According to Walter, one of the dangers of postmodern authority is that it
eclipses the traditional separation of public and private domains by means
of an unbridled support of expressive forms of discourse. After providing a
summary of Walter ’s views on the possible authoritarian danger of expres-
sive individualism I draw on Jürgen Habermas’s critical social theory, focus-
ing on his analysis of religion and rationality as a means of explaining the
potentially authoritarian and mystifying dynamics of religious language.
While religion has proven to be a powerful and pervasive discourse for deal-
ing with dying and bereavement, it is important that the therapeutic ideals
of consolation and working through not be confused with theoretical analy-
sis. It is my assumption that how we talk about death, whether in terms of
“grief management” or “death education,” has a profound effect on how
death is perceived and understood within society as a whole. Although it is
readily evident that religious language may help dying individuals and sur-
vivors cope with the experience and trauma of death and loss, it is argued
here that the privileging of religious or spiritual discourses in a highly indi-
vidualized way has serious and perhaps unexpected effects. Our attitudes
toward dying and death are culturally and politically significant since they
often encapsulate our predominant attitudes toward subjectivity. An ill-
conceived understanding of dying and death resulting in the spiritualiza-
tion of death and thus a denial or an avoidance of its reality cannot but
have serious and potentially harmful implications for everyday life. It is
the task of critical theory to provide a critique of regressive forms of theo-
retical analysis and social practice. In this, I argue that a contemporary
thanatology must confront what Habermas calls postmetaphysical thinking
if it is not to lapse into the realm of ideology.
By means of an introduction, thanatology can be defined as the interdisci-
plinary study of death-related behavior including actions, attitudes, and emo-
tions concerning issues of death, dying, and bereavement. Studies in
thanatology have emerged since the 1940s and 1950s out of a relative silence
on the topic – a silence that was often, and sometimes still, encouraged (Dean
1995). Although inevitably at the forefront of literature, art, and religious
imagery, death, dying, and bereavement have not traditionally been the focus
of sustained analysis. It was not until the path-breaking work and popular-
ity of thinkers including Herman Feifel, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Cicely
Saunders that thanatology has become a serious topic of public discussion
and inquiry. Today death education and death studies have become com-
monplace throughout the public sphere.
186 • Kenneth G. MacKendrick