Assenting to my death and that of the other

James G. Hart

pp. 1-42

in: James G. Hart (ed), Who one is II, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstrakt

Tolstoy helps us to see the relevance of the distinction between the first-personal and the other personal attitudes toward death. The death of Others is a rich phenomenological theme already adumbrated in ancient attitudes toward death and ghosts. Yet death may be said to be in important respects unintelligible. The "realization" of one's own death merits special attention. This reflection builds on earlier discussions in Book 1 of internal reflexive reference where we recognizably refer to ourselves as ourselves. But the "realization" of one's own death is not merely epistemic but "existential." Here we also have reason to explore why one keeps at bay the first-personal realization of death. The reasons are partly ontological ones discussed earlier in Book 1, e.g., I myself am not simply an event in the world. But there are also other reasons that are moral and "existential": One's annihilation, which appears evident in the third-person perspective, is not something we accept with equanimity – and the reasons for this are at once moral and phenomenological-ontological. A major stumbling block is conceptual: Given the non-material status of an essence, how is one to understand the annihilation of the unique individual essence of the "myself"? If such an essence is absolutely able to be annihilated, may we not entertain the eventual triumph of nothingness over being?