Death and the Afterlife in 20th Century Philosophy

How have 20^th century philosophers approached the subject of death and afterlife?

In the minds of most people, death looms as the end of who they are. It is the end of mortal life, but for many, it is also the transition to the afterlife. Life and afterlife as separate experiences of the one being. Twentieth century philosophers and thinkers have generally approached the subjects of death and afterlife by attempting to understand them in relation to mortal life. It perhaps could not be otherwise, as on the face of it, dying is something the living do, and the afterlife is for those who are dead.

The following essay argues that for death to be understood, twentieth century philosophers have needed to consider death’s relationship with life, just as an explanation of darkness might be formulated as the opposite, or absence of light. Neither death, nor life, can be understood divorced from the other. Ways that death has been considered include life and death as a function of power; death as a social reality; the influence of death on individuals; whether life must have any meaning in the face of death; and, death as an end to life and being.

On the other hand, afterlife has been considered in the following ways: the beliefs of the living about those who are dead; eternal life; as a concept beyond human understanding or not worth pursuing; and, why it might be important to believe in an afterlife regardless.

Some of the thinkers and philosophers whose work will be discussed include D.Z. Phillips, Foucault, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, among others.

Michel Foucault approaches the subject of death as a function of power. From the right of the sovereign over life and death to the genocides performed by the modern state. But he argues that the modern state has more interest in holding power over life than it does over death. He writes that

If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population.[1]

Foucault envisages the power of death as a form of power over life, in that it has the capacity to end life. But death is not the only power over life; living itself exerts power over life. But true to the theme that both death and life must be mutually considered to achieve an understanding of either, Foucault is able to comprehend modern genocide as an enormity of death through reference to an enormity of life, the modern ‘large-scale population’.

But for Foucault, the decline of death in favour of life as the primary function of power, has cast death into a new social role.

It is over life, throughout its unfolding, that power establishes its domination; death is power’s limit, the moment that escapes it; death becomes the most secret aspect of existence, the most ‘private’.[2]

If modern power is continuing to lose interest in death, then death, according to Foucault, can no longer mark the handing over of sovereignty to a higher power. The lack of pageantry, ceremony and public expression is linked with the modern anxiety about death. [3]

Death has become something to speak about in hushed tones, to avoid saying the ‘wrong’ or ‘insensitive’ thing to those who are bereaved, and many of us have very little personal contact with death. So pronounced is this anxiety, that Martin Heidegger was moved to write “the dying of others is seen often as a social inconvenience, if not a downright tactlessness, from which publicness should be spared.”[4]

Death in this sense is something in which we cannot share, although we know that eventually, we too must face death. It seems that death alone of those most common aspects of life -that of its finishing – is the most estranging. No other can communicate the experience of dying to us, nor shall we be able to impart our own experience, if indeed death is experienced at all. “Death” says Heidegger, “reveals itself as the ownmost nonrelational possibility not to be bypassed.”[5]

Death, that is, belongs to each of us alone in a sense greater than anything else, and it is inevitable. For Heidegger’s Da-sein, death has no before or after, as the life of a being must be understood in terms of its awareness of its own death. He writes

the ending that we have in view when we speak of death, does not signify a being-at-an-end of Da-sein, but rather a being toward the end of this being. Death is a way to be that Da-sein takes over as soon as it is.[6]

Thus from the beginning of consciousness death is an ever present reality. Death can only have a before and after when we consider it in the lives of others, while they lived, and then when life ceased. Jeff Malpas explains Heidegger’s thought on death as being the limit of Da-sein’s possibilities. [7] But not only is death the ultimate limit to all our possible ideas, projects and endeavours, it also represents “that mystery beyond which we cannot think…, but which forces us back to focus on the life that, so long as we are, always lies before us, that always remains in question, that is always demanding of our care.”[8]

In this sense death as a limit not only informs our understanding of our lives, but also is a requisite for this understanding. That is, not only is the fact that we must die relevant to understanding human life, it is essential. But if this is so, why is death evaded and feared? Roy Perrett suggests that the hereafter offers a transformed quality of life which is not easily obtainable in mortal life. “The fear of death is the response to the realization that one’s life does not possess this quality and death will destroy its meaning.”[9]

The search for meaning in both life and death has held constant fascination, but is this meaning obtainable? Schuon argues that,

If the cognitive faculty consists in discerning between the essential and the secondary and if, by way of consequence, it implies the capacity to grasp situations and adapt to them, then he who can grasp the meaning of life and thus of death will be concretely intelligent. This means that the awareness of death ought to determine the quality of life, just as the awareness of eternal values takes precedence over temporal values.[10]

When Schuon states that the ‘awareness’ of death should determine the quality of life, this falls short of the ability to ‘grasp’ the meaning of death. That is, death, like ‘eternal values’, is immutable and greater than that which changes – ‘temporal values’ – or in this case, the way in which we live our mortal lives. There is sympathy here with Heidegger’s view that awareness of death informs our being, but Schuon differs in that not only does the awareness of death inform our being, but that it must. Death, as eternal, must take precedence over life, as temporal.

For Keightley, however, “for someone’s death to be really his death, there must be no continuation of life in any sense, through revival, survival or resurrection.”[11] In this view, death and afterlife are antithetical, as an afterlife could not be reached except through death, but if one lives an afterlife, according to Keightley, then one cannot really be dead. This conception might pose death as an absolute limit to both the temporal and the eternal. But the eternal, by its very nature can have no limit.

Are the eternal and afterlife the same thing? The philosophers and thinkers being considered in this essay have generally approached the concept of afterlife from a practical perspective. As what happens after death is not something any of us can claim to ‘know’ about, D.Z. Phillips argues that those who argue that the dead are simply dead are arguing from belief, rather than the fact of death; “those who speak of the reality of the dead and those who insist the dead are dead share the same language, but take up different perspectives within it.”[12]

Death may be a fact, but Phillips argues that the dead are a reality that do not necessarily rely on an individual’s fantasy or imagination that the dead live on elsewhere. So despite having knowledge of the objective fact of death, even those who wish to assert that there is nothing more to death than this fact are, according to Phillips, confused if they see this as saying less about death than those who say that the “dead are transfigured, glorified, or raised up.”[13]

For Phillips, what people believe about the dead isn’t as important as the fact that people hold beliefs about the dead;

If one asks why people should believe in the reality of the dead, why the dead should be held in awe, reverence or dread, one can only reply that people do react to the dead in this way, that is all.[14]

To Phillips, this belief cannot be explained, but it is fundamental. It is not important how or why people believe in the reality of the dead, it is important that they do. So, just as night and day might not be explained without reference to the sun, a belief in the reality of the dead cannot be explained by merely focusing only on the individual who holds this belief, nor on the circumstances that have informed their belief. That is, to attempt to explain that a person believes in an afterlife in Heaven because they were raised in the Christian faith does not, for Phillips, say anything at all about why people hold beliefs about the dead.

But in this, Phillips finds a position that satisfies Keightley argument on death. He writes

For the believer, his death, like his life, is to be in God. For him, this is the life eternal which death cannot touch; the immortality which finally places the soul beyond the reach of the snares and temptation of this mortal life.[15]

Eternal life, or the afterlife, in this view then, is outside of time, rather than for all time, just as God is outside of time. Keightley is able to assimilate this view of Phillips with his own by arguing that “for Phillips, beliefs about immortality, eternal life, the resurrection, if they are genuine, are expressions of the state of the soul.”[16]

This however, takes us no closer to understanding the idea of the afterlife. Like the earlier discussion on death, philosophers have sought to understand the afterlife by considering its influence on mortal life.

Keightley quotes the following passage from Wittgenstein which highlights the inadequacy of attempting to understand afterlife in itself by considering its influence on mortal life

Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.[17]

But what is outside of space and time but God? Does this suggest that Wittgenstein believes that we might be unable to comprehend the ‘riddles’ of both eternal life and the present life? Are space and time as the boundaries of life inexplicable without reference to that which is beyond or outside it, just as darkness can be considered as that which is beyond light?

Heidegger seems to see little utility in considering these particular questions of afterlife while a full understanding of death has not yet been reached. He argues that “we cannot even ask with any methodological assurance about what “is after death” until death is understood in its full ontological essence.”[18] This may be so, but can death be understood in its “full ontological essence”, and if not, is pondering this question just as futile? Perhaps not.

Roy Perrett recognises, like Phillips, the importance of humans holding beliefs about the afterlife, but he does this pessimistically:

Most humans are deprived of the opportunity of realizing their potential. Thus for most the realization of this potential would require some form of continued personal life after death. In denying the reality of an afterlife, humanism is committed to the view that for the vast majority existence is in the end irredeemably tragic.[19]

Human potential in the general sense might be anything within the limits imposed by the horizon of death. But is reaching human potential the equivalent of achieving the utmost that is possible within those limits set by death, or is it a relative measure of achievement? Is human potential the same as the perfectibility of man and thus unattainable?

The twentieth century philosophers and thinkers who have been considered in this essay have almost exclusively attempted to understand both death and the afterlife by relating these ideas to the influence they have on our mortal lives. Some have suggested that the answer to these questions lies outside of the possibilities of human understanding, while others suggest that there may be no answer at all, but that it remains important for people to hold beliefs on these subjects.

It is clear however, that death remains a mystery, and the afterlife even more so; but that without an understanding of both of these, life itself can never be fully comprehended.

 

Bibliography

Foucault, M., ‘Right of Death and Power Over Life’, in The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow (ed.), London, Penguin Books, 1986.

Heidegger, M., Being and Time, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996.

Keightley, A., Wittgenstein, Grammar and God, London, Epworth Press, 1976.

Malpas, J., Heidegger’s Topology, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2006.

Perrett, R.W., ‘Regarding Immortality’, in The Philosophy of Religion Selected Readings, Yeager Hudson (ed.), Mountain View, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, pp. 592-607.

Phillips, D.Z., Religion Without Explanation, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1976.

Schuon, F., Roots of the Human Condition, Bloomington, World Wisdom Books, 1991.

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[1] Michel Foucault, ‘Right of Death and Power Over Life’, in The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow (ed.), London, Penguin Books, 1986, p. 260.

[2] Ibid., p. 261.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 235.

[5] Ibid., p. 232.

[6] Ibid., p. 228.

[7] Jeff Malpas, Heidegger’s Topology, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2006, p. 101.

[8] Ibid., p. 273.

[9] Roy W. Perrett, ‘Regarding Immortality’, in The Philosophy of Religion Selected Readings, Yeager Hudson (ed.), Mountain View, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 606.

[10] Frithjof Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition, Bloomington, World Wisdom Books, 1991, p. 8.

[11] Alan Keightley, Wittgenstein, Grammar and God, London, Epworth Press, 1976, p. 90.

[12] D.Z., Phillips, Religion Without Explanation, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1976, p. 123.

[13] Ibid., p. 136.

[14] Ibid., pp. 134-5.

[15] Phillips quoted in Keightley, p. 89.

[16] Keightly, pp. 87-8.

[17] Wittgenstein, quoted in Keightley, p. 90.

[18] Heidegger, p. 230.

[19] Perrett, p. 593.