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In the photo above we have a graveyard of paid debts if it is true that we all own nature a death. Mass graveyards like this, however, do not conjure up the picture of the occupants going quietly to their deaths. Socrates went relatively quietly to his death in spite of the fact that Athens, in retrospect was doing him an injustice. His speech in the Phaedo however, left no-one in any doubt that whatever the circumstances he believed death to be a Good. Either it was a peaceful dreamless sleep or there was a seemingly contradictory afterlife in which Socrates would be consorting with the great oracles, poets, lawmakers and intellectuals of the past.
Fingarette in his work, entitled “Death: Philosophical Soundings” begins with a narrative by Tolstoy entitled “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”. Ivan experiences a pain and visits his doctor but the doctor cannot help. His suffering continues until he at lasts confronts himself with the possible reality of nonexistence which in turn leads to reevaluation of the life he has been leading, arriving finally at the “truth” about his life. He also finally realises there is no death because there is no experience of death and his fears have been groundless. There is no “meaning” to death since it is an event that lies outside of our experience. This too was the position of Wittgenstein on this issue. Here we encounter not the battle of the giants of civilisation Freud pointed to, namely Eros v Thanatos, but rather the battle of two civilisation-building principles, namely the pleasure principle and the reality principle. On Freuds account, because the unconscious where our instincts reside do not acknowledge contradictions, there is no possible awareness of “the possibility” of that contradictory event–death– but only an awareness of what life means or is. Many commentators are willing to describe such a state of affairs as an awareness of our immortality but that is not an appropriate description. The unconscious is also timeless and this means that it is not aware of any time spans least all that of eternity or living forever. In the unconscious there is the desire for life to continue but not because of an awareness of eternity or the possibility of death. Fingarette puts the matter somewhat misleadingly:
“I think it is fair to put things this way:There are two absolutely certain facts about this existence.From the objective point of view I am mortal–it is certain that I will die. From the subjective point of view I am immortal–it is certain that I will never die. Or to put it differently: Never in my life will I experience death.”(P 7 Open Court, Chicago, 1996)
Putting it differently is certainly putting the matter more correctly but it is not true that I am “certain” that I will never die. Certainty as Wittgenstein put the matter is linked to doubt. Only consciousness has the conceptual capacity to doubt something. Doubting is a reality principle activity. My wishing to continue living is an activity of the life instinct regulated by the pleasure principle. Wishing in this context is tied to emotion and the imagination and doubting to a conscious conceptual use of the imagination and Understanding. The problem with the above false description relating to life is that a hylomorphic Aristotelian understanding of psuché makes no specific reference to consciousness because the assumption is that psuché is the first actuality of the human for of psuché(possessing as it does a human organ and limb configuration-system which is defining for our species). Aristotle, that is, does not separate consciousness from the realms of the preconscious or unconscious, operating on the pleasure-pain principle and the energy regulation principle. Consciousness, has, of course, a variety of defence mechanisms to protect itself from high anxiety levels including the deflection of energy into cultural activities such as the sciences but also sublimation which transforms energy into works of imagination.
Fingarette claims that we cannot experience the possibility of death but we can imagine it. He means here that we cannot imagine in first person mode the experience of death but we can imagine the consequences for those left behind after of our death. Here the pleasure-pain principle is clearly operating and this accounts for our ability to describe what is happening here in terms of the emotion of loss..But it is other peoples loss that I am imagining. My loved ones have lost me and need to continue all our mutually valued projects without me. This is the only way in which I can be “conscious” of my death. Returning to real life and realising our mutually valued projects are still actual and ongoing, contributes, Fingarette argues, to an increased pleasure being attached to these projects and perhaps to everything one experiences which was imagined as “lost”. This is the natural reaction to what he calls the “post-mortem future”. This is of course different to my imagining historical events which have no direct connection with my life. I have never personally engaged with the people i Imagine nor the projects they are involved with. Here my imagination must be working in close cooperation with the understanding and reason and the reality principle reigns for what is being imagined is then legitimised by written documentation and evidence. There is no feeling of loss attached to these events and/or the people that populate these imaginings. Any pleasure connected to these imaginings will be related to a correlation of what is imagined with some good the imaginer embraces in their life(in accordance with the Aristotelian major premise that all activity aims at the good and a minor premise that there are many meanings of good).
Fingarette further claims that when I imagine the response of my loved ones to my death I am engaging in a form of self deception because if one is dead there is no imagining activity going on–I am imagining a world in which I am still alive. Fingarette asks the insightful question whether it is phenomena such as this that lies behind the myth that the psuché or soul can detach itself from the body. Hence the fundamental importance of describing these phenomena correctly. These imaginings are always subject to some form of correction by the reality principle. A dream of Gabriel Garcia Marquez is discussed in which the author attends his own funeral with some friends and at the end of the funeral he prepares to leave with his friends who correct him saying “No, you, cant leave!”
This myth of separation from ones body in relation to death may well have motivated the many forms of mind-body dualism that have dogged the footsteps of Philosophy throughout the ages. Aristotle sought to neutralise Platonic dualism with his hylomorphic theory and Kant sought to neutralise Cartesian dualism with his Critical theory but dualism reappeared after Hegelian attacks on Kant and it was Wittgenstein in the 20th century that restored some form of sanity in Philosophy with his anti-Hegelian investigations that recalled many of the hylomorphic and critical arguments against both dualism and materialism.
Fingarette reawakens the ancient Socratic comparison of death with sleep when he claims that :
“We have no word to describe the inner experience of falling asleep. I anticipate “falling asleep” while still awake; and on reawakening I discover what happened. I do experience getting drowsy as the preliminary to falling asleep. Nevertheless we are never aware of the actual happening, the moment of falling asleep. What is it like, that transition from being awake to being asleep? There is only one correct answer: nothing. What is it like, subjectively, being in dreamless sleep? Nothing.”(P.19)
The event happens but is not experienced Fingarette argues and the two events, death and falling asleep are similar yet different in that I can realise upon awakening from sleep that I must have fallen asleep. In the case of the event of death happening to me, on the other hand, there can be no such realisation, no such awakening.
Fingarette declares his anti dualist position by maintaining that the idea of non-bodily consciousness is an incoherent idea(P.21). He then discusses the idea of selflessness and how it may lead to the self deceptive idea that the self is some kind of illusion which must be surmounted if one is not to experience the loss of self in imagining ones death. Many Eastern religions such as buddhism preach the idea of the selfishness of the self and its consequences for life: the freeing of “ones spirit” (P.23) Now whether Hegel “borrowed his idea of “Spirit” from this source or not is an open question and perhaps such an idea is not all that different from the Kantian idea of freedom where the unselfish person chooses to act in accordance with a universal imperative and treat everyone including themselves as “end-in-themselves”, an ancient idea that goes back to the challenge Glaucon, in the Republic, laid down for Socrates, that he had to prove that Good was not just Good in its consequences but good-in-itself. It can be argued, however good Platos answer to this question was, that it was left to Aristotle and Kant to give a fully satisfactory answer. An answer moreover that did not “turn Kant on his head” as Hegel wished to do but one rather that respected the traditions and customs of the past as long as they could be defended in terms of preserving freedom and treating people as “ends-in-themselves”. Action became the centre of ethical theory for Kant and dutiful action its lodestar. There is no denial of the self in Kants account only a perfect acknowledgement of its scope and limitations in accordance with rational principles such as noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Principles that Hegel questions. The Eastern view of a life striving to deny the appetites of the self would be in accord with both Aristotle and Kant but would not entail the absence of the “I”, which is a mortal entity that can die and never come back to life. That is, the Kantian “I think”(a manifestation of the act of apperception) is not immortal even is a time-bound phenomenon that pronounces “Nows” and arrange them in the framework of “befores” and “afters” until it dies and its “time” comes to an end. Time of course does not end, at least not until there is an absence of life on earth and maybe not even then. If the Kantian agent has done his duty he can look forward to his death without the feeling of trepidation without the feeling that he has not led a life of eudaimonia( a good spirited flourishing life). One dies in such circumstances without the fear of lost opportunities because ones value has been actualised during ones life and does not need another life to make another attempt to establish ones value. Going to meet ones death in the process of dying, in such circumstances, is the same as going to meet the occurrence of any event that one is anticipating. On Freudian terms the wish to live forever through successive resurrections would be delusional but the wish to live without the knowledge of death would be the kind of life that most animals lead. With the knowledge of death comes the fear of death and that in turn requires an overcoming of the fear in order to meet ones death stoically.
Fingarette points out that we are acquainted with ourselves uniquely and immediately via something resembling Kantian intuition. If I am in pain I know this non-observationally but thankfully, Fingarette does not use the word one normally uses in this context, namely “Introspection” which smuggles in a kind of imaginative observation that does not meet the criteria of knowing something non-observationally He also points out that I am the only person in the world that can move my arm simply by intending to move it. Such movement expresses my intention. This is the realm where Wittgensteins claim that “I am my World” makes sense and I know what I am doing non-observationally because I am my world, I am my body, and my body is in the world in the form of an “I”. This was criticised as an expression of solipsism but it is clear that this is not what Wittgenstein meant. The “I” referred to is not a particular I bearing a particular name, but rather a universal I that has a universally unique form of existence. Here there is a limit to what I can do. I cannot decide/intend to fall asleep in the way in which I decide/intend to reach for an orange. As Merleau-Ponty suggests in the “Phenomenology of Perception”:
“I lie down in bed, on my left side, with my knees drawn up; I close my eyes and breathe slowly, putting my plans out of my mind. But the power of my will or consciousness stops there. As the faithful, in the Dionysian mysteries, invoke the god by miming scenes fro his life, I call up the visitation of sleep by imitating the breathing and posture of the sleeper….There is a moment when sleep “comes” , settling on this imitation of itself.”(P.189 Trans Smith, C., Routledge, London(1958) P.189
Another limit of the imagination, Fingarette argues, is that we cannot imagine the end of world because to do so would be to imagine nothing. Now because I can imagine a world I presumably can imagine a world existing before I was born, This, indeed is a crucial possibility if we are understand history. So there is a space-time continuity which is a condition of our existence, a continuity that exists after my death and before my birth. I did not regret my having been born earlier at the dawn of living existence and the question is whether trying to imagine a beginning of the world is also an attempt to imagine nothing Heidegger once wrote an essay entitled “Introduction to Metaphysics”(Trans Manheim, R, London Yale University Press, 1959) and asked the fundamental question “Why are there essents rather than nothing?” This question is asked of course only by man for whom questioning is the essence of his Being-in-the World. Man is a Being for whom his own Being is in question.
Aristotle registers this interrogative nature of man by claiming that we are not just interested in the “What” question which facts give us the answer to, but we feel a further need to proceed to ask why the facts are the way they are, and thus we enter into the Kingdom of Principles(arché) which insofar as human beings are concerned begins with a hylomorphic account of psuché. In such an investigation imagining a beginning of the world requires a belief in an infinite continuum which has no beginning and no end. Heidegger, like Wittgenstein sees language as a critical constituent in our understanding of Being and the translator of Heidegger’s “Introduction to Metaphysics”:
” It is in words and language that things first come into being and are”(P.13)
Psuché and Phusis(physis) are intimately connected because the latter according to Heidegger means “the power to emerge and endure”(P.15). This over the millennia has been transformed into the more modern idea of nature where the concept of the “physical” is contrasted with the vague idea of the “psychological”. Heideggers concepts of Being-there(Dasein) and Being-in-the world” are attempts to avoid the difficulties of the above forced opposition . The original meaning of “Phusis”, Heidegger argues, “has determined the essence and history of metaphysics”(P.17). The Greek term “aletheia” ia also a key Greek term for Heidegger but Psuché is not related to this discussion in this work.
Fingarette continues on this theme and points out how an individual death will cause but a ripple in “the great ocean of existence”(P.36). The link here is clear to the Eastern/Stoical understanding of the limitations of the human power to affect such an ocean. This he contrasts to the Western egotistical view of being the centre of the world and spending ones life feeding ones appetites. The transactions of this speck of physical material in a physical universe are of course inconsequential. Fingarette touches upon the truth of solipsism which is a universal truth about all individuals who are their world(as Wittgenstein puts the matter) He points out that the uniqueness of being the centre of my world cannot be shared but that does not strictly follow from his argument because although my life is mine someone else who is human is in exactly the same situation. So we may be isolated with our feeling of being alone but insofar as we know that everyone human is in the same boat that knowledge is exactly what puts us in the same boat. This kind of knowledge may well have been what the oracle of Delphi was referring to in her challenge to “Know thyself”.
We are rational animals capable of discourse as Aristotle claimed and part of the capacity for discourse includes the vitally important activity of story-telling. In the story the narrator is the centre of the story-world if it is a third person narration otherwise the narrator is an inhabiter of the imagined world we the readers are presented with. Fingarette points out insightfully that if the narration is in first-person mode the narrator cannot die at the end of the story. This has the consequence that a story narrated in the first person cannot reach a definitive end:
“It simply stops at a certain point and no more is told. This is exactly analogous to real life”(P.40)
This allows Fingarette to conclude that my story is my world: a sequence of events in which characters are acting and being acted upon, all striving for ends with more or less success. The attractiveness of a story, Fingarette argues is due to it being a richer catalogue of meaningful events neatly crafted into an artistic whole. Religions use narratives to communicate a philosophy of life to a wider population than any genre of literature can reach and Fingarette provides us with a theory of how the different religions approach the theme or , as he puts the matter, “raw fact”(P.52), of suffering and claims that given the great differences of approach there can be no “objective description”. It is not clear that it is the intention of these narratives to provide such an objective description: their intention may be more related to prescribing how to deal with suffering and live well. Fingarette then declares this to be a reason why he cannot believe in reason in the way the Enlightenment prescribes. This is indeed a curious reason to give for not believing in reason: suggesting that the “spirit” of Hegel may be haunting this discussion. This distinction between what is subjective and what is objective has become hard currency since the time of Hegel and the retreat from his form of idealism to analytical Philosophy and its belief in the scientific method.
Fingarette, after abandoning reason, aligns himself with a form of relativism in which:
“The facts in such cases rarely suffice to settle the matter. Instead, we settle matters in the light of the general perspectives we favour….”(p 87)
There are many different perspectives for Fingarette and he hails the book of Job as a navigational star in this discussion, supposedly teaching us the fact that there is no Justice in the world and we do not get what we deserve as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Kant would claim. The question, however, is more complex than whether a particular man at a particular point in his life feels he is not getting what he deserves and therefor begins to question his faith. In Ancient Greek Philosophy, the discussion was far more complex, relating diké to areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and arché(principle):- not just over a period of ones life(one swallow does not make a summer) but over a significant portion of ones life. If the relation between these elements are rational then we can reasonably expect eudaimonia–(a good spirited flourishing life(psuche)).
Fingarette then offers us a selection of authors writings defending various aspects of his position, beginning with Tolstoy “My Confession”:
“Thus I had lost my way in the forest of human knowledge, in the light of the mathematical and experimental sciences which opened out for me clear horizons where there could be no home, and in the darkness of Philosophy, plunging me into a greater gloom with every step I took, until I was at last persuaded that there was, and could be, no way out” (p.102)
Tolstoy then turns to life for the answer and ultimately to Christianity which replaces reason with faith. Freud is also invoked in two of his lesser known essays and the result is a very different one to that Fingarette or Tolstoy propose.For Freud there is a form of self knowledge which seeks to know unambiguously our relation to life and to death, not via a blind faith but via the Reality Principle that regulates our appetites, desires and hopes for a future in the work we do to maintain and improve our civilisation. In this account the Greek spirit lives on in the form of arché and the Enlightenment lives on in the motto Sapere Audi!. A fellow Citizen of Vienna, Ludvig Wittgenstein, would embrace all three strands of influence and reawaken the slumbering spirit of Freedom and Progress in Europe. A spirit that has the patience to wait one hundred thousand years for the “kingdom” of ends” to come. A kingdom that will actualise not in the lifetime of many generations but which will shine like a beacon in the forest and enable us to see our way “home”.