for me death is simply transfigurement.

You will cease to be human and your identity will shift to something else. The energy and matter that upheld your conscious mind, body and self identity will dissipate or spread out and be shared amongst the various other biologicals that work on decaying your body back into the flowing cyclical material-energetic soup that is mother nature.

Sure "you" as a specific identity and it's experiences and memories will evaporate, but your substance - your basis in the physical world will not go anywhere but simply be recycled into new living systems.

At most this could only ever be the creation of a new identity with no recollection or memory of past lives. Experiencing life anew as a worm, a wolf, a human. Who knows. At worst it means you will never exist again. In total oblivion.

But the oblivion one emerged from is the same as one enters on death. And as you didn't suffer before being born, I suspect you will not suffer in death. Suffering is for the living not the dead.

All in all, regardless of what view you take, I don't think death is something to be feared as much as it is inevitable and natural and what gives life meaning. A fact of life just as much as birth.

Dying as a process, now that can be feared. Dying may involve suffering - pain, disablement, disorientation, uncertainty. That is something to fear but it resides in the "state of living."

Perhaps death is just like a dreamless sleep. Perhaps one you may awake from once again. Or perhaps one you never wake from.

In either case is dreamless sleep "suffering"? I don't believe so.

Also injury, disease, and violence. — green flag

Yes!

But the oblivion one emerged from is the same as one enters on death. And as you didn't suffer before being born, I suspect you will not suffer in death. — Benj96

Indeed. For most of time we were all already dead...

I think philosophers can be too vague (as you mention) and therefore leave us cold.

Fear of life and fear of death look to be the same thing. It's like the fear of going backwards. Loss of comfort, power, freedom, status, safety, reputation. Fear of loss.

Learning how to die seems to be like becoming so ripe that one is willing to drop from the tree. One way to see this ripeness is as the realization that one is not really trapped in a particular dying primate. There are other close-enough copies of the softwhere in other dying primates who have the joy and terror of making still more.

Learning how to die seems to be like becoming so ripe that one is willing to drop from the tree — green flag

Great line.

Great line. — Tom Storm

:up:

Thanks!

Identifying with flame that leaps from melting candle to melting candle is a comfort, but what about the heat death ? What about nuclear war ? Why I am not afraid that the species will be erased ? It must, yes ? Is my programming not up to it ? Can I not 'truly' believe it in my depths ? Is it too big ? Too far away ?

So I would agree that "not fearing death" is not to ignore it, or think of it always, or to focus on "living", but to have the courage to define ourselves in committing to form and structure and institutions and the judgment of others; to speak despite the inadequacies of our expressions and still be held to our words as if all that we are was in them, with everything else dying each time. — Antony Nickles

So, something like Heidegger's "resoluteness"?

Learning how to die seems to be like becoming so ripe that one is willing to drop from the tree. — green flag

I won't be willing to die until I've already dropped from the tree and become so dried up and shriveled that I am way beyond over-ripe.

Why I am not afraid that the species will be erased ? It must, yes ? Is my programming not up to it ? Can I not 'truly' believe it in my depths ? Is it too big ? Too far away ? — green flag

Too irrelevant would be my pick.

Too irrelevant would be my pick. — Janus

:smirk:

I won't be willing to die until I've already dropped from the tree and become so dried up and shriveled that I am way beyond over-ripe. — Janus

What if you knew your mental faculties were declining ? If it didn't make one a burden, maybe it'd be OK, but part of the charm of life for me is the hope of always jumping a little higher. This is irrational in the sense that we don't actually leave a Real dent, but that might be something we have trouble believing in our depths.

What if you knew your mental faculties were declining ? If it didn't make one a burden, maybe it'd be OK, but part of the charm of life for me is the hope of always jumping a little higher. This is irrational in the sense that we don't actually leave a Real dent, but that might be something we have trouble believing in our depths. — green flag

For me the challenge would be to find joy in decline; it's a different kind of experience after all. I don't set so much store in mental faculties. I'm not interested in "jumping a little higher" just for the sake of it, although I am interested in being a little higher, and I've found that much of philosophy doesn't help me with that.

I'm getting to the point now where I have little interest in complex intellectual productions, or arcane subjects, and find more joy in simple expressions of being. I find much of philosophy, however impressively intellectually acrobatic it might be, tedious and uninspiring. If it lacks poetry, then I lack interest. I'm also unconcerned with leaving a mark in the world.

I'm more interested now in those philosophers whose focus is on living wisely. As I seem to remember from Wittgenstein: "It's more important to be good than to be clever".

Thank you for the sincere and detailed answer. Did you ever see one of Rorty's last essays expressing that kind of point, an appreciation for poetry as opposed to tedious fussy webs ? What you describe sounds perfectly reasonable.

Thanks, I'd be interested to read that Rorty essay. I've never really explored Rorty, I have had a copy of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature on my shelves for perhaps 20 years and have never read past the first few pages. Perhaps I should give it another go. :smile:

I found that essay very moving.

I found that essay very moving. — Tom Storm

:up:
I'm glad you reminded me of it.



PMN is beautifully written. CIS is maybe even better, because more existential and less technical. The essays tend to be great too. I just happened on Rorty about 9 years ago at the public library and found him terribly readable. So I've read most of his work and a sociological biography. Here's a snippet and a link to one of the last essays:

I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts – just as I would have if I had made more close friends. — Rorty

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/68949/the-fire-of-life

I find much of philosophy, however impressively intellectually acrobatic it might be, tedious and uninspiring. If it lacks poetry, then I lack interest — Janus

I find Emerson inspiring, though it can be hard to make out how he is doing analytical philosophy (following Kant and Descartes and Socrates). Nietzsche is as arcane unfortunately. The later Heidegger (Poetry Language Thought in particular) is a kind of poetry. I would try an essay of J.L. Austin’s too. Although pedestrian, it is refreshing to see him actually get somewhere with issues that tie others in knots, though again it can be hard to take him as dealing with the same issues as the tradition.

I would try an essay of J.L. Austin’s too. Although pedestrian, it is refreshing to see him actually get somewhere with issues that tie others in knots, though again it can be hard to take him as dealing with the same issues as the tradition. — Antony Nickles

I have read Austin years ago. He seems to convince himself that he has it all commonsensically figured out and that it is misuse of language and only misuse of language that causes philosophers to tie themselves up with metaphysical knots that can never be unravelled, but rather, like the Gordian knot of legend, can only be cut by the sword, in this case the sword of linguistic analysis. I find that attitude unconvincing because I see it as over-simplistic.

I have read Austin years ago. He seems to convince himself that he has it all commonsensically figured out and that it is misuse of language and only misuse of language that causes philosophers to tie themselves up with metaphysical knots that can never be unravelled, but rather, like the Gordian knot of legend, can only be cut by the sword, in this case the sword of linguistic analysis. I find that attitude unconvincing because I see it as over-simplistic. — Janus

I can understand seeing it that way. Wittgenstein is better at keeping open the question of why skepticism continues to appear. And, yes, Austin can seem like he is just cataloguing how language works. What he is doing though is looking at: what we say when we.... (know, think, etc.) because the way we talk about those activities shows us what matters to us about the activities. The criteria for having apologized are what count towards being forgiven. So the workings of how we discuss the activity show us what we are interested in about it. The language shows us the world.

I find that attitude unconvincing because I see it as over-simplistic. — Janus

We agree on this point. I like the question of meaning and the question of being for bring our ignorance to light, for making darkness visible. Openings, beginnings. Not closings, endings.

Did you ever wrestle with Limited Inc ? Fun strange book.

Did you ever wrestle with Limited Inc ? — plaque flag

I never did get into that one. I hate to say I read a book about a book, but Stanley Cavell was a student of Austin's, and, in his second chapter of "A Pitch of Philosophy", he discusses the book and how it appears to him that Derrida was responding to a mistake he read into Austin's work, and then later that Derrida had turned presence (or the voice) into something more metaphysical than logos. I have a hard enough time with Hegel, so I skipped it.

--So I'm not allowed to joke about bombs at this airport?
They arrest him.

NEXT DAY

--So I'm not allowed to joke about joking about bombs at this airport?
They arrest him.


[inspired by a point made in the book]

I can understand seeing it that way. Wittgenstein is better at keeping open the question of why skepticism continues to appear. And, yes, Austin can seem like he is just cataloguing how language works. What he is doing though is looking at: what we say when we.... (know, think, etc.) because the way we talk about those activities shows us what matters to us about the activities. The criteria for having apologized are what count towards being forgiven. So the workings of how we discuss the activity show us what we are interested in about it. The language shows us the world. — Antony Nickles

I agree that language shows us the world; since the world is a linguistically generated collective representation in my view. This is not to say that whatever gives rise to the phenomenal world is linguistically generated, nor that our perceptions of things are (entirely) linguistically generated.

Naming things, positing them as entities, brings the world into being for us. We never actually perceive the world, we just perceive those things which enter our visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, etc., fields. Nor do we ever actually perceive whole things.

:up: I agree.

For me the challenge would be to find joy in decline ... — Janus

:death: :flower:

Do the flowers I find in decline come before or after the death? Or both maybe, although I won't be there to find the latter.

Flowers wilt, life declines. A day in the sun is the joy, no? Memento mori et memento vivere. :fire:

Flowers wilt, life declines. A day in the sun is the joy, no? Memento mori et memento vivere. :fire: — 180 Proof

:up: A whole day under the sun includes the brightest and the darkest hours.

Thank you.