New Philosopher – July 2019

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TheEssayist ThePoliticalTheorist TheLogician

Death – the great inevitability; the price of

living. Here are six thinkers’ views on that which

awaits us all.

The obscene mystery Thereisno escape Ishall rot

There is a peculiarly modern predi-
lection for psychological explanations
of disease, as of everything else. Psy-
chologising seems to provide control
over the experiences and events (like
grave illnesses) over which people have
in fact little or no control. Psychologi-
cal understanding undermines the ‘re-
ality’ of a disease. That reality has to
be explained. (It really means; or is a
symbol of; or must be interpreted so.)
For those who live neither with reli-
gious consolations about death nor
with a sense of death (or of anything
else) as natural, death is the obscene
mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing
that cannot be controlled. It can only
be denied. A large part of the popu-
larity and persuasiveness of psychol-
ogy comes from its being a sublimated
spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly sci-
entific way of affirming the primacy of
‘spirit’ over matter.

It has been commonly observed that

blood, wounds, cries and groans, the

preparations for painful operations, and

everything which directs the senses to-

wards things connected with suffering,

are usually the first to make an impres-

sion on all men. The idea of destruction,

a more complex matter, does not have

so great an effect; the thought of death

affects us later and less forcibly, for no

one knows from his own experience

what it is to die; you must have seen

corpses to feel the agonies of the dying.

But when once this idea is established

in the mind, there is no spectacle more

dreadful in our eyes, whether because of

the idea of complete destruction which

it arouses through our senses, or be-

cause we know that this moment must

come for each one of us and we feel

ourselves all the more keenly affected

by a situation from which we know

there is no escape.

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and

nothing of my ego will survive. I am

not young and I love life. But I should

scorn to shiver with terror at the

thought of annihilation. Happiness is

nonetheless true happiness because it

must come to an end, nor do thought

and love lose their value because they

are not everlasting. Many a man has

borne himself proudly on the scaffold;

surely the same pride should teach us

to think truly about man’s place in the

world. Even if the open windows of

science at first make us shiver after the

cosy indoor warmth of traditional hu-

manising myths, in the end the fresh

air brings vigour, and the great spaces

have a splendour of their own.

Susan Sontag
1933-2004

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712-1778

Bertrand Russell

1872-1970

Six thinkers