PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH

Death

There is a limit to the duration of the human person, which is death. Everyone knows that death will eventually
come, for in youth death seems something far off. Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through. Death
is experienced vicariously, explicitly, vividly in depth of the other. Even one’s own death may already have
entered into one’s experience by anticipation. Death is not just the moment when life actually ends, but is also
the process of dying. We are dying every day. According to Martin Heidegger, a human person is a being
towards death. Once born, the process of death has already begun.

Death presents some strange contradictions. It is the most certain event that will occur in anyone’s biography.
No one escapes death because it is a part of the human condition.

Concept of Man and Death

 Jean Paul Sartre – According to Sartre death removes all meaning, it empties the meaning of life.
 Karl Jaspers - For Jaspers, death is a limit situation. Death is an ultimate end in human existence,
bringing us to a point where we have to face the most serious questions about the meaning and goal of
human life.
 Martin Heidegger – Death allows human life to have meaning. If human were immortal and life went on
forever, there could be no unifying pattern for it. Death is a boundary that gives a perspective within
which priorities can be set and the various events and possibilities of life are seen interrelationships as
parts of sense-giving to the whole of life.

Martin’s Heidegger’s Concept of Man & Death

A. Man

1. Being-there VS being there

 Man as a Dasein (German: Da – there; Sein – being) – Dasein is the self-constituting activity because
we observe what man does. The being of man is “being-there” (Filipino: Nandito ako sa
kinakatayuan ko; Nandiyan ka sa mundo mo). Hence, it is a phenomenological understanding of man,
of human existence.
 Man as being-in-the-world (with hyphen means that there is interconnection of one’s existence).
Being is alongside with things called concern. Man is being-with-others because man has a bundle of
possibilities. He is the power to be what he wants to become and the fundamental structure of Dasein
is CARE which is the constancy of the human spirit to realize himself; thus, man is a project unto
himself.
 On the other hand, man as a being in the world (without hyphen means there is separation) is
merely being alongside with things talks only about the physical world.

2. Three Fundamental aspects of human existence or CARE

a. Facticity/factuality or PAST – Human person is already a being in the world, alongside with entities
we encounter. “I am given a world which I have not chosen but in the same time the world is mine, and
I cannot do anything except to claim it as my own.” Man is thrown into the world without any
consultation – but he has to appropriate the world.
b. Fallenness or PRESENT- Man’s submersion in the preoccupations/distractions of the past. In
fallenness, we simply accept our facticity – our lack of transcendence. The implication of this in our
attitude is that “there is nothing we can do”.
-Man is living in a society wherein he is just involved in the everyday concern of the “they-self”.
- The “they-self” has no face. It means you have no identity of your own, you are floating on others
perspective. You are lost because you don’t know who you are.
c. Possibility or FUTURE – Human existence is a possibility or existentiality. Man reaches beyond
himself. He reaches out to the future. He transcend himself. We can make ourselves better. In the end,
man also appropriates his existence. Existence is not simply a given, it is also made or chosen.

B. Death

For Martin Heidegger, man is not only a being-in-the-world but he is also a being-towards-death. He is not a
being-at-an-end but as a being-towards-the end. Death is therefore the greatest possibility of man, a
“not-yet” which will be.

1. Inauthenticity VS Authenticity

a. Inauthenticity is the attitude of a “they-self” or “crowd mentality”. Death is just an event because
“everybody dies anyway. It is a non-acceptance of your greatest possibility. It is a tranquilized
indifference towards one’s finality. It is an impassioned freedom towards death.
b. Authenticity is a positive response or attitude. Man faces his death as his greatest possibility. It is an
anticipation of one’s possibility. Death is my one and no one else; I have and need acceptance of its
possibility. I am anxious of my own death-anxiety.

2. Four Fears of Death

 a. Fear of the process of dying: When people say that they fear death, it is not really death itself as
an end state that they fear, but rather the physical and psychological process of death. They fear that
they suffer terribly. They fear pain and agony. They fear the torment of letting for and leaving behind
everyone and everything they love.
b. Fear of punishment: Some people who say that they fear death actually harbor anxieties about one
particular possible set of events that they fear might happen after their bodily death. It is the fear of
what might happen after passing to the world of the dead. Is it heaven or hell?
c. Fear of unknown: This fear is related to our deep need to feel in control. When we know what is
going on, we have a sense of control over our fortunes. However, the unknown allows for no sure
plans or reasonable expectation.
d. Fear of Annihilation: This is the fear of death that gives many contemporary men night terrors. Man
find himself suddenly aware that they will inevitably face death, and that what they will confront may
in fact be the total cessation of conscious experience, the annihilation of the person they have been,
forever.

Insights

According to Heidegger, death is certain, indefinite and unavoidable; it is a dead end. It is the only possession
we can call our own but ‘not-yet’. Nobody can die for us. I only die for myself. We transcend the medico-scientific
fact of death, or merely the fear-of-ceasing-to-be. A.W. Frank (2002) encourage us to see that death is no
enemy; it rather restores our sense of the value of living. Illness restores the sense of proportion that is lost
when we take life for granted. To learn about value and proportion, we need to honor illness, and ultimately to
honor death.

P.S.

Philosophy is never a futile activity. It is not just your subject, it is your way of life. After this semester you may
forget the concepts that were taught during class, but please do not forget the values on how to live as human
beings. Always seek on how you can attain full knowledge and wisdom, and that is the philosophical way.

“Science gives us knowledge, but only Philosophy can give us wisdom.”

Kudos students!