Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy

by Bernard N. Schumacher , Translated by Michael J. Miller

• ISBN13: 9780521171199
• ISBN10: 0521171199
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism, and analytic philosophy. He also examines the ancient philosophies that have shaped our current ideas about death. His analysis focuses on three fundamental problems: (1) the definition of human death, (2) the knowledge of mortality and of human death as such, and (3) the question of whether death is "nothing" to us or, on the contrary, whether it can be regarded as an absolute or relative evil. Drawing on scholarship published in four languages and from three distinct currents of thought, this volume represents a comprehensive and systematic study of the philosophy of death, one that provides a provocative basis for discussions of the bioethics of human mortality.

Author Biography

Bernard N. Schumacher received his Ph.D. in philosophy and his Habilitation from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, were he currently teaches. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago; Providence College, Rhode Island; and the University of Lugano. He is the author of A Philosophy of Hope (2003) and has edited and co-edited numerous scholarly works, including L'humain et la personne (2008), translated into German as Der Mensch und die Person (2008) and A Cosmopolitan Hermit Modernity and Tradition in the Philosophy of Josef Pieper (2009).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Human Personal Death
Definitions of Death and What We Mean by Person	p. 13
Introduction	p. 13
Biological Death	p. 17
So-called Personal Death	p. 20
The Anthropological Challenge of Neocortical Death	p. 31
Ethics as the Criterion for Defining Death	p. 38
Diversity of Definitions of Death in a Secular Ethic	p. 45
Conclusion	p. 48
Theory of Knowledge about Death
Scheler's Intuitive Knowledge of Mortality	p. 51
Introduction	p. 51
Modern Man's Attitude Towards Death Itself	p. 53
The Certainty of Mortality Based on Observation and Induction or on Intuition	p. 54
Problematic Questions Raised by Scheler's Thesis of an Intuitive Knowledge of Mortality	p. 58
Heidegger's Being-Towards-Death	p. 61
The Distinction Between Ontical and Ontological	p. 62
The Impossibility of Experiencing My Own Death	p. 64
The Death of Another as a Possible Object of Thanatological Knowledge	p. 68
Being-Towards-Death	p. 72
Critique	p. 80
Is Mortality the Object of Foreknowledge?	p. 85
Inductive Knowledge of Death and Jean-Paul Sartre	p. 91
The Realist and Idealist Concepts of Death	p. 92
The Expectation of My Death	p. 95
Death as Another's Victory	p. 99
Death as a Situation-limit	p. 107
Conclusion	p. 109
Knowledge of Mortality Is Inseparable from the Relation to the Other	p. 112
Death as the Object of Experience	p. 117
Mutual Exclusiveness of the States of Life and Death	p. 122
The Meaning of the Expression "My Death"	p. 127
Death in Life	p. 131
Love as the Unveiling of What Is Unthinkable about Death	p. 139
The Phenomenology of Death	p. 140
Does Death Mean Nothing To Us?
The "Nothingness of Death": Epicurus and His Followers	p. 151
Presuppositions of the Epicurean Thesis of the "Nothingness of Death": Materialism, Hedonism, and Expenentiahsm	p. 151
"Death Is Nothing to Us"	p. 153
The Ancients	p. 155
Modern Thinkers: Montaigne, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, and Others	p. l65
Discussion of Experientialism and the Need for a Subject	p. 168
The A Priori Character of the Epicurean Assertion that Death Is Nothing to Us	p. 168
First Series of Examples Against Experientialism: Comparisons Between Two States of Life	p. l71
Second Series of Examples Against Experientialism: Comparisons Between a State of Life and a State of Death	p. 174
Third Set of Possible Arguments Against Experientialism: Posthumous Evils	p. 175
The Subject of Posthumous Evils	p. 177
Death: An Evil of Privation Of What Does Death Deprive the Subject?	p. l82
Is Death Always an Evil?	p. 184
Defense of the Characterization of Death as an Evil in View of the Peaceful State of Prenatal Nonexistence	p. 206
Conclusion	p. 213
Bibliography	p. 221
Index of Names	p. 249
Index of Concepts	p. 255
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