Durham E-Theses DEATH, FREEDOM AND NARRATIVE THINKING: EXISTENTIAL ANALYTICS YAVUZ, MESUT,MALIK How to cite: YAVUZ, MESUT,MALIK (2016) DEATH, FREEDOM AND NARRATIVE THINKING: EXISTENTIAL ANALYTICS, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11577/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 DEATH, FREEDOM AND NARRATIVE THINKING: EXISTENTIAL ANALYTICS MESUT MALIK YAVUZ Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT DURHAM UNIVERSITY “The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged.” 2016 1 DEATH, FREEDOM AND NARRATIVE THINKING: EXISTENTIAL ANALYTICS Abstract In this thesis, I focus on the relation between individuals’ awareness of their mortality and freedom from a phenomenological perspective, which is based on making sense of our temporality with the tools of narrative thinking. I argue that this perspective will shed light on the neglected question, of how the awareness of the fact that every individual will die would have a bearing upon an individual’s freedom. In the first chapter, I argue that a linear understanding of time paves the way for the grand narratives, which eclipse the meaning of death and individual freedom. In the second chapter, I argue that Heidegger’s primordial conception of time is the proper way to see death as a phenomenon. This view is based on the distinction, I offer, between conceiving death as an event and an eventuality. I argue that, whereas conceiving death as an event reveals the temporal finitude of one’s existence; conceiving death as an eventuality discloses the finitude of possibilities at one’s disposal. In the fourth chapter, after introducing Berlin’s two conceptions of freedom in the third, I apply the negative conception of freedom in analysing individuals’ freedom with respect to the event of death and the positive conception respectively to the eventuality of death. This, firstly, leads me to discussing whether an immortal life-span would be a freer one, in the light of the suggestion of the negative conception that indexes the range of one’s freedom to the absence of external constraints and, secondly, whether the anxiety caused by the presence of death as an (ever-present) eventuality constrains one’s freedom, in the light of the suggestion of the positive conception that indexes one’s freedom to the presence of mechanisms which enable individuals to exercise control over their life. In the last chapter, I conclude that anxiety caused by the eventuality of death might actually constrain one’s freedom to a larger extent. I demonstrate that narrative thinking would be helpful to alleviate the influence of anxiety into a lesser degree and it might actually transform this potential constraint on a motivating factor for one’s authenticity. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS DEATH, FREEDOM AND NARRATIVE THINKING: EXISTENTIAL ANALYTICS .................. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................... 3 DEATH, FREEDOM AND NARRATIVE THINKING: EXISTENTIAL ANALYTICS .................. 5 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ........................................................................................................ 5 CHAPTER I...................................................................................................................................... 18 I. THE MODE OF BEING AND THE MEANING OF DEATH AS AN EVENT ...................... 18 I.A. Grand Narratives and Time .............................................................................................. 20 I.B. Transience and Transcendence.......................................................................................... 25 I.C. A Historical Comparison ................................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER II .................................................................................................................................... 34 II. THE MEANING OF DEATH AS EVENTUALITY AND THE MODE OF BEING ............. 34 II.A. Human Existence and the Moment ................................................................................ 37 II.A.1. Humans and Existence .............................................................................................. 37 II.A.2. The Moment ................................................................................................................ 38 II. B. Being-Towards-Death ...................................................................................................... 43 II.B.1. Death: One’s own-most possibility .......................................................................... 45 II.B.2. Death: Certain .............................................................................................................. 49 II.B.3. Death: Temporally Indefinite .................................................................................... 51 II.B.4. Authentic Mode of Being-towards-Death ............................................................... 55 CHAPTER III ................................................................................................................................... 61 III. FREEDOM AND DEATH ........................................................................................................ 61 III.A. Freedom, Anticipatory Resoluteness and Integrative Will ........................................ 61 III.A.1. Integrative Will .......................................................................................................... 62 III.A.2. Conceptions and Conditions of Freedom .............................................................. 66 III.A.3. Constraints and Unfreedom .................................................................................... 73 III.B. Negative and Positive Freedom ..................................................................................... 75 III.B.1. Berlin’s Two Conceptions of Liberty ...................................................................... 77 III.B.2. Externality and Internality of Freedom .................................................................. 85 III.B.3. Freedom From/ Freedom Towards ........................................................................ 94 III.B.4. Freedom as Opportunity vs. Freedom as Exercise ............................................. 101 CHAPTER IV ................................................................................................................................. 107 IV. DEATH AS A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF CONSTRAINT ON ONE’S PROJECT(S)...... 107 3 IV.A. Death as an External Limit: An Analysis in the Negative Sense ............................. 109 IV.A.1. Being-In-Between: Birth and Death as External Limits ..................................... 109 IV.A.2. Elasticity of Death’s Timing .................................................................................. 114 IV.A.3. Indefinitely Long Lives and the Negative Conception of Freedom ................ 116 IV.A.4. The Awareness of Immortality and Freedom ..................................................... 121 IV.B. Death as an Internal Obstacle: An Analysis in the Positive Sense .......................... 128 IV.B.1. Freedom-towards-death ......................................................................................... 129 IV.B.2. Authenticity and Regret ......................................................................................... 135 IV.B.3. Anxiety towards Death and the Positive Conception of Freedom ................... 140 CHAPTER V .................................................................................................................................. 147 V. THINKING IN NARRATIVE TERMS: EXERCISING CONTROL OVER LIFE AND DEATH .......................................................................................................................................... 147 V.A. Existential Analytics ....................................................................................................... 147 V.A1. Human Lives as Narratives ..................................................................................... 154 V.A2. Episodic versus Diachronic Meaning ..................................................................... 159 V.A3. Coherence, Meaningfulness and Emotional/Experimental Import: A Diachronic Self-Experience ................................................................................................. 165 V.B. Death: Closure in One’s Life .......................................................................................... 172 V.B1. Death as an Eventuality and Closure as Telos ......................................................