We speak of the “continuous succession” of different functions, although we know that on the level of spiritual duration self-realization takes place in one single act, that is, in a total awareness and presence of being. Thus, although in death there is but one single act in the completely personal exercise of being, we can grasp the completeness of this single act only by describing it as a concentration of several spiritual acts, as if in death the spirit achieved its self-realization in separate acts, succeeding one another in time. This inexactitude of our language must be constantly borne in mind when we speak of the process of death; otherwise we make unnecessary difficulties for ourselves where, in fact, none exists.
3. DEATH AS A FUNDAMENTAL MODALITY OF LIVING, CONCRETE EXISTENCE
After this preliminary discussion of the concept “moment of death” we ask the crucial question: How can we make any statement at all about this moment? At the very beginning of this methodological introduction we referred to a difficulty that is inherent in the subject: philosophical reflexions on death seem to have no point since we have no direct experience of death. Modern philosophy has gone far towards answering this question. Martin Heidegger, in his book Being and Time, expressed himself very clearly on this point.7 According to him, death is a fundamental modality of living, concrete existence. Our existence carries death within itself, and not only—or, at least, not primarily—because we can in reality die at any moment. Any given existence may be defined as a dedication to, an immersion in death, not only because it is on its way to meet death, but more truly essentially because it constantly realizes in itself the “situation” of death. This presence of death is so fundamental to existence that not one of its stirrings can be understood otherwise than in the light of a constitutive ordering towards death. In every act of existence death is present from the beginning. Its own end belongs of right to every existent being as an outstanding debt, a perfectio debita. The expression indicates some thing that is proper to a being, but which it does not yet possess. For example, an unripe fruit develops towards ripeness; it, and no other, brings itself to ripeness, and this characterizes its existence as a fruit. This “not yet” is comprised in its own existence, and attains expression in “ripeness”. True, the presence of death in human existence cannot be grasped from this example without some qualification. It is much more intensive, more truly essential, more pervasive. Heidegger himself supplements the comparison in important respects.8
These analyses of Heidegger’s seem to hark back to Augustinian thought. In his portrayal of man Augustine certainly makes of “dedication to death” an intrinsic determining factor of human existence. Man is, in fact, dying as long as he exists. “As doctors, when they examine the state of a patient and recognize that death is at hand, pronounce: ‘He is dying, he will not recover’, so we must say from the moment a man is born: ‘He will not recover’”9 Perhaps this remark again could be understood in the sense of a continual “threat” to existence by death, but Augustine’s real thought—and in it he expresses too the essence of Heidegger’s thought—may be seen in a complementary remark: “If each one of us begins to die—that is, to be in death—from the moment when death—that is, the ebb of life—began to work in him, then we must say we are in death from the moment we began to be in this body.”10
This is an important point to make. Death has been introduced into the structure of living, concrete existence, and a path leading to a philosophy of death has in principle been opened up. For, when the figure of death makes its appearance in living existence, the philosopher is able to lay hold of death itself at the place where the various pointers to death with which existence furnishes him, intersect. To use another image: the philosopher’s task is to discern the presence of death in an existence while it is still alive, and put together the picture of death from the mosaic fragments of so many scattered experiences of death. But how are we to obtain these pointers to death? How can death be discerned in our existence?
4. THE WORKINGS OF THE DEATH-PROCESS REVEALED BY THE TRANSCENDENTAL METHOD
If death really is a fundamental modality of living, concrete existence, then, in any given existence, it must always and everywhere be present; but what is always and everywhere present is not perceived. We take as little notice of it as we do of the beating of our heart, or of the air we breathe. It is like an atmosphere enveloping the landscape of our existence, and we have become so accustomed to it that our eyes no longer see it. What is closest to us is often farthest away. That is why we are never consciously and explicitly aware of death as a basic cause of the movements that occur in our mental activity. Death is the unreflexive, uncoordinated factor in our existence, one of those primitive metaphysical data that precede immediate experience. Human existence is lived out on different levels. It builds up from within, from an inner nucleus which ever eludes our grasp. It is, however, possible for philosophy to isolate and lay bare this thing in us which is constantly rising to the surface but is never actually grasped. This can be done by the transcendental method, that is to say, by an investigation of the acts of consciousness in order to find out just what implications they convey.11 In other words, the transcendental method is the way that discloses how, in our acts, there is always being effected at the same time an accompanying process of penetration into the sphere of what gives birth to them, something welling up out of the depths of our human being.
Some historical examples will show us how this method has been used. Plato directed his efforts to revealing the absolute contained in every experience. He had recognized intuitively that there is in us a primitive knowledge which is not obtained from experience, but precedes and conditions experience. He called these primitive data “ideas”. Therefore, in working out his theory of ideas, Plato was actually using a philosophy based on the transcendental method. St Augustine dealt with the same basic problem. In every act of concrete existence he decried something transcendent that constantly eludes the grasp of our thought. He called this “the realm of eternal truths”, and held that man unconsciously gains possession of it in every act of knowing, and that its presence, though realized only in an unconscious manner, floods the spirit with “light”. His theory of “eternal truths” and “illumination”, and hence his transcendental method, influenced both early and later Scholasticism. There is no doubt that the method is present in St Thomas Aquinas and that it played a decisive part in his teaching about the apriority of our knowledge. In the later developments of Scholasticism it was more and more concealed by a preponderance of Aristotelianism until it disappeared almost completely. Kant discovered it afresh and used it in his Critique of Pure Reason to re-establish the connexion between our empirical knowledge and its a priori foundations. In German idealist philosophy, in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, the transcendental method attained a perfection which, until then, had not been thought possible. Vast areas of the activity of human consciousness were studied with its help, so as to reveal the a priori data which are contained in them, providing them with both a foundation and norms. In twentieth-century philosophy the transcendental method has been recognized as the appropriate instrument and process of metaphysical thought. Husserl’s “reductions” and Heidegger’s “expositions” bear witness to the effectiveness of this method. With Maréchal it provided a new foundation for metaphysics—in the immediate, it is true, for epistemology alone—and it has made a decisive contribution to the development of a completely new atmosphere in Scholastic thought. Perhaps the most important representative of the transcendental method is Blondel. His system is a veritable ordnance survey of the regions of the human person right up to their extreme limits, and a bringing to light (i.e. conscious perception) of what in its deepest reality the person had always been and willed. He has described his method as follows: “The method we must use … may be called a method of ‘implication’ and ‘explicitation’. These expressions simply mean that, instead of running away, as it were, from the data of reality and from concrete thoughts, we have to bring to light what they envelop, what they, in the etymological meaning of the word, suppose; what makes them possible and gives them their consistency.” “Implication means the discovery of what is, indeed, present but not adverted to, not yet expressly recognized or formulated.”12
All these achievements of thought, as varied, even as
