“Every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not a festival.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
The claim that every man dies alone is accurate in as much as none but he who is dying can experience it. While a person can die surrounded by family and friends, the experience of that death cannot be shared with anybody – not even those who are dying simultaneously. The death of each person is their own to experience, and each is intrinsically unique by virtue of the individuality of each human being.
Heidegger suggests that death is not even available as an experience, because experience requires life. I do not presume to suggest that death is the end of all experience, but Heidegger’s position underlines the uncompromising finality of death in terms of experience and sharing that experience with others.
In death, none can recount that experience to the living. Even as we lie on our death beds explaining the experience to others, those others have only the experience of our death from their perspective. More accurately, others have the experience of watching someone dying; the process and not the result.
To further that idea of sharing in dying, Heidegger represented dying as what really matters, rather than death (by virtue of its possibility for experience), going so far as to point out that the process of living is synonymous with the process of dying, saying that as soon as we are born, we are old enough to die. This is what he called being-towards-death.
From this perspective, it is necessary to orient oneself towards death such that dying is an emotional investment in possible ways of being; one with a necessary agency and awareness – an authentic way of being-toward-death (note that ‘dying’ is the same as living, by this interpretation). More on this later.
As I said, dying and life cannot be mutual, identical experiences between individuals. Each person’s death and dying are his or her ownmost experience, but through reflection, communication, and shared experience – a state of what I call intersubjectivity - the living can share in a facsimile of another’s life, albeit a flawed and incomplete one.
Heidegger suggests that death is not even available as an experience, because experience requires life. I do not presume to suggest that death is the end of all experience, but Heidegger’s position underlines the uncompromising finality of death in terms of experience and sharing that experience with others.
In death, none can recount that experience to the living. Even as we lie on our death beds explaining the experience to others, those others have only the experience of our death from their perspective. More accurately, others have the experience of watching someone dying; the process and not the result.
To further that idea of sharing in dying, Heidegger represented dying as what really matters, rather than death (by virtue of its possibility for experience), going so far as to point out that the process of living is synonymous with the process of dying, saying that as soon as we are born, we are old enough to die. This is what he called being-towards-death.
From this perspective, it is necessary to orient oneself towards death such that dying is an emotional investment in possible ways of being; one with a necessary agency and awareness – an authentic way of being-toward-death (note that ‘dying’ is the same as living, by this interpretation). More on this later.
As I said, dying and life cannot be mutual, identical experiences between individuals. Each person’s death and dying are his or her ownmost experience, but through reflection, communication, and shared experience – a state of what I call intersubjectivity - the living can share in a facsimile of another’s life, albeit a flawed and incomplete one.
“To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
**I should probably note that those Nietzsche quotes were taken out of context and I'm using them in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way to illustrate my points.**
It is so ironic you posted this as I was posting "Twins." I was just talking to friends about the image, and one of them suggested we may go from the light to light rather than from darkness to darkness as we suppose. Now that ultra-sound is available, twins can be observed in utero, and they do indeed touch and react to one another. As I was reading your post, I was wondering who is to say that we are alone as we leave this life. The living cannot know, and our concept of "alone" may not be pertinent in death.
ReplyDeleteI love the Nietzsche quote, used tongue in cheek or not, for I do indeed believe dying can be "a success" if done well.