A Phenomenological Approach to Death Is a Precondition to Argue That Moral Obligations to The

LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD: A

PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO DEATH

Jacob Sebastian Cherry

Submitted to

Central European University

Department of Philosophy

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in philosophy

Supervisor: David Weberman

Budapest, Hungary

2021 CEU eTD Collection Table of Contents SYNOPSIS ...... 5

CHAPTER ONE ...... 8

Situating the "problem" ...... 8

CHAPTER TWO ...... 18

Some confusion about death...... 18

CHAPTER THREE ...... 34

Care for the dead ...... 34

CHAPTER FOUR ...... 40

The dead as fertilizer ...... 40

CHAPTER FIVE ...... 46

A failed solution ...... 46

CHAPTER SIX ...... 52

Death on the horizon: A defense of phenomenological spiritual death ...... 52

CONCLUSION...... 58

REFERENCES ...... 59

CEU eTD Collection

2 REFACE

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."1

The value of living a life in the mists of the apparent suffering and malevolence that plagues the

human condition was the fundamental issue for Albert Camus and the existentialists. Camus was

on to something when he asserted his famous opening words; there is indeed one truly serious

philosophical problem, although it is not suicide. Suicide, while of course serious, is only an action,

one of many possibilities for the human animal. Even though by the time you have arrived at the

conclusion of this thesis, many around the world will have embraced the option of suicide, it remains

only an option. Therefore, the possibility of suicide does not concern everyone. What is more

interesting is what inevitably follows suicide, namely death. Death is indistinguishably indifferent

to our many possibilities. Death is not an option; rather, it will and has happened to everyone and

everything thing. In Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda's popular play, George Washington, advises

Hamilton that "Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder."2 Perhaps there is merit in this fictitious

phrase, but what's necessary for our purposes is that death concerns us all. Philosophy too concerns

us all as it is concerned with reason, beliefs, and, most importantly, how to live. Therefore, while

the study of philosophy can and often have examined highly theoretical matters, which are

subsequently read by a select few, it must never lose its fundamental practical purpose, to better

one's ability to live and die. Such an investigation ought to be accessible and of interest to

everybody. Therefore, death is an essential object for philosophical inquiry, as it seems we must all

face our demise at one point or another. The results of such an investigation must be practical, as CEU eTD Collection living is a practical matter. In light of these guidelines to which I will align this thesis, perhaps a

1 Camus, Albert, 1913-1960 and Justin O'Brien, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books, 1955. 1 2 Miranda, Lin-Manuel, 1980-, Alex, Lacamoire and Ron. Chernow, Hamilton: An American Musical. [Los Angeles, California]: Warner/Chappell, 2016. 3 revision to Camus is necessary, namely, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and

that is death." CEU eTD Collection

4 SYNOPSIS

CHAPTER ONE: Situating the "problem"

If a phenomenological approach to death is a precondition to argue that moral obligations to the

dead are irrational, we must first understand why such a characterization is needed. In this

chapter, we will first define what it means for something to be a problem. We will analyze why

death is a problem for the human animal. To do so, we must investigate arguments for and against

situating death as a problem. While we will analyze each argument's merits, I will show that we

do have reason to understand death as a problem.

CHAPTER TWO: Some confusion about death

In this chapter, we investigate the apparent tensions that arise between various theories of death

from multiple aspects of study. We will begin with the tensions in bioethics when trying to

characterize a biological conception of death. Once we examine the three most common criteria

for death, we will then shift our discussion to a brief examination of death in Platonic philosophy.

Our investigation into the various theories of death, and apparent contradictions that persist, will

pave the way for a more comprehensive definition of death, which we will term the secession

account of death, which will serve to be our workable definition of death for the remainder of the

paper.

CHAPTER THREE: Care for the dead

CEU eTD Collection Once we have a workable definition of death, we will begin our anthropological study of death to

understand why various cultural practices towards the dead remain. We must first look to

Diogenes, who will illuminate the issue with the widespread tradition of care for the dead. While

his critique will be central to our investigation, we must investigate how extensive practicing care 5 for the dead is for the human animals’ normative history. To do so, I will rely mainly on Laqueur's

monumental volume, “The work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains,” to

understand why humanity, throughout history, has rejected Diogenes's argument and practices

care for the dead. Therefore, one can conclude that caring for the dead is a normative feature of

the human animal.

CHAPTER FOUR: The dead as fertilizer

In this chapter, I propose a contemporary argument in service to Diogenes' critique, which still

understands death as the end of temporal existence. To do so, I draw on the current literature to

formulate what I believe to be the most persuasive argument in favor of the idea that care for the

dead is irrational given a non-phenomenological approach to death.

CHAPTER FIVE: A failed solution

In this chapter, we examine a potential solution to the paradoxical nature of our apparent

normative history and the irrationality of caring for the dead. I first distinguish between two types

of death; one we might term Pauline spiritual death and one we will term phenomenological

spiritual death. While chapter six provides a basis and elucidates phenomenological spiritual

death, chapter five focuses on detailing Pauline spiritual death and subsequently examines why it

fails to solve our problem.

CHAPTER SIX: Death on the horizon

CEU eTD Collection This chapter will be dedicated to undermining the argument laid out in chapter four, The Dead as

Fertilizer Argument. I will aim to show that some cultural practices towards the dead are rational

and necessary for the human animal. To do so, I will argue that we must understand death in a

6 different way, which can provide such obligations to the dead while still staying consistent with

our central definition. To do so, I will apply a phenomenological approach utilizing the work of

Martin Heidegger. My approach will argue that the way in which the human animal experiences

the world is one of Being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world is orientated towards death. Since the

phenomenology of death exists as a backdrop for being, it is an integral part of the world.

Therefore, if death is part of being, it exists not as a negation but rather as a part of the world, and

consequently, I will argue that moral propositions can be crafted towards the dead. CEU eTD Collection

7 CHAPTER ONE

Situating the "problem"

"All men think all men are mortal but themselves." - Edward Young Night Thoughts3

1. What is a problem?

The central aim of this thesis is to argue that moral obligations (primarily that of care) that the

human animal maintains towards the dead are rational. However, if death is not an issue for the

human animal, as some have argued, it is undoubtedly not in need of any lengthy discussion, let

alone a novel "solution." Therefore, to extend this thesis beyond one page, this chapter will survey

both arguments for and against the idea that death is an issue for the human animal. I will show

that we have a better reason to believe that death is an issue for the human animal. Therefore, the

following discussion on such matters is relevant and necessary.

Before we analyze both arguments for and against the idea that death is an issue for the human

animal, we must first understand what qualifies something to be considered a "problem." I can

recall the first time I was formally introduced to the notion of a problem when I was younger seated

at a desk in grade school. The following occasion occurred in first grade, in which my peers and I

were learning how to perform simple addition and subtraction. The lessons usually procured the

form of reading from a textbook and summiting oneself to public humiliation. Such humiliation

usually occurred when one was asked to provide the solution to a problem on the blackboard in CEU eTD Collection front of 20 or so other individuals who were steadily watching, always ready to remind one of their

misguided efforts on the blackboard later in the day. While such an example might seem trivial,

3 Pettit, Henry. A Bibliography of Young's Night Thoughts. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1954. 8 perhaps first-grade arithmetic class offers us something to our definition. Whether it be simple

operations or Differential Equations, mathematics provides one of two modes or kinds of problems.

The first type draws us to our younger days in which we are given a set of information that requires

a solution. This we will term the artificial problem. Such an example might take the following

form: "June has 44 watermelons and then loses eight of them; how many watermelons does June

now possess?" The artificial component of the problem would include June firstly having an

ungodly amount of 44 watermelons in their possession, and then, of course, losing eight. Such a

scenario is usually contrived to capture students' attention. Therefore, artificial problems can be

understood as sets of finely manipulated variables intended to pose an inquiry. Artificial problems

can be designed with a solution in mind, such as the case with June, but they can also be intended

to invoke discussion without a pre-intended solution. While much can be said about artificial

problems, we must now turn to another kind of problem, natural problems.

Natural problems are perhaps more common. We experience natural problems in our average

everydayness. Thus, they are not necessarily contrived by another to continuously promote a

solution, as is the case concerning June. Natural problems range in magnitude. From forgetting

one's car keys to losing a loved one and thus being burdened with the funeral preparations and

subsequent expenses, natural problems take little to no training on our part; we do not need to seek

them out; they are naturally occurring. It must be mentioned that the two modes of problems are

not mutually exclusive. Instead, they are ways of looking at problems. While natural problems may

take the form of an inconvenience, as the two examples of losing one's keys and losing a loved one

CEU eTD Collection tend to be, they need not. It seems reasonable to understand an inconvenience as a negative attitude

towards a particular set of variables, which poses difficulty or extraneous requirements. However,

both natural and artificial problems do not need to be viewed negatively; instead, some can be met

with a sense of optimism or even positivity. Many individuals find enjoyment in artificial problems 9 such as mathematicians and engineers and those who have more optimism towards natural

problems as they tend to be accompanied by a sense of change and uniqueness in one's average

everydayness. There is much to be said about problems, which is beyond the scope of this chapter;

however, the primary reason for highlighting such a characterization of problems is that we must

understand what we mean when one characterizes death as a problem. While death can be

recognized as both an artificial problem and a natural problem, what makes death a problem for

the human animal is that it invokes a sense of emotional anxiety, accompanied by a desire for a

solution, a remedy of sorts. Such ideas will be explored in later chapters. However, what is

important to note is that death is an issue or problem for the human animal since it invokes anxiety

or concern. Concerning philosophical problems or as the Latvian- born British social and political

philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin terms "questions," Berlin states:

Philosophical questions have a certain desperateness about them, (they) are accompanied by

a degree of emotional pressure, a craving for an answer whose nature is not clear, a sense at

once of urgency and insolubility which indicates not a quest for facts...but rather that there

is a conflict...a head-on crash, a confusion and interaction of entire conceptual systems, of

whole methods of looking at the world and describing it, which leads to the so- called

"perennial" problems such as free will versus determinism, theism and atheism, materialism

and immaterialism, liberty and order, authority and equality, happiness and justice, self-

sacrifice and the pursuit of happiness.4

There are two interesting ideas to note about Berlin's definition. The first is that, according to

CEU eTD Collection Berlin, death seems to qualify as a philosophical question or problem. Broadly speaking, death,

especially the death of a loved one, naturally invokes a sense of "emotional pressure."

4 Isaiah Berlin, “Philosophy and Government Repression” in The Sense of Reality, ed. Henry Hardy, (London: Chatto & Windus, 1953/1996), 68–9. 10 Some might argue that the awareness of death, either one's own or the death of another,

does not always invoke emotional pressure, an idea we must consider. Consider the character of

Meursault, who is expertly depicted in Camus' L' Etranger or less eloquently translated as “The

Stanger,” as an indifferent French-Algerian man who is reluctant to attend his mother's funeral.

Meursault's indifference is most fittingly illustrated in the novel's opening lines, "Mother died

today. Or, Maybe, Yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER

PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter

doubtful; it could have been yesterday."5 The story goes on to depict Meursault as a man who

commits perhaps senseless murder in Algeria, in which he is thereupon sentenced to death.

Interestingly Camus intended to make the character of Meursault, the hero. Camus himself

states, "I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical:

"In our society, any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced

to death." I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game."6

Perhaps it is true that Meursault's actions following the death of his mother do not assimilate to the

widely held notions and practices of grief and loss that ensues when a family member or close

friend dies. The character of Meursault is depicted as antipathetic to attend the funeral. Still, he is

also portrayed as displaying little interest in viewing his mother's body or taking part in her funeral

service. One might argue that Meursault is just one example of an individual who holds a bleak

indifference to death; he does not “play the game,” Therefore, death would not qualify as a

problem. However, we must admit that Meursault did, in fact, have it easy. It seems reasonable to

CEU eTD Collection believe that Meursault did not maintain much of a relationship with his mother; therefore, perhaps

5 Camus, Albert, 1913-1960 and Matthew. Ward, The Stranger. New York: Vintage International, 1989. 1 6 Hakutani, Y. (2006). Cross-cultural visions in African American modernism: From spatial narrative to jazz haiku. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 11 less grief was warranted on his behalf. It seems likely to assume that the less a relationship one has

without someone while they are alive, the less care they will have when they are dead. It is also

evident that Meursault did not have to take care of his mother as she was aging, as the medical

institution provided care for her, leaving Meursault seemingly not responsible for his mother.

Therefore, it might seem that Meursault's encounter with his mother's death was one of a lone

indifference. Thus, the "emotional pressure," which I am arguing usually accompanies problems,

such as a loved one's death, was not evident.

Simply put, one might argue that death was not a problem for Meursault as he possessed a

bleak indifference to the situation. However, perhaps this is just a surface-level understanding of

Meursault. Taking a more in-depth look at Meursault's disposition, one realizes that Meursault

does face emotional pressure while dealing with his mother's death; he just manifests such pressure

idiosyncratically. Meursault feels the pressure during his mother's vigil to take part in some of the

customs. During his mother's vigil, at least while awake, it seems Meursault does feel awkwardness

or anxiety of having everyone sitting and sobbing over his mother, he, of course, does not share in

such a visual display of emotion, but this is not to say he is left unaffected by the vigil. Again,

perhaps it is true that this is not the same emotional anxiety, which is common when one

experiences another's death, but even if so, this still means that death would qualify as a

philosophical problem even for the most hardened and indifferent Meursault, in so far as the death

of his mother concerned him. It must be noted that such concern does not have to be sympathetic

or grief-filled; rather, emotional anxiety is present when one’s average everydayness is altered, as

CEU eTD Collection is the case with Meursault.

While such comparisons in literature are interesting, we must now move to understand the

relevant objections some have made to understanding death as a problem in the philosophical

literature. It seems most of the time, the death of another makes oneself put the idea of death into 12 perspective. Death invokes feelings, which are often suppressed and then manifested while

experiencing the death of another. Such attitudes, of course, as we have seen with the example of

Meursault, vary. However, it seems reasonable to assert that one of the emotions or feelings6 that

accompanies the awareness of death, whether it is one's own or the death of another, is fear. Fear

of death is common. Shakespeare’s character Claudio in “In Measure for Measure,” facing his

impending execution, laments:

’tis too horrible.

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death. (Act 3, Scene 1, lines 143–47)7

As is the case with Claudio, it is common that anxiety paired with the awareness of death manifests

such feelings of fear. Even in the epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps the oldest recorded story, Gilgamesh

places fear of death above all things. Upon learning of the death of his companion, Enkidu, He

laments: “Shall I die too? Am I not like Enkidu? Grief has entered my innermost being, I am afraid

of Death, and so I roam open country. (Gilgamesh, Tablet IX, i)”8 As a result of such fear, he

spends the rest of his days seeking out the only supposed solution to death: immortality. It seems

even the theists who claim to possess knowledge of the “afterlife” also are afraid of death. The

psalmist writes in praise of God’s salvation,

I will give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart.… For

CEU eTD Collection great is your steadfast love toward me;

6 Two words which I will take to be synonymous. 7 Shakespeare, William, and J. W. Lever. Measure for Measure. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2012. 8 Sandars, N. K. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. 13 you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. (Psalm 86:12–13)

While it is clear that fear of death is common, some argue that fear of death is irrational. If such a

fear is irrational, it is reasonable to assume that there, in reality, is not a problem, and therefore

awareness of death does not require an emotional response. The notion that the fear of death is

irrational is most notably put forward by Spinoza, who states:

A free man, that is to say, a man who lives according to the dictates of reason alone, is not

led by fear of death but directly desires the good, that is to say, desires to act, to live, and

to preserve his being in accordance with the principle of seeking his own profit. He thinks,

therefore, of nothing less than death, and his wisdom is a meditation upon life (Ethics,

Four, LXVII).9

As Murphy notes, Spinoza agrees with the Stoics and Epicureans' sentiment that the fear of death

is irrational. However, unlike the Stoics and Epicureans, who argue that one ought to desensitize

oneself to death by constantly pondering it, Spinoza argues that one should free oneself of such

thoughts of death. Freedom was central to Spinoza's philosophy as a whole.10 One might argue that

since the fear of death is irrational, such matters should not be discussed. They will argue that

death is nothing; therefore, worrying about such an empty matter is irrational. If death is nothing,

death is indeed not a problem for the human animal. Again, this is an issue for our pursuit; if the

fear of death is irrational as Spinoza argues, it seems the human animal throughout history has

been acting peculiarly antithetical to this notion as we will see in later chapters, but more

importantly, if one takes Spinoza up on his offer to “free oneself” our current thoughts and

CEU eTD Collection philosophizing on death seems useless. Whether or not one's fear of death is rational is a difficult

9 Murphy, Jeffrie G. "RATIONALITY AND THE FEAR OF DEATH." The Monist 59, no. 2 (1976): 187-203. Accessed July 15, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/27902415. 10 Ibid. 14 question. Such a question requires one to defend a definition of "rational" concerning the human

animal. While such an endeavor has its merits, my interest here is to argue for the general idea that

fearing death is a reasonable response, one which is in line with a fundamental feature of the human

animal’s normative history, namely having moral feelings.

Moral feelings can be described as responses to a situation(s), which generally invoke

strong emotional reactions on behalf of the human animal. An example of a moral feeling is

disgust. The sight of social injustice might elicit such an emotional response. Suppose for instance;

one observed an individual being called racial slurs; while such a situation might invoke many

moral feelings such as anger, it is reasonable to assume one reaction on behalf of the observer

would be disgust. Moral sentiments are a set of emotional responses the human animal uses to

express and evaluate a situation. It is important to note that moral feelings cannot be classified as

irrational; instead, they are always rational by their nature. However, how the human animal

invokes particular moral sentiments can be irrational. Take, for example, our previous example of

the disgust one feels when seeing a person being called racial slurs. Perhaps in this example, the

observer misunderstood what was said, maybe it was not really a racial slur, and they just misheard

what was said. In this case, how the observer displayed the moral feeling of disgust was irrational,

especially if such misunderstanding leads to further moral feelings or even physical actions taken

on behalf of the observer. Shifting back to our discussion of fear, it seems fear, too, is a moral

feeling. While fear manifests itself differently, it ought to be regarded in the same way; that is to

say, fear itself as a moral feeling is not irrational, rather one's exemplification of fear can be.

CEU eTD Collection Therefore, while we have not examined what death is or how it is treated, we can say that death is

a problem; it remains a problem for the human animal because it invokes what Berlin terms

"emotional pressure." The death of a loved one and the thought of one's own also invoke a sense

of moral feeling, primarily fear. As is the case with disgust, such feelings cannot be irrational; they 15 are in their very nature rational as they are a normative characteristic for the human animal. Thus,

the notion that fear of death is irrational cannot be used as an argument to undermine the notion

that death is a problem for the human animal.

Again, it is essential to note that some exemplifications of fear can very well be irrational.

Still, fear of death as an idea, an idea which seems to be integral to the human animal throughout

centuries of development, cannot be termed irrational. Fearing death is rational; likewise, death is

a problem for the human animal, and therefore, a thesis investigating such ideas is necessary. Hans

Jonas argues not that there are certain rational exemplifications of fearing death but that it is

contrary to our nature to think otherwise. He argues:

In any early world-view, death is the great riddle proposed to man. It is the glaring

contradiction to the one intelligible, self-explained, natural condition that is the general

life. To the extent that life is accepted as the primary state of things, death looms as the

disturbing mystery. Hence the problem of death is probably the first to deserve this name

in the history of thought. Its emergence as an express problem signifies the awakening of

theoretical consciousness long before a conceptual level of theory is attained. We may go

so far as to say that there, rather than in the use and making of tools, the humanity of man

reveals itself for the first time. Even apart from its powerful emotional implications, the

fact of death is disconcerting in its theoretical aspect to primitive panvitalistic thought, for

it challenges its most elementary presupposition. Early human understanding, therefore,

grapples with the riddle of death and endeavours in myth, cult and religious belief to find

CEU eTD Collection an answer to it.11

11 Jonas, Hans Organismus Und Freiheit;Ansätze Zu Einer Philosophischen Biologie Universitat Siegen 16 The notion that death exists as the foremost question for the human animal will be taken up

in the latter part of this thesis; however, what’s necessary for our purposes is that it seems if, as

Jonas argues, “That death, not life, calls for an explanation in the first place, reflects a theoretical

situation which lasted long in the history of the race.” Therefore, I concur with Jonas, in so far as

death exists as an issue for the human animal, it also exists as a normative feature of the kind of

animal the human is. Accordingly, now that we have begun to situate the problem of death, it seems

fitting to start our investigation of what death actually is.

CEU eTD Collection

17 CHAPTER TWO

Some confusion about death

BORIS: You get used to the taste of death.

ALEXI: What does it taste like?

BORIS: Like liver.

- Woody Allen Love and Death12

1. Reaping the rewards To my understanding, death does not have a taste; however, it does seem to have a face.

Articulating the notion of common imageries associated with death, Fred Feldman titles his book,

“Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death.”

Feldman writes,

In art and mythology, death is sometimes represented as a ferryman, eager to take his

passengers to the other side. It is also sometimes represented as a moth, fluttering mindlessly

into the flame of a candle. But the most compelling image of death is provided by the Reaper

– the hooded skeleton bearing the huge curved scythe. The Reaper is ugly and Menacing.

He stares directly at us, and with an outstretched bony finger he beckons us to come to him.

He is democratic. He takes all: high and low alike will be “harvested” when the time comes.

He is unforgiving. Once we are in his grasp, there is no return.13 CEU eTD Collection

12 Love and Death. United States: United Artists, 1975. 13 Feldman, Fred. Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 3 18 While Feldman's analysis of death will be useful in later chapters, our primary interest is in his

visualization of death as it concerns the mythical Reaper. The Reaper's persona, as Feldman

articulates, is multifaceted; however, one feature that is vital to note is the Reaper's attire. A dark-

hooded skeleton is not only paradoxical but most importantly, such an image is obscure. The

obscurity of the Reaper's attire and persona perhaps reveals something crucial to our purpose of

arriving at a definition of death. While some might argue that such imagery ought to be pushed

aside to make way for more serious or scientific investigation concerning the issue of death, it

seems Feldman's metaphorical investigations' points to something useful, namely the obscurity of

death, and subsequently the ambiguity of attempting to contrive a definition. The purpose of this

chapter is twofold. First, to examine the ambiguity of defining death. Once we investigate the

apparent tensions that arise between various theories of death throughout multiple aspects of study,

we will attempt to settle on a prima facia definition of death. I will then examine the weakness in

vitalist theories of life. In the end, I will propose a new definition, which I will term the secession

account of death.

2. Death in Bioethics We begin our investigation with the tensions in bioethics and the medical community when

characterizing a biological conception of death. It may seem reasonable to assume that to arrive at

a definition of death; one ought to turn towards the sciences; more precisely, one ought to consult

the medical professionals who encounter this phenomenon we term death more often in a week

than most people ever will throughout their lifetime. It may also seem reasonable to assume that

arriving at a biological definition of death is easier now than it was 100 years ago. CEU eTD Collection One might argue that just as the sciences’ have progressed, so must the medical advances that tend

to manifest from such empirical discoveries. Surely it seems, given the technological and scientific

advances at the hands of our medical professionals today, they must have a more definitive sense

19 of what death is, when it occurs, and how it affects others. However, while such ideas might seem

true, they are not. Younger writes:

Until the invention of the stethoscope and the acquisition of knowledge about

human anatomy in the early nineteenth century, physicians were unable to diagnose

death with precision. The ability to do so provided them with great credibility from

a public that had, until then, been concerned about premature burial. Significant

uncertainty and debate about the definition and determination of death did not

resurface until the latter half of the twentieth century, again owing to the state of

medical science. But this time, physicians knew too much, rather than too little,

about the pathophysiology of the dying process. In the modern intensive care unit

(ICU), they have been increasingly able to break down the dying process, teasing

apart each of its component parts and supporting some functions while providing

technological replacement for others. In the intensive care unit, death approaches

as much on the electronic screens of heart, brain, and blood pressure monitors as it

does in the failing bodies of patients.14

Most importantly, today, medical professionals have more technology and more medical research

at their hands than they ever have. Again, we are less concerned with premature burial than we are

with who gets to decide when the popularized “time of death call” gets made. Also, given the array

of technological advances in current medicine, such as cardiac pacemakers, mechanical ventilators,

and the emerging field of artificial technology such as 3D printing as it relates to prosthetics and

CEU eTD Collection medical devices, it seems we ought to have more control over death. However, as Younger notes,

“This understanding and control, while never able to defeat death, gives human beings the illusion

14 Youngner, Stuart. The Definition of Death. In Bonnie Steinbock (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics. Oxford University Press, 2009 285 20 of control over death and an uneasy sense of responsibility, however it arrives.”15 Such an illusion

does not help answer the question, "what is death?" let alone when it happens. Before such

"advances" in medicine were made, death seemed to happen all at once, negating the need to

provide a detailed description of the events that occur when one dies. For example, one of the most

common medical occurrences is a myocardial infarction or a heart attack, which is usually the

result of acute coronary syndrome, which often leads to cardiac arrest, to which loss of breathing

and subsequent loss of consciousness occur. In the early 1900s, such an event led to the

characterization of death all at once; Younger argues, “Thus, we never had to choose between vital

fluid flow, function of the organism as a whole, or consciousness and cognition as the key function

that distinguished life from death.” 16 Today if one has a heart attack and is within medical

professionals' care, there are many options. The patient can be resuscitated and be put on a

mechanical ventilator. Such measures are often taken to prevent a lack of oxygenated blood from

getting to the brain resulting in irreversible brain damage.17 Since such medical advances seem to

“stretch out the physiologic events surrounding death,”18 we have an issue; it seems we are no

closer to finding a clear definition of when death transpires. The idea is that once we know when

death occurs, perhaps, then we can have a better sense of what death is.

Younger states, “To define death, one must answer the question ‘What function(s) is (are)

so essential that its (their) irreversible loss signifies (signify) the death of the human being.’”19

The medical community seems to have three varying definitions of death.

CEU eTD Collection

15 Ibid., 286 16 Ibid., 287 17 Ibid., 287 18 Ibid., 287 19 Ibid., 286 21 1. Loss of consciousness and cognition

2. Loss of vital fluid flow – the circulation of blood and oxygen through the body.

3. Loss of functioning of the organism as a whole

Let us briefly examine each definition, beginning with the first: Loss of consciousness and

cognition. I take it that the terms consciousness and cognition refer to processes that can be

centralized in the brain. While I will not defend this point in any great length, it seems the human

animal is the type of animal that without a brain, the organ that serves as the center of the nervous

system, such a process such as consciousness and cognition cannot occur. This is not to say that

such a process cannot happen if the brain is non-functioning but only if it is without the organ. The

debate over whether an individual qualifies as a “person” if they do not possess consciousness is

one of the most contested matters in bioethics; as such, it is one I will not examine. However, most

would agree that temporary loss of consciousness, on its own, is not enough to pronounce one

dead. Some argue that the loss of consciousness over extended periods like years or even decades

might qualify someone as dead, but it seems they must be speaking metaphorically.

In the same way, one might lament that disco is dead; they would not be arguing that a

literal death has occurred; the loss of one’s consciousness over extended periods is not enough to

grant one as biologically dead. If this were the case, one would have to defend the notion that an

individual in a coma or a persistent vegetative state is not alive. Tubbs defines a coma as:

A profound state of unconsciousness from which one cannot be awakened, and in which one

does not respond normally to light or pain, does not make voluntary actions, and does not

CEU eTD Collection exhibit sleep-wake cycles. Unlike sleep, coma is not always reversible; unlike stupor, coma

is characterized by lack of suitable response to all verbal or noxious stimuli; unlike

22 persistent vegetative state (PVS), coma is characterized by no sleep-wake cycles,

spontaneous movements, eye-opening, or response to external stimuli.20

Again, the bioethical community's question is whether an individual is qualified as a “person” but

not whether they are alive. Suppose it were the case that those without consciousness were

characterized as dead. In that case, it seems efforts would not be expended to provide nutrition

with a feeding tube or maintain healthy liquid bowel movements using a foley catheter. Again, for

one to argue that loss of consciousness alone is a feature of the dead is misguided. While we might

and often do make judgments on the quality of life that an individual void of consciousness has,

biological life remains. However, our stipulation of death was the loss of consciousness and

cognition. Cognition is difficult to define sufficiently, whereas interest in consciousness is

widespread in philosophy circles,’ the subject of cognition seems to be dominated by those

working in cognitive psychology. When we speak about improving one’s cognitive health, it seems

we refer to one’s ability to enhance the aptitude of one’s memory and emotional awareness.

However, it also seems cognition refers mainly to the processes of one’s hypothalamus, a feature

of the human animal’s brain which controls smell, taste, and vision as well as one’s emotional

equilibrium. The hypothalamus also controls the autonomic nervous system, which is devoted to

involuntary internal functions. In addition, the hypothalamus signals sleep cycles and other

circadian rhythms, regulates food consumption, and monitors and adjusts body chemistry and

temperature.21

Suppose one is to argue that the total loss of cognition and consciousness invokes a death

CEU eTD Collection sentence. In that case, one might still question how much of one’s cognition can be lost given the

development of mechanical ventilators and other intensive care life-sustaining technologies. Will

20 Tubbs, James B. A Handbook of Bioethics Terms. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009. 28 21 Body, Visible. “The Human Brain.” Accessed August 1, 2020. https://www.visiblebody.com/learn/nervous/brain. 23 we ever truly understand what an individual deficient of total cognition might look like?

Presumably not. Our second definition, the loss of vital fluid flow, seems to allude to cognition, in

so far as the circulation of blood and oxygen throughout the body is made possible by the human

animal’s cardiovascular system, which is regulated by the brain stem, a crucial element of the

brain.

Perhaps our third definition, loss of functioning of the organism as a whole, will give us an

answer. The loss of functioning of the organism as a whole refers to brain death. In 1968 an ad hoc

committee at the Harvard Medical School proposed a new criterion of death as the

“total and irreversible loss of functioning of the whole brain.”22 Unlike the persistent vegetative

state, brain death is the permanent loss of function in one’s brain, mainly the brain stem. After

brain death occurs, one cannot regain consciousness or utilize their central nervous system unaided

by a mechanical ventilator. Youngner states:

Brain dead patients’ hearts continue to beat spontaneously, they breathe with the

aid of a ventilator, and, in many other ways appear to be alive. Their kidneys

produce urine, their pancreases produce insulin, their livers metabolize waste

products in the blood, etc. In the early stages of pregnancy, such ‘dead’ patients can

gestate fetuses for months until they are capable of living ex utero. Although

initially considered very unstable, better technology, persistence, and demands of

family members have kept some brain-dead patients ‘alive’ for up to ten years.23

Interestingly, organ donation can only be carried out in most countries once the patient has reached

CEU eTD Collection brain death. It seems our third definition, loss of functioning of the organism as a whole, is the

22 Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death 1968, “Report” in Journal of the American Medical Association, 209, 337-43 23 Youngner, Stuart. The Definition of Death. In Bonnie Steinbock (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics. Oxford University Press, 2009 288 24 most persuasive argument we have to determine when an organism is dead. As brain death is the

most medically agreed-upon criterion for death, it follows that the legal definition of death for

most urbanized countries follows suit. However, the question of what death is or, more precisely,

what the criterion for a living organism is to be qualified as dead is not solely scientific; such a

proposition ought to be investigated from a philosophical lens.

In the Austrian philosopher Josef Seifert's paper "Is 'Brain Death' Actually Death," Seifert

offers several philosophical, linguistic, and scientifically compelling arguments in favor of

rejecting the ad hoc Harvard committee’s notion of death as the "total and irreversible loss of

functioning of the whole brain." Seifert’s arguments against classifying patients as brain dead, as

genuinely dead, are manifold; however, he first illustrates the importance and clarity that such a

definition requires. Seifert states, “We must certainly expect that the set of medical phenomena

which are declared to be dead are clearly and carefully spelled out. This is in no way the case. And

in fact, it cannot be the case as long as it remains unclear what brain death means.”24 To understand

why Seifert believes the classification of 'brain death' does not actually constitute death, one must

first understand why such a definition came about. Seifert argues that the “new definition” has

what he terms “pragmatic motivation.” He states:

One finds in the original proposal and in the statements describing brain death as

criterion of death chiefly two – purely practical – reasons for introducing this new

definition of death: 1. The desire for a clear moral and legal ground for disconnecting

patients from artificial life-support systems; and 2. the need to have moral and legal

CEU eTD Collection justification for heart-transplants, which had become possible in 1967, as well as for

other organ-transplants.26

24 The Monist, APRIL 1993, Vol. 76, No. 2, Philosophical Aspects of Death and Dying (APRIL 1993), pp. 176 26 Ibid 25 While the subject of organ transplantation offers a plethora of philosophical considerations, what

is important to note is that such a criterion for brain death and subsequent legal classification offers

the medical community and organ transplantation committees the ability to determine when one

ought to be removed from a ventilator, declared dead, and determined “fit” to harvest organs. One

must worry about the pragmatic components that influence the medical term “brain death.”

However, many will argue that just because such a definition has questionable motivations, this is

not enough to cast aside such a meaningful definition. Therefore, Seifert offers two additional

arguments against identifying the irreversible cessation of brain function with death. He states:

1. Does not the human embryo live before he gets his brain? If so, then his identity cannot

be situated in the brain. 2. Moreover, nobody has as yet proven the impossibility in principle

of implanting into a 'live body' a new artificial or live brain which will then be used by the

same person whose brain has been destroyed. (We have seen that even now the same small

child, after hemispherectomy of the dominant hemisphere of the brain, uses the other one

for the same functions.) The injection of fetal brain tissue from aborted embryos is even now

possible—without transfer of the person—in such a way that the person who receives the

brain tissue uses it for his memory. While I condemn these operations—when they involve

abortion—from an ethical standpoint, do they not prove that a brain-dead person might

regain his consciousness if the progress of science led to the possibility of more sophisticated

brain transplants or injections of brain-cell solutions? There are also more recent and

ethically neutral experiments which show that neuron-cell- cultures can be made to grow

CEU eTD Collection outside the body. But if we must not dogmatically exclude brain-implantations as a serious

26 scientific project for the future, we cannot exclude the presence of the same person in the

brain-dead man now.25

Essentially, if Seifert's analysis is correct, we ought to cast doubt upon the classification of brain

death or, at the very least, revisit such a vital classification. If such doubt is even reasonable, we

must reassess such a matter as moral certainty of such an action is imperative. We do not want

medical professionals, whose job it is to keep one safe, to be committing involuntary or even

voluntary manslaughter when deciding to terminate a patient’s life-sustaining treatments. Again,

my point here is not to give an exhaustive account of the arguments against the popularized criteria

we have for what constitutes death; instead, it is to show that even if there is the slightest chance

that our most substantial argument for brain death could be flawed, we must be vigilant. If we are

attentive, we must understand our shortcomings and acknowledge the complexity and

obscureness the medical community offers in terms of a definition of death. Let’s move away

from medical definitions and onto philosophical considerations. We must now ask ourselves, what

is death for the philosopher? To answer such a question, perhaps it is fitting to examine one

philosopher in particular since, as the twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead

once remarked, the whole of western philosophical tradition remains “a series of footnotes to

Plato.”26

4. Death in Platonic Philosophy

“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius”27 Socrates' ironic and perhaps fearless last words on his death

bed refer to the practice of owing alms to Asclepius, who was the Greek god of healing, to CEU eTD Collection

25 Ibid 26 Whitehead, Alfred North, David Ray Griffin, and Donald W. Sherburne. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Free Press, 1978, 39 27 Plato, and G. M. A. Grube. Five Dialogues. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co, 2002, 153 27 encourage a smooth transition into the afterlife. Whether or not one is persuaded by the definitions

of death which the natural sciences and medicine have to offer, many would look to Plato’s

illustration of Socrates in the Dialogues as an individual with knowledge of death. Of course,

Socrates is unjustly charged with corrupting the minds of the youth and is thereafter condemned

to death by drinking hemlock. Like many others during his time, Socrates thought he knew

something about death, in so far as he asserted three possible, mostly conflicting, paradigms of

what death is. It must be noted that Plato scholars might argue for more or less. Some might argue

that Plato’s use of allegory and imagery in his writing does not serve to elucidate a detailed

description of death; however, for our brief examination, we will put such doubts aside.

Concerning Socrates’ Apologia, or verbal defense at his trial, he states:

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to

think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may be the

greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest

of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows

what one does not know…I shall never fear or avoid things which I do not know,

whether they may not be good rather than things that I know to be bad.28

It seems that Socrates’s notion that one should not fear the unknown conflicts with at least two of

his contingencies. Perhaps this is one example of Plato imputing his own view onto the character

of Socrates. However, I will leave such mysteries to the Plato scholars. Our point here is to briefly

analyze each contingency of death. For Socrates, death understood as a blessing is one of two

CEU eTD Collection things. 1. “…the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything…if it is complete lack of

perception, like a dreamless sleep, then death would be a great advantage” Or 2. “A change and a

28 Ibid.,34 28 relocating for the soul from here to another place.” While inherent confusion might arise due to

the point that both understandings conflict, Socrates yet again offers another contingency of death,

which we can understand as death, not as an end or a migration of the soul from one place to

another as many religious worldviews have contested, but rather death as a start, a beginning to a

cycle of reincarnation. This seems to be Socrates’ favored view rather than the dreamless sleep or

cessation of perception or the migration account. However, each account seems to offer an

incomplete definition of the afterlife. As Van Harten elucidates, it is not clear why the dreamless

states are valued so favorably. He states:

An existence that precludes all perception seems diametrically opposed to the kind

of life Socrates values, since it lacks the necessary conditions for a life that is good

and worth living. After all, central to Socrates' defense was his belief that what makes

life worth living is examining himself and others on virtue. This belief led Socrates

to reject the option to abandon his philosophical activity and 'lead a silent and quiet

life' in exile (37E3-38As). And, earlier on, Socrates described the aim of his divinely

ordained mission as precisely to awaken the city from its slumber (3oE1-3~48). On

what grounds should we now value as a good existence the state of inactivity and

unconsciousness that the city, in a defensive countermove, is aiming to bring onto

Socrates?29

Similarly concerning the obscurity of Socrates’ migration account, Van Harten adds:

Unsurprisingly, Socrates expresses great enthusiasm at this prospect: he asks whether

CEU eTD Collection there can be a greater good than to be among all those who have died and states that it

will be an 'inconceivable happiness' to examine the countless inhabitants of the

29 Van Harten, Alice. “Socrates on Life and Death (Plato, Apology 40C5–41C7).” The Cambridge Classical Journal 57 (2011): 165–183. 29 underworld. Yet while this scenario evidently involves a good and attractive existence

for Socrates, it is not clear how it would entail an equally good existence for those who

disagree with him on what a good life consists in, such as his accusers and the jurors

who just convicted him. Indeed, Socrates' remark that he would continue to examine

people there, just as he did in Athens, 'in order to find out which of them is wise, and

which of them thinks he is wise but is not' (41B5-7) suggests that, like the Athenians

he examined, not all - if any - underworld inhabitants will pass his test. Anyone, then,

for whom the first scenario would be a change for the better will find himself no better

off than in his current life. This means that also the second scenario does not entail a

universally good state and thus fails to support Socrates' conclusion that death is

something good tout court.30

Suppose death is the beginning of a progression of reincarnation, as many religious worldviews

have contested. In that case, one must account for the ability for such a move both “backward” and

“forward” on the rung of potential reincarnations to take place. Socrates or perhaps more

accurately Plato seems to assert that living the “examined life” will detach one from the cycle and

enter another place. Sapardanis explains, “Conclusively, the goal is the complete detachment from

the birthing circle, which will be achieved only by having lived the philosophical life, and will

lead to the deification of the soul, its complete removal from the body and the migration to the

“other place.”31 It seems Socrates is conflicted about the nature of his “afterlife”; however, it is

clear that he does not fret in its uncertainty. Like many today, Socrates appears to put much of his

CEU eTD Collection faith in a higher powers’ plan. He finds peace in his death sentence in so far as the gods willed it.

30 Ibid. 31 Sapardanis, K. (2017, April 12). Socrates on death. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from http://sapardanis.org/2017/04/12/socrates-on-death/ 30 Sapardanis further explains that, “The Stoics believed that every man had a spark of life within

him as part of the life-giving force of the universe. They named it pneuma, or breath. At death, the

pneuma ascended to the heavens and united with the cosmic totality.”32 The Stoic account is similar

to the Christian notion of the human person's soul or animating principle. For the Christian, the

human soul is the rational feature of the human animal which is bestowed on one at conception.

This rationality ultimately finds its origin in God’s essence, which for most Christians is identical

to his “person.” Therefore, an individual's soul can be understood as on “loan” to the human animal.

Perhaps our lives and our actions act as a sort of repayment. Aristotle explains that for Socrates the

soulless body is inept and could therefore even be thrown away.33 For the Christian, this seems not

to be the case as they would argue that even the soulless body is an extension of God’s power and

creative measures and ought to be respected. What is important to note is just in Socrates' account,

his understanding of death is convoluted and messy. Plato seems to offer little to no solutions to

what death is.

5. A New Definition of Death: The Secession Account

It is apparent that death entails something different for everyone. There does not seem to be one

singular definition to which we all abide. Some interpret death through a cultural or religious lens,

whereas others tend to take a more biological account of death. As I have shown, there is not full

agreement, even in the medical community, as to when death occurs, nor does it seem unity will

happen soon. Given the intimate nature of death, it is difficult to define precisely what death is,

however, we must attempt at a basic definition, one in which both the physician and the Pūjari or CEU eTD Collection

32 Ibid. 33 Olshewsky, Thomas M. "On the Relations of Soul to Body in Plato and Aristotle." Journal of the History of Philosophy 14, no. 4 (1976): 391-404. doi:10.1353/hph.2008.0163.

31 Hindu priest can both find mutuality. Therefore, I propose a straightforward definition of death,

one I will align the rest of the paper to, namely the secession account of death.

The secession account of death defines death as the process of permanently falling from

existence to nonexistence. Death, it seems, is a process, something that happens—a kind of

activity. I assume that existence precedes nonexistence, and therefore when an entity dies, it falls

from such a position of existence. The action of falling is relatively vague, as it seems it ought to

be. To suggest when an entity dies that it moves from existence to nonexistence would be to assume

the presence of an intelligent mover, or at least a force outside of itself which propels the entity

into nonexistence. Movement seems to entail intelligence or order of some sort. Some, especially

atheists, would, of course, find issue with such an idea; therefore, the term falling seems fitting for

our definition. To fall is to decrease, and perhaps such action is ordered, however, it need not be.

To decrease is to reduce in some capacity, and it seems falling from existence to nonexistence is a

kind of reduction. Death is also permanent, and the fallenness of existence is not able to be

resuscitated. The secession account of death entails that death is not a transitory retrogression. The

idea that death is temporary is an idea that is perhaps made popular through the widespread

tradition of sending sympathy cards to the family of one who has died. Such cards which read,

“rest in peace” normalize the idea that the dead are merely sleeping or in a deep slumber. Judeo-

Christian scripture might be to blame for such an error. Isaiah writes, “The just have perished, but

no one takes it to heart; The steadfast are swept away, while no one understands. Yet the just are

taken away from the presence of evil and enter into peace; They rest upon their couches, the

CEU eTD Collection sincere, who walk in integrity”34 The idea that Isaiah illuminates, that death is a restful sleep, is

contrary to the secession account of death, as death is a unilateral permanent fall from existence to

34 Isaiah 57:2 32 nonexistence. With the definition of the secession account of death in place, we must now examine

the anthropological foundation of care, which seems to be an enterally present feature of the human

animal’s normative history.

CEU eTD Collection

33 CHAPTER THREE

Care for the dead

I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

- Woody Allen Without feathers35

We must look into the anthropological basis of the human animal before I offer a defense of

my claim, which understands care for the dead as a normative and rational feature of the human

animal. The notion that caring for the dead is rational is assumed and defended in almost every facet

of modernity. However, we can point to various historical examples of how care for the dead

manifests throughout the human animal's normative history. Illustrations of this normative feature

are spread throughout even the earliest narratives we have on record. Perhaps the most notable

example of which elucidates the expectation of caring for the dead is found in Homer’s epic written

in the mid-8th Century BC, “The Iliad,” in which Achilles is found dragging the body of Hector,

who he had just slain over the plains of the city of Troy.36 It has been argued that Homer attempts

to illustrate the ruthless Achilles in a more honorable light in a later scene in which he is depicted

as agreeing to grant the body of Hector, who he killed, to his father, King Priam, for a proper burial,

which was, of course, necessary in the Greek tradition, as well as some modern religions, to seek

entrance to the afterlife. Another example is found in Antigone, the ancient Greek tragedy written

by Sophocles around 441 BC in which the gods punish Creon for leaving the body of Polynices

unburied on the battlefield.37 This theme was continued and expounded upon in Shakespeare's most CEU eTD Collection

famous rendition of the tragedy. Not only do we have a deeply embedded sense that it is honorable

35 Allen, Woody. Without feathers. New York: Random House. 1975. 36 Homer, Robert Fagles, and Bernard Knox. The Iliad. 1998. 37 Sophocles, and Richard Emil Braun. Antigone. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 34 to bury the dead, but much time and energy has also been dedicated to crafting resting places for

the dead. As Thomas Lacquer notes in his influential volume, “The Work of the Dead a Cultural

History of Mortal Remains,” the prominence of the dead fashions itself into our notably expensive

and intentional burial practices.38 He states, “In 1750, all the graves would have been oriented

towards the east, towards Jerusalem, to greet the resurrection. In the 1900 or 2000, they were

oriented towards walkways or topographical features – view of a valley or a river – that might still

be visible.” 39 Indeed, even the very language we, nonbelievers and theist, use, feasible

unknowingly, when alluding to the dead, appears to humanize them. One may contend that while

some may humanize the dead in general, this is just an inadvertent element procured from the West's

religious underpinnings, which places the human animal's worth, in any condition, even over the

spiritual angelic entities. One may contend that individuals living in today's scientifically minded

environment surely do not carry on such pretentious human characterizations of the dead. Albeit

this doesn't appear to be the situation, instead, an undeniably far and wide convention of regarding

the dead has set up itself in maybe the most mainstream of spots, the medical school. There is an

enormous and nuanced historical backdrop of clinical dead bodies. It is said that two Greek scholars,

both Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Ceos, were the first to use dead bodies to advance

rational investigations around the third century BC.40 Since 1832, in what is commonly called gross

anatomy laboratories, most schools have required their students to study and examine a human

corpse. Although bodies are expensive and increasingly difficult to acquire due to advancements in

CEU eTD Collection 38 The average funeral costs $7,181. That $7,181 includes a viewing and burial, embalming, hearse, transfer of remains, service fee and more. It doesn’t, however, include the cost of, say, a catered luncheon with drinks after the memorial service, which can add hundreds if not thousands of dollars to the cost. https://smartasset.com/life- insurance/how-much-does-the-average-funeral-cost 39 Laqueur, Thomas Walter. The Work of the Dead a Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 15 40 Von Staden H (1992). "The discovery of the body: human dissection and its cultural contexts in ancient Greece." The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. 65 (3): 223–41 35 re-enacted laboratory experiences, more than 19,000 clinical students in their preparation come into

contact with the dead a year.41 However, respect for the dead, both in cadaver and recently medically

pronounced form, is increasingly emphasized in medical schools. While many medical schools offer

a memorial service to honor the donors, Georgetown’s medical school, albeit a Jesuit founded

institution, leads the way. Sun states, “At Georgetown, the formal Mass has been in place for at

least 25 years but has grown so large that it is now held in a classroom auditorium instead of the

medical school’s small chapel.”42 Many donors and families of the deceased explicitly choose to

donate their bodies to Georgetown’s medical program because of their notable respect and care for

the dead. Of course, this practice is not limited to just Jesuit founded institutions. Most completely

secular programs offer such ceremonies such as those held at George Washington University

medical school to honor the deceased.43 Reverence for the dead in the medical community is not

only displayed in ceremonious form but also extends into the classroom as classes and seminars

have been designed to promote for such conduct. Therefore, it seems even in the most secular and

scientific places in the United States, places where rigorous medical training takes place; it is still

stressed that it is right and just to take care of the dead. But perhaps it is only medical cadavers or

the newly dead, who respect is owed to, inevitably, your great great great great great great

grandmother, whose name is unrecognizable must not be given the same respect, she surely doesn’t

exist anymore, right?

CEU eTD Collection

41 Sun, Lena. “Medical students learned on the bodies, and now honor the donors.” The Washington Post, May 27, 2012. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid 36

1. Let them sleep

Not only do we respect the dead in so far as we treat their newly deceased bodies with respect, but we also believe that we must let the dead sleep or rest in peace, sometimes it is even

advocated by some that we ought to bury them in one piece. While one might argue that moral

obligation ought to be fashioned to the newly dead, such as medical cadavers in so far as they

resemble ourselves, and there seems to be a biological and psychological desire to respect those

who mirror our physical makeup, it seems we have no real reason to respect the dead after

putrefaction takes place. Lacquer explains,

Depending on the climate, happenstance, and technology, a body might be around as

decaying organic matter for only a matter of weeks or months, a few years at best. It begins

to devour itself within minutes, as the enzymes that had once turned food into nutriments

start disassembling the body that no longer needs them in their old job. This is autolysis.

Bacteria freed from the gut soon afterward also start to devour the flesh; in later stages

microbes from the soil and air join in. Putrefaction. Eisenia fetida – the worms in our

compost bins – dines on the carnage in some climes; so do flies and other insects.44

If it is the case that the deceased post-putrefaction are nothing more than dust, fertilizer, and objects

of a worm’s diet, we obviously don’t form moral obligations towards such past persons. Again, this

would be misguided as still; it seems we maintain the same prima facia understanding and desire

for respect, that we have towards the newly dead, as we do the deceased post-putrefaction. While

CEU eTD Collection there has been a desire to delay putrefaction through embalming techniques throughout history,

there is an increasing interest in combating even the very possibility for decomposition through

44 Laqueur, Thomas Walter. The Work of the Dead a Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 2 37 cryopreservation, in which the newly dead are frozen with cryoprotectant. While cryonic patients

usually opt for such treatment hoping that they will be revived once technology progresses, it is

apparent that there is a value and expense that the cryopreservation community puts on preserving

the dead. Similarly, we observe this same desire to preserve, albeit with less scientific tools, while

studying ancient mummification forms.

Some might argue that all I have shown so far is that some hold the deceased in high regard.

My detractor will say that surely individuals are capable of pursuing many irrational projects in

seclusion. What would be more convincing is to examine if I can show that this phenomenon

happens at the cultural and macrolevel. Therefore, I will show that it seems we do not only hold this

belief at the individual level but also find a desire to respect and manipulate the dead at the

communal level. To elucidate this point, one need look no farther than to the small coal-mining

town in Northern Pennsylvania, which gets its name and cultural identity from the 1912 Olympic

Gold Medalist, Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, New York Giant, and actor James (Jim) Thorpe.

While originally from Oklahoma, Thorpe is to many viewed as one of the most versatile and

celebrated athletes of his generation, and to some, the greatest athletes of all time.45 While Thorpe

and his achievements gained him much popularity while he was alive, “he” was also the subject of

a brutal legal dispute over his remains, which made itself to the US Supreme Court. Thorpe's

remains were buried in a tomb that doubled as a tourist destination in Pennsylvania, where he gained

initial fame playing football for the Carlisle Indian school. His family enacted a legal battle with

the newly named town in Pennsylvania to recover and return his remains to Oklahoma, where they

52 CEU eTD Collection believed he should be able to “rest.” While the remains of Thorpe stayed in Pennsylvania as a

45 Streeter, Kurt, “The Spirit Of A Legend.” Espn.com July 28,1016 http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/17163767/heated-debate-now-lawsuit-burial-ground-jim- thorpe- remains-continues-today 52 Ibid 38 result of the legal dispute, his family and those from Oklahoma insisted that his remains do not

belong outside his “home,” and it is apparent that if given the chance, they would have opted for

his remains to be resurrected and moved.

Another example is Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, whose body was exhumed years after his

burial and cremated with his ashes randomly scattered as to not establish a worship sight for

admirers.46 As a culture, do we really believe that a pile of dust holds significance that is worthy of

visitors and respect? One might ask, what separates one pile of dirt from any other pile of dirt? This

phenomenon is, of course, not new, as medieval churches too have had a long tradition of unearthing

the dead to relocate for various reasons, including for veneration. Not only do we manipulate the

dead at the macrolevel, but some have also found it necessary to pray to and talk to the deceased.

The Roman Catholic Church not only celebrates the deceased in memory, but certain forms of

worship include relics or pieces of the dead such as their hair or skin. As I have shown, the

anthropological foundation which gives rise to the notion that it is right and just to take care of the

dead is perhaps more than merely prima facia, as caring for the dead seems to be a significate feature

of what it means to be the types of animals we are, as it has shown itself in literary, religious and

secular features of the human experience. With this anthropological foundation, we must now turn

to the argument at hand, to juxtapose the discrepancy between this foundation and build the

argument that we cannot form useful moral obligations on the deceased. To arrive at such a

conclusion, I must now systematically defend each premise. CEU eTD Collection

46 Dowling, Siobhan, “Rudolf Hess's body removed from cemetery to deter Nazi pilgrims.” The Guardian, July, 2011. 39 CHAPTER FOUR

The dead as fertilizer

"Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful

if it happens in that order." 47

- David Gerrold Alternate Gerrolds: An Assortment of Fictitious Lives

As Robin Hard notes our knowledge and record of Diogenes of Sinope is handed down from

those who knew him personally and from those who knew of him.48 Admittingly, for those in Athens

to know of Diogenes would not have been unusual. From his tattered clothing to his outlandish

living arrangements, namely a large clay jar, Diogenes’ reputation was enough to cement him into

the annals of philosophy without leaving much of a personal written trace. While Diogenes’ life

leaves much to be examined, what is more interesting for our purpose is his death. Aelian writes,

When Diogenes of Sinope was ill and close to death, he dragged himself off with some

difficulty, and threw himself down on a bridge which lay close to the gymnasium; and he

instructed the superintendent that, as soon as he could see that he was dead, he should throw

his corpse down into the Ilissos. So little concern did Diogenes have for either death or

burial.49

While it seems, Diogenes did not leave a written account of his life it is clear he broke with the

religious and Socratic moral traditions regarding death of his period. Diogenes did not leave us a

formal argument; however, it seems one is able to be fashioned relativity simply given his CEU eTD Collection

47 Gerrold, David. 2004 Alternate Gerrolds: an Assortment of Fictitious Lives. BenBella Books. 48 Diogenes, and Hard, Robin. 2012 Sayings and Anecdotes: with Other Popular Moralists. Oxford University Press. 131 49 Ibid. 40 understanding of death, and what he understood as the irrational nature of caring for the dead.

Diogenes argument against caring for the dead goes as follows:

P1. When a person dies, they permanently cease to exist

P2. The secession of existence implies nonexistence which is death

P3. The dead are nonexistence

P4. It is irrational to care about nonexistence

C. It is irrational to care about the dead.

It seems intuitive to imagine that when an entity or anything present or alive ceases to be, so too

must those qualities that it once possessed, namely existence. If this were not the case, one must

examine what ceasing to be entails, and for my argument, it will include the secession of qualities.

My detractor will likely argue that it is only less real or in a lower form of existence when an entity

dies. They might look to the corpse, as it seems every entity that dies leaves behind remanence of

its past, usually in corporeal form, and such a form cannot be characterized as nonexistent.

Therefore, when an entity dies, it does not fall from existence to nonexistence as it leaves behind

a body or ashes. This is perhaps my detractor’s most persuasive argument as most individuals have

had the experience of burying a loved one or attending an open casket funeral. When one dies, we

know that they do not just disappear at once as if in a science fiction movie. Instead, there is

something real, something that we invest substantial sums of money to morticians in hopes that

they visually reanimate, namely the body.

The main issue with this argument against my first premise is that it is unclear how long

CEU eTD Collection the body or the thing in existence lasts after death. Again, as I have alluded to, after putrefaction

takes place, which, if left undisturbed, is fairly rapid, all one is left with is ashes and dust. Again,

my detractor might claim that something still remains after putrefaction, namely, bone fragments

and ashes. But what happens after 20 years? Or 200 years? Or even 200,000 years? Is my detractor 41 still willing to assume that the remains are still in existence? What happens when the worms that

have digested, ten-times-over, the body in question, then too goes extinct? It seems for something

to exist; it must be understood temporally or at least with reference to a location. How can we still

claim that the deceased live on thought their remains; where are they after 200 years, and what

separates their remains from any other subatomic particle?

Since this seems like an unanswerable question, my detractor might utilize Hertz’s view,

that the dead have two lives: nature and culture.50 For Hertz, the dead existing as nature, entails

existence as we have previously examined, namely, the dead existing as organic matter which turns

to dust over time while still retaining its organic nature. Again, this mode of existence does not

seem to answer our question or even maintain a suitable form of existence. The more stimulating

objection to my premise is what Hertz calls the dead in culture. He asserts that the deceased exist

as social beings, which move into existence through others' memories.51 Following Hertz, my

detractor will argue that if the dead maintain existence through culture and culture is very much a

real phenomenon, both Hess and Thorpe are alive so far as they retain cultural significance.

However, I reject the possibility of Hertz's distinction. My critique of Hertz is similar to my

last critique; if we grant that the dead are alive in some culturally relevant mode, it is unclear how

long they stay in this state. Can Thorpe, post-biological death, shift from culturally alive to dead

to culturally alive again if the culture shifts their view of Thorpe over time? Imagine, for whatever

reason, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, decided to rename its town and distance itself from the icon

upon the discovery of legal allegations hidden from public view when Thorpe was alive. Perhaps

CEU eTD Collection with the recent discovery, the cultural attitude which the town maintained towards Thorpe

50 Laqueur, Thomas Walter. The Work of the Dead a Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 19 51 Ibid 42 diminished; in the following year, his name and memory were systematically erased from the

culture, and subsequently, Thorpe was no longer characterized as culturally dead. Imagine, in a

few years, however, such legal allegations were put to rest, and it was shown that Thorpe was

innocent of all charges; then the town decided to embrace his memory again; thus, a resurrection

of Thorpe as culturally dead occurred. Therefore, Thorpe's story goes as follows: Thorpe went

from culturally dead, which according to Hertz implies existence, to nonexistence, as he was not

memorialized by the culture for a period of time, back to culturally dead, as the town now valued

his memory. Such a process seems far-fetched and is entirely subjective to the relative nature of

cultural values, which is a problem. Characterizing the dead as alive and existing in the memories

of others leaves a lot to be examined; however, it seems for our purposes such a classification of

death implies a weak foundation for moral propositions concerning care for the dead, and thus it

ought to be rejected. Since my second premise, "For an individual to be deceased, is to be

nonexistent," is a reformulation of my first premise. Adding only the notion of the “individual”

referring to the human animal, it need not be defended. Therefore, we must move to my third

premise.

P4. It is irrational to care about nonexistence

To be rational is to be concerned with matters or states of affairs that are real, that exist, or have

the potentiality to exist. The deceased do not exist, nor do they have the potentiality to exist; in

fact, they are entirely without potentiality ever to exist. When we use our reasoning capacities, we

do so on states of affairs that exist, as concerning ourselves with matters that don’t exist has no

CEU eTD Collection place in our evolutionary structure. Instead, it seems it could even be a hindrance to normal

flourishing qua human animal. In the Theaetetus, Plato illustrates Thales of Miletus as being so

concerned with extra worldly matters he found himself falling into a well, while walking observing

43 the stars.52 This is, in fact, not even a fair comparison, in that Thales was philosophizing on matters

which did exist, namely astronomy. Therefore, he was, of course, acting rationally, even while

falling into a hole. However, if Thales believed himself to be a 46-headed fish or something he

was not, he would not have been acting rationally. If the dead do not exist, it is irrational to care

about them. My detractor will argue two points; the first is that if I am committed to this position

that it is irrational to care about things that do not exist, the atheist must hold that the theist is

acting irrationally in so far as he or she believes in God. While this might not be a problem for

some, as most atheists would say that the act of believing in something that doesn't exist is

irrational, I do not believe I am committed to this. Instead, I would argue that the theist is acting

rationally in so far as the possibility of God existing is a potentiality that exists, one that many

reasonable people hold. Again, the dead differ from the common theistic belief of God, in so far

as the dead do not have the ability to actualize on a state of affairs, the dead are without potential.

In contrast, God, according to Aristotle's metaphysics, is pure actuality and, for believers,

the wellspring of love and creation. The dead are far from a wellspring, so far as they do not possess

the ability to change or bring about change; instead, they are the end product of a natural process

that moves from existence to nonexistence. My detractor will also argue that the human animal is

the type of animal to care about the future state of affairs that do not presently exist to them. We

care about how we will be remembered; we care about the wellbeing of future people we have not

yet met, in so far as we believe we ought to provide them with a healthy ecological system. All

these actions seem reasonable, even though they concern matters that do not yet exist. They will

CEU eTD Collection argue that the fight to combat climate change is predicated on individuals' current concern for

52 Burnyeat, Myles, M. J. Levett, and Plato. The Theaetetus of Plato. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990. 46 44 future states of affairs like the future health of the planet and individuals that don't yet exist. It

would surely be absurd to call those fighting against climate change irrational.

I would agree that individuals performing actions and concerning themselves with future

states of affairs that do not yet exist are not irrational; in fact, caring and preparing about the future

is one sign of our human rationality. All my argument is asserting is that the deceased are never a

part of our future states of affairs. It is paradoxical then to concern ourselves, who exist, with the

dead, as they are the negation of anything real. We can know about and rationally make plans for

a future state of affairs because we understand that the entities, we concern ourselves with now,

such as the planet's health, will most likely be a part of the future. Still, the dead are nothing. They

do not possess qualities or potentialities, therefore, any speculation on future states cannot include

the dead, and to do so would be irrational.

Let the dead bury the dead

So, what ought we do, leave the dead unburied? Even if Diogenes was right that the body

cannot be affected after death, if death is nonexistence and it is irrational to care about that which

does not exist, we cannot assert that the dead have rights or that we have any moral obligation to

them. Perhaps, Diogenes was on to something when he said corpses are no more worth throwing

out than dug; instead, it seems corpses provide excellent fertilizer. It might be argued that we

should reinvent our cultural practices towards the dead to be more ecologically sustainable.

However, even fertilizer is something, the dead on the other hand are not so lucky and thus it might

seem we have no other option besides confronting our irrational desires to care for the dead and

CEU eTD Collection subsequently let the dead bury the dead.

45 CHAPTER FIVE

A failed solution

“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a

spiritual one.”

- St. Paul 1 Corinthians 15:44

We have reached a pivotal crossroad which Diogenes has personally laid, and many have

interpreted. Jones writes, “If life is the natural and comprehensible thing, death its apparent

negation is a thing unnatural and cannot be truly real.”59 If death is the end to the human animal

and its phenomenology, it must follow that the dead are no more. Further, if it is true that when an

entity dies, it falls from existence to nonexistence, one ought not to construct a moral proposition

towards that which does not exist. Perhaps this is what Jesus had in mind when he echoed the “dog

philosopher’s” sentiment. There are lines in Judeo-Christian scripture in which even the most

ardent nonbelievers and fervent believers can find mutuality, a commonality that invokes a certain

perplexity as well as shared embarrassment. It may seem to some that certain lines of scripture

ought to have been proofread with perhaps a more nuanced attention to detail. One of these lines,

which is often criticized by nonbelievers and weaponized as an attack against religion, namely the

Christian religion and also sorely misunderstood by theists, therefore, permitting a unique sort of

internal assault is a quote of Jesus which is only written in Matthew’s gospel, in which Jesus says

to one of his disciples “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”53 To many, perhaps the most

damning argument against theistic belief, or more precisely Christianity, is the existence and CEU eTD Collection

manifestation of evil. The Judeo-Christian worldview emphasizes God’s goodness and supposed

unconditional love for his creation. As it has been termed, the problem of evil is simple: how is it

53 Donald Senior, John Collins, Mary Ann Getty. “The Catholic Study Bible.” 46 that a good and righteous creator could be capable of constructing a world plagued with violence,

destruction, and seemingly unjustifiable chaos. Such evil is not only delineated towards natural

evils but also include what Marilyn McCord Adams in her fittingly titled book, “Horrendous Evils

and the Goodness of God” calls Horrendous Evils. Adams describes horrendous evils as:

Evils the participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima

facie reason to doubt whether the participant's life could (given their inclusion in it) be a

great good to him/her on the whole'… examples include the rape of a woman and axing off

of her arms, psycho-physical torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality,

betrayal of one's deepest loyalties, child abuse of the sort described by Ivan Karamazov,

child pornography, parental incest, slow death by starvation, the explosion of nuclear bombs

over populated areas.54

Interestingly all of the Horrendous Evils mentioned above result in death. Perhaps some such as

parental incest and rape lead to an even more prevenient spiritual death. When one speaks of the

spiritual, one’s thoughts do not need to be contained to the metaphysical but out to be open to the

possibility of a non-metaphysical spiritual death, namely as a manifestation of the process of

detaching one’s identity or spirit with their person. Such actions lead to what some term a death of

the soul; many individuals conflicted with clinical depression note the feeling of such detachment.

Some argue death is the most horrendous of all evils. Some concern themselves with addressing

the problem of evil; however, it seems more critical we must first address the problem of death,

namely, how does one reconcile death or the state of nonexistence with moral propositions? It

CEU eTD Collection seems moral propositions, whatever they might be, must concern that which does exist. This thesis

54 Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. 47 will not discuss what the moral propositions concerning care for the dead might look like, but

rather if such propositions can even be conceived. If spiritual death or detachment is real, perhaps

we must reimagine our conception of the person; more specifically, we must reimagine our

understanding of the phenomenological aspects of the human animal’s orientation towards death.

We must distinguish between two types of death; one we might term Pauline Spiritual Death and

one we will term Phenomenological Spiritual Death. We will elucidate Phenomenological Spiritual

Death in subsequent chapters; however, we must first detail Pauline spiritual death and show why

it fails to solve our problem. St. Paul describes spiritual death or death of the soul in his letter to

the Romans:

In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of

Christ, so that you might belong to another, to the one who was raised from the dead in order

that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, our sinful passions,

awakened by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released

from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit

and not under the obsolete letter. 55

An understanding of Pauline spiritual death is further elucidated in Paul’s letter to Timothy, in

which Paul recalls a hedonistic widow whose selfishness leads to her demise. He states, “The real

widow, who is all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night

and day. But the one who is self-indulgent is dead while she lives.”56 One interpretation of Paul is

that spiritual death is a consequence of the human animal’s natural inclination towards sin.

CEU eTD Collection Spiritual death would then be uniquely tied to the flesh as it is the flesh that dies. Thus, fitting that

the third person of the Holy Trinity would take on flesh perfectly or without sin to redeem His

55 Senior, “The Catholic Study Bible.” Romans 7:4 56 Ibid., 1 Timothy 5:9 48 creation from their own fleshy devices. Simply, Pauline spiritual death is an act of separation from

God or the Spirit. It is an internal separation as well as external, as the external spirit subsists in

each of us. Philo of Alexandria adds to this definition when he interprets God’s warning to Adam

and Eve of the death that occurs following eating from the forbidden tree of life. Philo states:

The death is of two kinds, one that of the man in general, the other that of the soul in

particular. The death of the man is the separation of the soul from the body, but the death of

the soul is the decay of virtue and the bringing in of wickedness. It is for this reason that

God says not only "die" but "die the death," indicating not the death common to us all, but

that special death properly so called, which is that of the soul becoming entombed in

passions and wickedness of all kinds. And this death is practically the antithesis of the death

which awaits us all. The latter is a separation of combatants that had been pitted against one

another, body and soul, to wit. The former, on the other hand, is the meeting of the two in

conflict. And in this conflict the worse, the body, overcomes and the better, the soul, is

overcome.57

While Pauline spiritual death naturally invokes reference to the metaphysical or the divine, this

understanding of death is not sufficient for our cause. It should also be noted that Pauline spiritual

death and death understood in the biological sense, for the theists, are necessary. Death is a

normative feature of the human animal. St. Anslem states, “That also [man] was so created as that

he was not under the necessity of dying, may hence be easily proved, since, as we said before, it is

contrary to the wisdom and justice of God that He should compel man, whom He made upright for

CEU eTD Collection everlasting happiness, to suffer death for no fault. It follows, therefore, that had man never sinned,

57 Wasserman, Emma. "The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Revisiting Paul's Anthropology in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology." Journal of Biblical Literature 126, no. 4 (2007): 793-816. Accessed December 24, 2020. doi:10.2307/27638469. 49 he never would have died.”58 For theists, Pauline spiritual death is a punishment, one which stems

from our natural malevolence. Hick’s describes this view of death as a sort of natural sentence. He

states, “Death is a punishment, and the emotions which appropriately reverberate around it are

those of guilt and sorrow, remorse and fear. Man is born in sin, deserving eternal torment, and is

saved from it only by faith in the redeeming blood of Christ, shed to avert the divine condemnation.

The atmosphere is one of doom, horror and dread.”66 While both Pauline Spiritual Death and

Phenomenological Spiritual Death are a normative feature of the human animal, only the former

is a result of sin. Sin in Greek, ἁμαρτία, means to miss the mark which invokes a sense of

temporality and physicalness as there must be a target beyond oneself to aim at. Of course, for

theists, the human animal's central target is Godliness, a standard of perfectness one aims to

actualize. The latter, phenomenological spiritual death, is anything but a failure on the human

animal's part. Phenomenological spiritual death is the human animal's aim; it is the central target

one hopes to realize. Before we elucidate an understanding of Phenomenological spiritual death

and subsequently establish a different way of understanding death, one that allows one to form

moral obligations, it must be noted that perhaps it may be true that the theists have the most

compelling argument in favor of caring for the dead. The theistic account of care for the dead goes

as follows: If the human animals’ body is uniquely associated with the soul and the soul is an

extension of God’s divinity, destruction of the body would not be tolerated even into death. Theists

who acknowledge the dead's resurrection maintain that the events leading up to one’s biological

death and the care of the body postmortem are vital to ensure everlasting life with God. Thus, care

CEU eTD Collection must be endowed to the dead. Jesus echoes this sentiment to Marta and his followers, succeeding

58 Hick, John, Death and Eternal Life. (London: Collins, 1976.) 208 66 Ibid. 50 the death of his friend Lazarus instructing, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in

me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”59

Perhaps an analogy is necessary, in the same way, it would be wrong to rip the pages of a

library book, in so far as one does not own the book; instead, it is merely on loan, so too one must

not disrespect the body as it too is on loan. Theists, in particular Christians, would argue that such

disrespect transcends the flesh as the human animal is both body and soul; the two, once conceived,

are never able to permanently separate; thus, disrespecting the dead is equivalent to disrespecting

God. However, while such an argument seems to answer our question, as to whether or not care

for the dead ought to qualify as an “ought,” many, especially those with atheistic persuasions, will

be dissatisfied with this answer; thus, it is necessary to proceed to examine and defend

phenomenological spiritual death.

CEU eTD Collection

59 Senior, “The Catholic Study Bible.” John 11:25 51 CHAPTER SIX

Death on the horizon: A defense of phenomenological spiritual

death

“By its very essence, death is in every case mine, in so far as it "is" at all.”- Martin Heidegger

Being and Time60

When children paint pictures, the horizon is one feature of a landscape most choose to paint

first: a single horizontal line offering segregation to the once unified absence. However, what if

the children are wrong? What if the horizon is not just a detail among others or a division but rather

the picture itself? It seems all pictures must have a horizon in so far as a picture is a representation

of space, which seems to invoke temporality. Perhaps it is not just the children who have it wrong

but us as well; perhaps there is something more to our own horizon, which is not just a feature to

our life but rather living itself. To understand phenomenological spiritual death, we must look to

the work of Martin Heidegger, who provides a groundwork for such an idea to prosper; however,

before we do so perhaps it is appropriate that we define each word in the term. What makes

phenomenological spiritual death phenomenological is that it is a real direct experience. When one

speaks of the phenomenon of life, it is assumed the thing in question (life) is real; it is able to be

experienced through the perceptions. Phenomenological spiritual death is not hypothetical, nor

does it exist as just an idea; it is a phenomenon because it must be sensed, it must be lived, whereas

Pauline spiritual death exists initially as an idea. Pauline spiritual death exists as an idea because CEU eTD Collection

it is a death built upon a preconceived notion, namely that death is a consequence. The entailment

60 Heidegger, Martin, John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson. Being and Time. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1962. 284 52 relationship of death and sin is one that is bestowed by a transcendent force. The idea of death

existing as a consequence of malevolence is not something one experiences; rather, it is a product

of thought. While a quick look in the mirror can usually uncover one’s own desire for malevolence,

the entailment relationship is not something experienced as it exists as a logical relationship.

Phenomenological spiritual death, on the other hand, is lived; it does not first exist as an idea.

Phenomenological spiritual death is spiritual because it is only a phenomenon that an animated

being can experience. Thus, purely physical objects cannot experience such a phenomenon.

In the same way, a pillar for Heidegger cannot undergo Being-in-the-world, a pillar cannot

experience phenomenological spiritual death not only because it lacks sense perception but also

because it lacks animation or an internal driving force, a force which propels the potentiality for

sense perception. It must be noted that phenomenological spiritual death is not concerned with the

soul or divine “spirit” as Pauline spiritual death entails; rather, it retains its title as spiritual so far as

it is capable of internally producing and sensing action. Heidegger describes Dasein as being in

which Being or existence is an issue for it. In the same way, Being for Heidegger must be animated;

it too must be alive and sensible in order to self-reflect. Lastly, as I have made clear, any revised

understanding of death must abide by the same basic definition of death, namely the thing in

question; for our purposes, a person, in order to qualify as dead, must fall from existence to

permanent nonexistence, therefore for something to undergo phenomenological spiritual death it

must fall from existence to permanent nonexistence.

In “Being and Time,” Heidegger describes death as the end of Dasein; this is not to say at

CEU eTD Collection the end of Dasein’s existence comes death, which acts as a sort of bookend, as many in the medical

community consider one’s time of birth and time of death, but rather for Heidegger death exists as

an end in a relational capacity. This is not to say that Dasein experiences death as a sort of role;

Heidegger is clear that Dasein cannot experience another's death; it cannot take on the role of 53 another. While Dasein can recognize another's death, it is unable to experience it; death is

nontransferable. This is due to Dasein’s fundamental orientation, a relation which is always Being-

towards-death and not death as a consequence of being. He states, “The full existential-ontological

conception of death may now be defined as follows: death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s

ownmost possibility - non-relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be outstripped. Death is,

as Dasein’s end, in the Being of this entity towards its end.”61 Dasein does not seek it’s death; rather,

it is death that discloses itself to Dasein. The ability of death to disclose is uniquely associated with

Dasein's Being-towards-death. Being is not just held together to death with hyphens; rather, being

is unable to be separated from death since being is non-relation to death. For Being to be in relation

to death presupposes a difference as the two must-have distinct qualities which are then unified;

however, Being-towards-death for Heidegger is Dasein. Being is death, and death is Being.

With regard to Heidegger’s phenomenology, Stefanovic states, “In contrast to any ontic

meanings, an existential-ontological understanding reveals death to be the very structure of being-

mortal, an existentiale, the mode of Being of man himself in his structure of existing as Being-

towards-death.”62 The Epicurean notion that one’s death is unable to be experienced is at odds with

the phenomenology of death Heidegger lays out; death is ever-present as Being is present;

therefore, Being-towards-death entails Being experiencing death. One feature of Being is it’s not-

yet; death is not a potentiality; rather, for Heidegger, it exists as an actuality in which Being is

oriented. Death acts as a horizon, a backdrop that allows for Being to exist. Such a backdrop allows

for Being to exist as care. CEU eTD Collection

61 Heidegger, M. Being and Time. (Translated by J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson). San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers. 1962. 303

62 Leman-Stefanovic, Ingrid. The Event of Death: a Phenomenological Enquiry. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. 54 Care for Heidegger is being-ahead-of-itself. Being as care is vital for Dasein, as Dasein is

being in which Being is an issue for it, and to recognize an issue is to exemplify care. Our being-

as-care is at all times regulated by finite temporality. Perhaps the awareness that life is temporary

remains stashed away in the unconscious until brought forth by some serious phenomenon such as

another's death. Care is made manifest through our projects, which are also placed on the horizon

of temporality, the horizon of death. Stefanovic explains, “If I am my end, then an enquiry into the

meaning of death must begin with the recognition of death as the most unsurpassable, non-

relational and the most personal of life’s potentialities…a human being is never to be seen as a

completed, defined thing or essent: so long as one is, one’s being is directed towards a future which

is-not-yet.” 63 Death existing as the, “most personal of life’s potentialities” is of course not

something many take without objection. Wittgenstein famously asserted, “Death is not an event in

life: we do not live to experience death.”64 Liveritte concurs, arguing, “My death is not an event in

my life that I can avoid or not avoid.”65 However, what both Wittgenstein and Liveritte fail to

consider is just how much our being-as-care is contingent on temporality, more specifically the

horizon of finite temporality. Our being, from the start of our existence, is thrown into a world in

which phenomenological substructures are constantly predisposed to a finite clock. To elucidate

Being-towards-death see the figure below of Heidegger’s existential temporal structure:

CEU eTD Collection

63 Ibid., 64 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. [Reprinted, with a few corrections] New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1933. 6.4311 65 Liveritte, Rudy “Some Thoughts on Death Anxiety” ETC 28 (1) (1971) 29 55 66 Heidegger’s Existential Temporal Structure

Past Being-already-in Future

Being - projected- into - Being - already- in Being - possibilities amidst

The Horizon of Death (Finite time)

Being-already in, Being-amidst, and Being-projected-into-possibilities subsist above the horizon

of death. The horizon of death is not separated from Being; rather, it is Being since Being is

oriented towards its finite horizon in the present (Being-already-in) and also in the future (Being-

projected-into-possibilities) and past (Being-already-in.) This being said, it must be understood

that in order for such temporal structure to exists, i.e., past, present, and future, the horizon of death

must be present. Death, therefore, is an authentic feature of being, as Being in all modes is

constituted of death. Death must be phenomenological or able to be experienced as it is Being, CEU eTD Collection

66 See Raia, Federica. 2018. Temporality of Becoming Care as an Activity to Support the Other Develop a Sense of Self for an original rendition of Heidegger’s Existential Temporal Structure 56 which is oriented towards it. Being is, of course, active, as ‘towardness’ is animated. Thus, Being

can be understood as spirit, in the sense in which it is perpetually active.

Heidegger’s existential temporal structure is the substructure which gives rise to

phenomenological spiritual death. One experiences phenomenological spiritual death when they

become aware of the horizon of death, which underpins their existential temporal structure. While

Being is always towards death, conscious awareness of our finite horizon is not always present. In

a similar way, Heidegger’s understanding of Dasein, as the type of being in which being is an issue

for it, subsists even when one is not consciously aware of their existence. In our average

everydayness, we sometimes take part in projects in which we forgo our self-awareness; however,

Dasein as care still remains even when one “loses oneself” in their projects. Being too remains

even when one is not consciously aware of their orientation towards death. Practically speaking,

Being-towards-death can be observed when one seeks out projects; this is especially true when

one’s activities involve others and building and sustaining social relationships. Social relationships

entail some level of consciousness towards one temporality. Our relationships are always formed

with reference to finite time.

Take, for example, one’s morning routine before work, getting dressed, eating breakfast,

and commuting to work, all activities in which one’s care or concern must subsist with awareness

to the finite horizon of time. This phenomenon for the human animal very often happens

unconsciously; we are aware of the time we take to carry out certain activities, for we know all our

projects must occur with reference to a finite amount of time. Choosing not to converse with the

CEU eTD Collection barista when one is run late is an example of Dasein being consciously aware of one's temporality,

not only with reference to the remaining hours of the current day but also to their own life. We

maintain the number of friendships and relationships we have with others; we attempt to regulate

how much time and care must be allotted to each, and therefore we regulate, mostly unconsciously, 57 the number of relationships we are capable of maintaining. The human animal’s awareness of its

temporality is an indication of its Being-towards-death. If we are aware of our temporality, so too

must we be aware of our death as the two are one and the same. However, if this is true, we must

not understand death as the end of life but the horizon which underpins our phenomenal existence.

If death is, as Wittgenstein famously asserted, “Not an event in life: we do not live to experience

death.”67 We must understand death as a secession of life or ending to one’s life; of course, this

paradigm entails one is unable to fashion moral propositions concerning that which undergoes

death, namely the dead.

CONCLUSION

Some will be uncomfortable with the thought of acquiescing to Heidegger’s existential

temporal structure. Perhaps such skepticism is granted; however, it seems we have no other option,

either we embrace the notion that death is a part of life and therefore subsequent moral propositions

are able to be made, or we cling to understanding death through the succession account in which

our only option is to reject the tradition of caring for the dead, which as we have seen seems to be

an idea contrary to the human animals’ normative anthropological history. Thus, a

phenomenological existential temporal structure is necessary for understanding the way in which

the human animal experiences death and allows for the human animal to make sense out of their

desire to exemplify care towards the dead.

CEU eTD Collection

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