The following publishers have given permission to use extended quotations from copyrighted works. From The Stranger by Albert Camus, trans. Stuart Gilbert. Copyright 1946 by Alfred A. Knopf Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. From What I Believe by Bertrand Russell. Copyright 1925 by E.P. Dutton, renewed 1953 by Bertrand Russell. Used by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. From Eugène Ionesco: Journal en miettes, (Fragments of a Journal) © Mercure de France, 1967.
Cover illustration: Arnold Boecklin. Isle of the Dead.
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First printing 1996
Second printing 1997
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fingarette, Herbert
Death: philosophical soundings / Herbert Fingarette
p. cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8126-9941-8
1. Death. I. Title.
BD444.F53 1996
128'.5--dc20
96-42972
CIP
for Leslie and Ann
with whom this silent conversation was held
and in memory of
Phil
with whom it was the last
CONTENTS
PART ONE: THE MEANING OF DEATH
What Is There To Be Explored?
1. Death as the Mirror Image of Life
Metaphors That Deceive
2. Separation, Sleep
3. Immortality, Selflessness
Metaphors That Enlighten
4. The World as My Life
5. Life as Story
6. Life as a Visit to Earth
7. The Ceremony of Life
Living in Time
8. Living a Future without End
9. Living a Present without Bounds
Perspective on Life and Death
10. “Before, I had heard—Now I see” Job 42:5
PART TWO: OTHER VOICES, OTHER VISIONS
Introduction
Section 1
Leo Tolstoy
Blaise Pascal
Miguel de Unamuno
Section 2
Bertrand Russell
Chuang Tzu
Section 3
Eugène Ionesco
Albert Camus
Section 4
Bhagavad Gita
Arthur Schopenhauer
Sigmund Freud
Section 5
Marcus Aurelius
Michel de Montaigne
David Hume
INDEX
Death as the Mirror Image of Life
True, death itself is nothing; but the thought of it is like a mirror. A mirror, too, is empty, without content, yet it reflects us back to ourself in a reverse image. To try to contemplate the meaning of my death is in fact to reveal to myself the meaning of my life. In this connection I think of one of the most powerful attempts to probe the meaning of one’s own death, Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”
Initially, Ivan Ilyich reacts to the possibility of impending death in a way that I suspect most of us do: with denial. Maybe, he thinks, this isn’t death after all. Maybe this pain is merely the effect of some malfunctioning organ. The doctors can probably put it right. Ivan Ilyich soon realizes these hopes are feeble straws. But he’s impelled to grasp at
