for we are dealing with the very mystery of man, taken from a certain aspect. Every real problem in philosophy contains all the others in the unity of mystery.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Dictionnaire Philosophique, Vol. 14, p. 63.
Voltaire uses the words “its experience” and not “experience”. This use of the pronoun shows that he is speaking of the common experience of humanity, an experience enlarged by science ; this implies a quantitative concept of experience. Thus an empirical interpretation seems unavoidable both from the philological and philosophic angle. Voltaire adds (loc. cit.), “A child brought up alone and transported to a desert island would have no more idea of death than a cat or a plant.”
Scheler, Max, “Tod und Fortleben” in Schriften aus dem Nachlass, Vol. 1, Berlin, 1933.
Huizinga, Johan, Le Déclin du moyen age, Chap. II, La vision de la Mort, Paris, 1932.
See Frazer, The Fear of the Dead. The Binjwar believe & that only evildoers survive to become harmful spirits. According to Huizinga (loc. cit.), death and the dead man are identified in the mediaeval Dances of Death.
Corinthians XV, 55–57. It was one of the factors in the tragedy of Nietzsche that he saw Christianity through the eyes of Schopenhauer.
Heidegger’s enquiries go almost immediately beyond the experience of the death of another and follow a course entirely different from my own. See Sein und Zeit, Halle, 1927.
Georges Duhamel, poet and doctor, has given an incomparable description of this sympathy in L’humaniste et l’automate, Paris, 1934.
Mauriac, François, Journal, Paris, 1935, p. 53. “In the frightening confusion of feeling which we experience at the sight of death, there is also a sense of being cheated: he whom we love is there and is no longer there.”
Mauriac, loc. cit.: “For a corpse is essentially an absence, something left behind, rejected, in fact, the remains.”
This is the “everyman” in Baudelaire’s saying: “God is the eternal confidant in this tragedy of which everyman is hero.” (Mon coeur mis à nu),
It should be remembered that this “everyman” is the exact opposite of the “one” who is always a public creature. Montaigne seems to have been the first to state the identity of anthropological and individual generality in his well-known chapter “On Repentance”: “Everyman carries in himself the whole nature of the human condition.” But the highest form of this symbolic and real identity is surely found in the Gospel of the Son of Man.
Paul Voivenel, author of a book of deep wisdom and experience, Le Médecin devant la doulour et la mort, Paris, 1934.
The act of dying, which is always unique, may also be the most personal as Rilke has shown in the unforgettable pages of Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, Leipzig, 1920.
Heidegger does not seem to grasp the importance of this distinction. His “Mitsein” is always a highly formalized concept. His philosophy does not include love, just as it includes neither faith nor hope. Jaspers with his idea of “communication” comes much closer to the possibility we are discussing. Cf. Jaspers, Karl, Philosophie, Berlin, 1932, Vol. II.
If religion, for instance, offers us concrete pictures of the torments suffered by souls or even bodies in purgatory or hell, the situation is changed and pity becomes possible.
Unamuno, Miguel de, Avant et après la révolution, Paris, 1933, p. 178.
Cf. my book Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie, Frankfurt, 1934, and my essay “La Conception de la personne,” Esprit, No. 27, 1934.
In certain thinkers the pleasurable quality of anguish has a quality of nihilism.
Hebrews, XI, 2.
Vida de Don Quijotey de Sancho, Madrid, 1905, Chap. XLIV. M. de Unamuno expresses this conviction, of which he rarely speaks, at the end of the mystical sonnet, La Sima. “Life, our true life, life, this hope that immolates itself and lives thus, in immolation, waiting.”
Sternberger, Adolf, Der verstandene Tod: Eine Untersuchung über Martin Heideggers Existentialontologie, Leipzig, 1934, pp. 83, 131, 143. This book makes a fundamental criticism of Heidegger’s nihilism which is very necessary to destroy its attraction.
Landsberg makes a fundamental distinction between espérance, the spiritual virtue, and espoir to which he ascribes a purely temporal significance. Both would normally be translated by hope in English. To avoid confusion, in spite of the fact that espérance might also mean expectation, I have translated espérance as hope and espoir as expectation. (Translator).
Paul Valéry has expressed this admirably in Variété, Paris, 1926, in The Crisis of the Spirit. “But expectation is only man’s mistrust of the precise forecasts of his own mind. It suggests that any conclusion unfavorable to his being must be an error of the mind.” This passage has provoked Unamuno’s anger, as shown in his Agonia del Christianismo, because it asserts a truth about expectation without indicating that the contrary is true of hope.
Perhaps one might apply the word “hopelessness” (désespoir) to this general state of disillusionment with regard to temporal expectations. In Pascal the term ennui has often precisely this meaning. Cf. Pensées (ed. by Brunschvicg), sect. II, 168 and 171, with commentary. In Kierkegaard it is not so much a question of hopelessness (désespoir) but of despair itself (désespérance). Kierkegaard, Soren, Traité du Désespoir, Paris, 1932.
Epistle to the Romans, V, 5. The relationship between the hope which is natural to man as person, as typified in Goethe’s Orphische Urworte, and the supernatural hope which is provided by the revelation of Christ, seems to be somewhat similar to the analogy between immortality and resurrection. In both cases hope includes certainty, but these certainties are of a different order. The hope of which I am speaking is therefore not the théologal virtue. I am describing the point in human nature whereby this virtue can and must enter, if the possibility of despair is to be finally overcome.
This category of Everyman corresponds in St. Augustine to the term nos. See, for instance, the last chapter of the Confessions: et nos alio tempore moti sumus an bene faciendum & priore autem tempore ad male faciendum movebamus. The whole of this supremely important chapter is informed by his sense of the encounter and the contrast between man and God.
The Confessions of St. Augustine, Everyman Edition, p. 56.
Conf., IV, 4. “Quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum; et quidquid aspiciebam mors erat. Et erat mihi patria supplicium et paterna domus mira infelicitas; et quidquid cum illo communicaveram, sine illo in cruciatum immanem verterat. Expetebant eum undique oculi mei, et non dabatur mihi; et oderam omnia, quia non haberunt eum, nec jam mihi dicere poterant: ‘Ecce veniet’ sicut cum viveret quando absens erat. Factus eram ipse mihi magna quaestio et interrogabam animam meam quare tristis esset, et quare conturbaret me valde ; et nihil noverat respondere mihi. Et si dicebam ‘Spera in Deum’ juste non obtemperabat: quia verior erat et melior homo quem carissimum amiserat, quam phantasma in quod spe-rare jubebatur. Solus fletus erat dulcis mihi et successerat amico meo in delictis animi mei.” The perpetual repetition of the “et” is the literary device by which St. Augustine expresses his ennui.
Conf., IV, 6. “Mirabar enim coeteros mortales vivere, quia ille quem quasi non moriturum dilexeram, mortuus erat ; et me magis, quia illi alter eram, vivere illo mortuo mirabar. Bene quidam dixit de amico suo: ‘Dimidium animae meae’. Nam ego sensi animam meam et animam illius unam fuisse animam in duobus corporibus.” On the death of the Grand Duchess Louise, Goethe said to Eckermann: “Der Tod is doch etwas so seltsames, dass man ihn, unerachtet aller Erfahrung, bei einem uns teueren Gegenstande nicht für möglich hält, und er immer als etwas unglaubliches und unerwartetes auftritt.” (Death, in fact, is so strange a thing that in spite of all experience we consider it impossible in the case of someone we love, and it always occurs like something unbelievable and unexpected.)
Conf., V, 7. “Ego mihi remanseram infelix locus, ubi nec esse possem, nec inde recedere.”
Cf. my book, Wesen und Bedeutung der platonischen Akademie, Bonn, 1923, particularly Phaedo, p. 64 et seq. We should not forget that this philosophy is a Mystery, a Greek Mystery in spiritual form.
One inevitably thinks of the spirits with whom mediums claim to communicate.
Isolation is, of course, the opposite of solitude, which may be a means to personal communion.
In the Mysteries, the Mother, Nature in the form of a goddess, seems to have been the immortal reality in which man participated through death and re-birth.
Diogenes Laertius, X, 139.
Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. I, and Cato Major, 18–66.
Lucretius, III, 898. (M. Budé’s text). “Nec videt in vera nullum fore morte alium se qui possit vivos sibi se lugere peremptum stansque jacentem.” Thus the anguish of death lies in a fictitious duplication of the individual, and the annihilation of the individual should therefore annihilate any meaning which death might have for us. Cf. also Marcus Aurelius, In se ipsum: “The man that fears death fears either an absence of sensation or sensations of a different order. But if there is no more sensation, he will not feel any pain, and if he acquires sensations of a different order, he will be a living being of a different order, and will not cease to live.”
Seneca, Epist. ad Lucilium, IV. “Nullum malum quod extremum est. Mors ad te venit? Timenda erat, si tecum esse posset: necesse est aut non perveniat aut transeat.” When Seneca was reproached for having borrowed a tenet from an alien sect, he replied with the famous remark: “Omne quod verum est, meum est.”
Loc. cit., IV. “Ex quo natus es, duceris.”
Loc. cit., XXXVI. “Desinunt ista, non pereunt.” Cf. also Marcus Aurelius, loc. cit., II, 7. To him death is the dissolution of the living organism. See also Epictetus, Encheiridion, V.
Loc. cit., XXX. “Tu autem mortem ut numquam timeas semper cogita.”
Loc. cit., LXXVII. “Fac tui juris quod alieni est.” Cf. Epictetus, loc. cit., XI. Death enters into the category of those things which should not concern us, since they are beyond our power to alter or select.
We must even change death into activity. “Non sit ipsa mors otiosa.” Seneca, De Otio, VII, 1.
This contempt for death should also extend to one’s neighbour: “If you love your son or your wife, remember that you love human beings, and if they die, you will not suffer.” Cf. Epictetus, loc. cit., III.
Loc. cit., LXXVIII. “Vita si moriendi virtus abest, servitus est.”
Loc. cit., XII. “Malum est in necessitate vivere; sed in necessitate vivere, necessitas nulla est. Quidni nulla sit? Patent undique ad libertatem viae multae, breves, faciles. Agamus deo gratias quod nemo in vita teneri potest.”
The death of Socrates is a free death, in the stoic sense, although there is no question of suicide. Plato has already shown in Phaedo, 62, that the renunciation of night has made this death one of free choice, not far removed from the philosophic suicide. For the stoic attitude towards the Christian martyrs, see P. de Labrielles La Réaction païenne, Paris, 1934, pp. 48, 78, 103. With regard to Seneca’s Socratic death, see Tacitus, Annals, XV, 62.
Loc. cit., XXIV. “Mors de te pronunciatura est.”
The Story of My Death, New York, 1933. Lauro de Bosis was a young poet who disappeared on a flight over Rome to scatter anti-fascist leaflets.
Porter una banderilla is a very frequent expression in Spain, meaning to make offensive remarks to someone.
Matador is derived from matar, to kill; it means literally the killer.
Cf. Pascal, Pensées, III, 199 (éd.) by Brunschvicg, Vol. XIII, p. 124. The Stoic, as we have seen, is the man without God, who neither can nor will despair entirely. His immobility both conceals and reveals his expectation. For the dialectical relationship between the Stoic and the bullfighter, see José Bergamin La estatua de don Tancredo, p. 17 (Cruz y Raya, May 1934). “No hay nada menos estoico que un torero en quanto tal torero, porque claro es que puede haber, y lo hay effectivamente en el torero un fundamento de estoicismo; pero es esta precisamente la intima contradiccion del torero.” (There is no one less stoic than a bullfighter, as such, because it is clear that there can be, and is, in every bullfighter, a certain basic stoicism: this is, in fact, his own inner contradiction.) To me it seems that it is the contradiction between his humanity, which is completely stoic, and the superhuman rôle which he adopts as torero. Spaniards have, since Angel Ganivet, (Idearium espagnol, 1896) become increasingly aware of this stoic element. On the relationship between Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Seneca, see Vossler, Karl, Lope de Vega und sein Zeitalter, Munich, 1932, p. 213 et seq.
Confessions, I, 6. “Istam dicam vitam mortalem, aut mortem vitalem, nescio.”
Conf., XI, 21. In all this the Platonic, but not exclusively Platonic, interpretation of being as presence is taken for granted. Augustine the Christian, is still a man and a classic philosopher.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, Duineser Elegien, VIII.
Conf., II, 5. “Noli a me abscondere faciem tuam; moriar ne moriar ut earn vidam.” Hide not thy face from me; I would die in order not to die and to see it. “Mueroporque no muero” -I die from not dying, as was later said by the Spanish mystic.
Cf. Conf., II, 5.
Conversion, both in the literal and figurative sense of the word.
Thus we shall not find the srme love of the life beyond death in the mystics of other religions. For instance, the Arab martyr and mystic, Suhwaradi of Aleppo, (died 1191) said: “Absorb poison until you finv it agreeable, love death, if you wish to be among the living.” But this council is only a transplantation of the stoic mortem semper cogita into a warmer climate of the soul. Cf. Corbin, H., “Un Traité persan inédit de Suhwaradi d’Alep,” Recherches Philosophiques, 1934.
Conf., IX, 10 “&rapida cogitatione attigimus aeternam sapientiam super omnia ma-nentem; si continuetur hoc, et subtrahantur aliae visiones longe imparis generis, et haec una rapiat et absorbeat et recondat in interiora gaudia spectatorem suum, ut talis sit sempiterna vita, quale fuit hoc momentum intelligentiae, cui suspiravimus, nonne hoc est: Intra in gaudium Domini tui?” The certainty of the mystical character of this experience can be seen in the use of the present tense, “attigimus”. “The Eternal Wisdom” in St. Augustine is always Christ as God, the Logos which is God in unity of the Trinity; in a certain sense this is the Christ of St. Augustine.
The Latin text is in the present tense, attigimus.
Conf., X, 41. “Et aliquando intromittis me in affectum multum inusitatum introrsus ad nescio quam dulcedinem, quae si perficiatur in me, nescio quid erit quod vita ista non erit. Sed recido in haec aerumnosis ponderibus, et resorbeor solitis, et teneor, et multum fleo, sed multum teneor. Tantum consuetudinis sarcina degravat ! Hic esse valeo, nec volo ; illic volo, nec valeo; miser utrobique!” The antithetical style is derived here, as always, from a certain duality of soul in St. Augustine. On this point see Balmus, Constantin, Le Style de St. Augustin dans les Confessions et la Cité de Dieu, Paris, 1934.
Conf. IX, 30 (Everyman edition), p. 198.
Hello, E., Physionomies des saints, Paris, 1927, p. 347.
“Quedome tambièn poco miedo à la muerte, à quien siempre temia mucho; ahora par-eceme facilisima cosa para quien sirve a Dios, porque en un momento se ve el aima libre desta càrcel y puesta en descanso. Que este llevar Dios el espiritu y mostrar el cosas tan ex-celentes en estos arrobiamientos pareceme conforma mucho à cuando sale una alma del cuerpo, que en un instante se ve en todo esto Bien.” Chap. 38.
Space does not allow us to follow this spiritual pilgrimage in its chronological sequence. Cf. Berreuta, Juan de, and Chevalier, Jacques, Sainte Thérèse et la vie mystique, Paris, 1934, particularly p. 189.
Master Eckhart, quoted by Dempf, Meister Eckhart, Leipzig, 1935, p. 225.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1966 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Landsberg, PL. (1966). The Experience of Death. In: Natanson, M. (eds) Essays in Phenomenology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-5403-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-5403-3_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-247-0042-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-5403-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive